Djang0

Just curious, does anyone know why they changed the version numbering? (e.g. form 3.4 to 2016.*.*).

Yeah LOL, it's just been one thing after another taking up my time, but now I have the time to build this thing and do more flight sim. Also every time I get back to this there's new hardware to think about.

Re HDs for FS and storage, does anyone have informed opinions about Toshiba X300 SATA drives vs WD Black? The 4TB X300 is around £90.

Well I still want to do this project! The idea is an after-school club for kids to try flightsim. I'm setting my sites on GTX750ti cards (or GTX750 if the power requirements are much less). For GTX750 / 750Ti I've seen minimum recommendations from various manufacturers of: 300 to 400W Total on 12V rails = 42A From PC forums I've seen users suggest: 300W Total on 12V rails = 20A The PCs I'm using are old workstations and have the following PSU voltages: #1 PSU = Dell L305P-01 305W 12V1 = 18A 12V2 = 18A #2 PSU = FSP ATX-350PNF 350W 12V1 = 18A 12V2 = 16A #3 PSU = HP PC6015 365W 12V = 12A 12Vcpu = 14.5A (Not sure if "12Vcpu" literally means for the CPU only???) Q1) Could I run GTX750 / 750Ti cards with these PSUs? Any thoughts are particularly welcome from those that have tried these cards with a 300W PSU. Q2) Could I run any of these cards in particular: # GTX750Ti KFA2 GTX750Ti OC Slim 2GB MSI N750Ti-2GD5TLP # GTX750 KFA2 GTX750 OC Slim 2GB Or your favourite single slot GTX750Ti / 750?

Re SSDs for the OS: SanDisk Extreme Pro 240 GB - £90 Samsung 850 Pro 256GB - £98 Samsung 850 Evo 250GB - £60 I think I'll probably go for the Evo, unless anyone has thoughts???

Q) What made you go for that MSI M/B?

Q) Is the GTX 750Ti currently the best entry level GPU for flightsim? I'm considering a project where I'll be rebuilding old Core2 systems so I need a good deal on a reasonable GPU as I'll be building many systems.

For goodness sake!

For current and future flightsims I think you really want to be overclocking the CPU. 1) The system your planning can't overclock the CPU. Also there is no unlocked "i5-4460K" CPU and the chipsets H97, H87 and H81 do not support CPU overclocking.) 2) The H81 chipset does not support PCIe v3, it's not a big deal but for a new build I'd want to take full advantage of a GTX970 GPU. 3) If you go for an i5-4460 avoid the S or T models. 4) The i5-4670(K) and i5-4690(K) are about the same price. 5) Consider a 2nd dedicated hard drive for your flightsim software. Anyway I'd suggest (most £££s to least £££s): i5-4690K + Z97 M/B... To overclcok the CPU. i5-4690 + H97 M/B i5-4670K + Z87 M/B... To overclcok the CPU + get great deal on the Z87. i5-4670 + H87 M/B... Get great deal on the H87. i5-4460 + H87 M/B... Minimum spec I'd consider for a GTX970. i5-4460 + H81 M/B... no PCIe v3 The i5-4460 + H81 + GTX970 will not be a bad system but for a few more £££s I think you could get a better overall deal.

Just check that the version of whatever temp measuring software you use is actually compatible with your hardware (mainly thinking CPU) or you could get inacurate temps!

Do you know what make the card will be?

I'd say HT off for FSX. Q1) What flightsims do you mainly use? Q2) Did you also need 1.43v for 4.7GHz with HT off? Q3) Did you stress test the system at 4.8GHz and 1.43v?

I think you will eat up that disk space pretty quickly with scenery, maybe consider a bigger SSD for the flightsim stuff or a 7200 drive - the WD Caviar Black would be my choice.

