TurboKen

Interesting results thanks for sharing. I use a Plextor M5Pro for my flightsim drive and have no complaints, very fast and reliable for 2 years now. Also been using a Samsung 830 as my laptop drive for 2 years and no problems with it either.

Yes it will but its not just virus scans there are other things the OS is doing in the background (Optimizations, indexing) for example that are pinging the hard drive and every little thing is a chance for a stutter. You can certainly install flight sim on the OS drive but if you can spare $100 I would suggest buying a dedicated drive.

DO NOT RUN Intel burn test! If you are hitting nearly 70c with FSX you will be at 90c with IBT. First thing I would try is cleaning off the thermal paste, reapply and re-seat the water pump. Then run FSX again and let us know what temps your hitting. Should be closer to 50c with that setup.

I went from a Q9550 overclocked to 3.4 to a sandy bridge 2600k overclocked to 4.8. Massive difference. So If you choose to upgrade to the new 4790k you will see much better results then your current system.

Not just upgrade to a larger SSD, you want an additional SSD. You do not want to run P3D on the same drive as the operating system, as it may be running a scan or have other things going on. Keep the intel 730 240GB for the O.S. as they are very reliable drives but I would add another one for the "flight sim drive" stay with the intel, samsung or plextor as they are the most reliable.

+1 for win7 x64 The cooler is awesome but to be honest 4.8 is more likely. You will love the case, just built one with the 750d. Lots of room. I would add 1 more SSD. One for the WIn7 and one for FSX/P3D and keep the other HD for back and other stuff.

You should be no where near those temps, I'm not hitting that at 4.8. Before you buy a new cooler I would change the thermal paste. just a very small grain of rice vertically will do. Don't forget to clean both the cpu and cooler first with alcohol.

Yeah the OOM problems are overrated, stop putting EVERYTHING at 100% detail with 100% traffic and you wont get OOM errors PERIOD! By the way... Nice Shot!

2133 seems to be the sweet spot as much higher the CAS increases counter the increase in Mhz. I went from 1600 cas 9 to 2133 cas 9 and improved 2-3 FPS, but did not see an increase going to 2400 CAS 10. I would say stick with at least the 2133 ram 8/16Gig and you will be fine.

Then I would set it at 4.1ghz You never know what other issues may come up, if it will not wake up it may start having other random issues. Find the WALL and then back it down to a SAFE level and enjoy it.

I believe that was an issue with asus and sandy bridge processors. (mine included so I never used sleep) I dont remember the older I7's ever having that issue. Will it wake from sleep with less overclock? Only 4.0 for example.

Just saying that with your system @ 4.7 that would be roughly equal to a 4790k @ 4.3 If you were able to get to 4.7 with the new computer you will see a small jump 5-10 fps and smoothness, but only you can decide if its worth the COST and TIME to do the upgrade. For me it would not have been worth it, but I already had mine sold and wanted to build a new computer just for fun anyway. I now have a full tower Corsair 750D lots of room and a nice clear panel on the side to see all the goodies.

My 2600k @ 5.0 will match my 4690k @ 4.4

Wow! That looks serious... Please keep us updated. The FSXmark11 test is on a vanilla fsx install, so not long at all.

Or you could get a H110i GT for $130 and overclock it to 4.8ghz. But thats not as exciting as phase change. As for the SLI I would use what you have for now and wait for the new 12GB card coming out, which would work great with the curved HD monitor you are looking at.

yeah not worth it. I went from a 770 to a 970, really not much of a difference. FYI- When you said SLI maybe the way to go, you mean for other games right as FSX does not really take advantage of that.

I had a 2600k with a 560/660/770/970. You will see a small increase but only a few fps. It will help more in bad weather then at a busy airport for example. If you play other games massive difference. But what you need to do is overclock that baby. You will see a massive difference between 3.4ghz and 4.2 ghz which it should do without breaking a sweat with a good cooler. As for the other question 680 to a 970? Only if your running 3 monitors, for just 1 not worth it.

Also try turning the airport scenery down to minimum/low settings as this is a huge hit on fps, as is high AI traffic.

I have not tried an AMD card for a while but in the past they always had issues with clouds, which is why people always recommend nvidia for FSX. And with the ability to lock frames @ 30 (via 1/2 refresh) its a no brainer to go nvidia. However if anyone is using AMD on P3D please chime in as they may work just fine today.

Well then, you will see a nice boost in performance going from a i7-960 to a i7-4790k the clock for clock difference alone will make a nice jump. The SSD's should be fine but you definitely will need a 1TB for back up stuff.

+1 What Bert said.... Since you said the upgrade was specifically for FSX you can save some cash and get the i5 4690. But I would also recommend the 4690k and perform a MILD overclock to 4ghz. this would require the slightest bump in offset voltage to insure stability and give a nice boost in FPS. You do not have to go for 4.5+ Also if you do upgrade your video card you should give P3D a try as I think you would be pleasantly surprised by the visual lighting experience it brings that you just cant get with FSX.

Thats correct. So you could use the 512 SSD split in half using 256 for the OS and 256 for P3D. Then when you add the 2TB drive you can partition then format that drive as another 256 for FSX and the rest of the space as Backup.

I'm not as familiar with AMD as I used to be but hitting 4.0 with a good cooler maybe 4.2 sounds reasonable. Which may give you another 5fps. But I would also dial back the scenery a little, so that you are closer to 30fps when flying and 20 at the airport with heavy AI.

What processor are you using @ 3.2?

TrafficX I used about 80%. With Traffic360 I use about 60% I think. Much over that is too big of a hit on FPS at the airports. To the people reporting they cant even land because of the traffic, that would have a serious impact on FPS, sure it looks cool but dont go to chicago's o'hare.