People tend to use Nvidia Inspector (NI) to manage Nvidia GPUs. The application overrides the Nvidia control panel 3D settings and offers access to additional driver features e.g. AA modes. 1) Try searching the forums for FS9 settings which are very similar to those for FSX. 2) This is for FSX but should be helpful. 3) I place my NI in it's own folder in Program Files for house keeping. 4) Remember to check that the NI profile is associated your FS9.exe file and to save the profile after making changes. 5) I found that Sparse Grid Supersampling helped with shimmering (apparently some shimmering can be because of bad scenery design). 6) In FS9 set Antialising unchecked. Q1) What graphics card do you have? Q2) Are you using any FS9 cfg tweaks? NI settings I use for FS9 (other settings are at default): Antialiasing - Behaviour Flags = None Antialiasing - Mode = Override Any Application Setting Antialiasing - Setting = 8XSQ [or 8XS] Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling = 4X Sparse Grid Supersampling [or 2X... ] Anisotropic filtering mode = User-defined / Off Anisotropic filtering Setting = 16x Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias = Clamp Texture filtering - Quality = High Quality Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration = Single display performance mode [i'm using a single monitor] Power management mode = Prefer maximum performance Vertical Sync = 1/2 Refresh Rate [my monitor is at 60Hz so I set my FPS limit to 30 in FS9] Also FS9 cfg graphics tweaks I use: [DISPLAY] TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400 [TERRAIN] TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21 TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.5 TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.0 TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4

Q1) Have you tried clean booting your system to check the FSX performance? RUN command, "msconfig" etc. Q2) Where abouts is your fan controller located in your case? Q3) Are you sure you didn't dislodge one of the power connectors for your graphics card (if it has them)? Sometimes the power connectors can be loose and temperamental - need to check they are fully seated even if they look connected. Q4) Are you sure Windows Update hasn't tried to auto-update the Graphics driver?

As far as NI and new Nvidia driver installs is concerned, I prefer to start from scratch so I literally delete the NI exe and any other associated files, profiles etc. Since NI is 3rd part and not officially supported by Nvidia I want to avoid obscure incompatibilities with NI and new drivers... who the hell knows how and why... with FSX if it can happen it will! In short - no! In the FSX settings each display should appear (drop down box) with accompanying options for you to set the resolution. Perhaps the issue you were having was due to a compatibility issue between different display interface standards (e.g. I believe that the GTX9## supports newer HDMI revisions than the GTX7##). Windows might present a default resolution for one display when there is an incompatibility between display connection standards [guess]. Q1) What kind of cables/interfaces were you using, VGA, DVI, HDMI, Display Port etc? Q2) What resolutions and frequencies did you want to run the displays at? Q3) What are the model numbers of the displays? Q4) What Windows version are you running? Q5) Did you try setting the screen resolutions in Windows? I always set screen resolutions from Windows. Q6) I assume you're running FSX in full screen?

Yes, you want to match the CPU and GPU to avoid bottlenecks. E.g. My ageing Q9650 overclocked to 4GHz + my GTX780Ti + Aerosoft Heathrow and iFly 737 = 100% CPU and 35% GPU utilisation (+ depressing frame rate)! BTW I was thinking of a multi-monitor setup, with a single display you could also consider a 2GB GTX960, but as Jimmy RFR pointed out newer sims will use more than even 4GB VRAM. i5-4690K + GTX960 2GB + 8GB DDR3 kit (2 sticks 1866 - 2133MHz) £££ i5-4690K + GTX960 4GB + 8GB DDR3 kit (2 sticks 1866 - 2133MHz) £££ :smile: i5-4690K + GTX970 4GB + 8GB DDR3 kit (2 sticks 1866 - 2133MHz) £££ :mellow: i7-4790K + GTX970 4GB + 8GB DDR3 kit (2 sticks 1866 - 2133MHz) £££ :( i7-4790K + GTX970 4GB + 16GB DDR3 kit (2 sticks 1866 - 2133MHz) £££ :o Not so light gaming!

As I mentioned using the uninstallers is optional with the newer drivers, but considering that many gamers and flightsim folks use them it might be a good idea. I did link to Display Driver Uninstaller in my previous post. The method I posted has always worked for me when updating the Nvidia driver. My current system is rather outdated so I should probably take a look at Display Driver Uninstaller which perhaps is more suitable for newer systems. No, you don't *have* to delete the folder NI is running from. I should mention that I put NI in it's own folder in Program Files for housekeeping, you could probably run NI from any local disk. I just prefer to start with a new NI and to set up my NI profiles from scratch after a new display driver install; then I can rule out a corrupted NI application or corrupted profiles if I find any issues.

You should try DCS World, that tends to just "work" in my experience.

A Q9550 will overclock just as well as a Q9650. A good quality single tower CPU cooler with either single or dual fans (120 or 140mm) should give you OK temps (i.e. under 70C while simming at an overclock of around 4GHz). Consider upgrading the PSU because of ageing. These utilities might help to give you a rough idea what you need: Extreme PSU Calculator Power Supply Calculator It's nice to meet someone else still playing around with LGA755 Core2Duo/Quad CPUs! Just remember to disable Load Line Calibration with those CPUs when overclocking.

Q1) What model of M/B do you have? Q2) What CPU cooler do you have? Probably the CPU upgrade will make the most difference and you really want to be overclocking the CPU for a justifiable performance gain; that might mean a new CPU cooler. It appears that the fastest LGA1155 CPU upgrade for you is: Sandy Bridge i7-2600 to Ivy bridge i7-3770K (which is about the same cost as an i7-4790K). But Haswell is LGA1150 so he'd need a new M/B.

FSX does not use hyperhreading so I can't see a practical advantage of getting an i7-4790K for FSX. However I just find it hard to believe that in 5yrs you'll still using software that's over 10yrs old when there will be other alternatives. That's why people are recommending the i7-4790K. Yes it will for a single display system.

It the build is now a main flightsim PC for FSX and you want to future proof then the minimum spec I'd consider is: i7-4790K + GTX970 + 8MB DDR3 1866MHz I don't like i7-4790K + GTX960 2GB! The minimum VRAM these days, even for a lower end card, is 2GB. Surely you'll be using more than only FSX in 5yrs time? the i7-4790K gives you 8 possible cores, I'm sure future flightsims, addons and OS will find ways of using all those cores and increasingly the GPU for non-graphics tasks. It would be a waste to get a locked i7-4790.

I think it was for turner112!

Whenever I update the Nvidia driver (or change my graphics card) I do the following: 01) Delete the C:\Nvidia folder on my C: drive. 02) Uninstall the existing driver (and any other Nvidia graphics software installed with the driver package). Then reboot and let Windows install a generic graphics driver - do not let Windows install a Nvidia driver automatically! 03) [Apparently this step is not essential for recent Nvidia drivers] Use Driver Sweeper to check all Nvidia graphics components are removed (Driver Sweeper has been superseded by another application but I haven't used that). Then reboot. 04) Delete the NvidiaInspector application folder (back up your profiles if you want - but beware if the profiles are somehow corrupt! So I just remember the various settings). 05) Delete the FSX cfg file (back up any individual tweeks to a text file). [i've never done this but at this point you could also delete the current FSX shader cache] 06) Install the Nvidia driver (make sure there isn't any Nvidia bloatware c### installed with it!). Then reboot. 07) Use the RUN command and "msconfig" to actually check that no Nvidia bloatware c### is running on system startup! I just wanted the display driver, the control panal and PhysX installed. 08) Set up your NvidiaInspector profiles (check the profile is pointed to the correct FSX.exe file, and use appropriate settings for either DX9 or DX10). 09) Run FSX and let it rebuild the cfg file (and shader cache if you deleted it). Close FSX. 10) Edit the FSX cfg file with your tweaks (remember some tweaks that you manually add to the cfg file will automatically revert to their default values if you change any graphics settings from inside FSX). I'm wondering if your AA issues are to do with a corrupted FSX shader cache??? Q) Are you using DX9 or DX10? (Perhaps you've accidentally ticked DX10 Preview Mode in the FSX settings but are using DX9 settings in NvidiaInspector?)