TurboKen

Hopefully you dont have any virus stuff on your SSD. J/K. LOL. I would still recommend at least a small 120GB SSD for FSX/P3D. Just takes too long to load scenery on a standard drive. My 2 cents. FYI- If you do however install all on one drive and the sizes need to be adjusted after you install everything. Go to My Computer right click and select Manage, then select "Disk Management" and you can add/delete or adjust partition sizes within the O.S.

I can get smooth FSX on my laptop, yes seriously. Its all in how you set it up and how much scenery you can display. Dial in your scenery so that worse case scenario you can still maintain 30 FPS. Turn down traffic and some scenery settings, should still be med-high. Next set your vsync to 1/2 refresh and lock to 30 in FSX. You WILL have a smooth flight sim.

Well for starters if you go with the 1150 socket you can reuse your ram so that will save you some money, all you should need is a Z97 motherboard and a 4690k. $400 bucks total and your done. Everything else you can transfer. (That's what I would do). If you WANT to spend some money you can get the 2011 socket, but you will also need new DDR4 ram to go with it. If you have good cooling and can reach 4.5 with the 4690k/4790k as you did with your 2600k that would give a nice boost there, as a 4790k @ 4.5 is equal to a 2600k @ 5.0.

I missed the part where you were talking about multiple terrain elevations being visible. That would definitely cause a drop in FPS. I have not seen the screen shots you posted, but I had a similar issue where multiple runway elevations were appearing and causing a drop in FPS. Unfortunately the only way I was able to fix it was to re-install everything FSX and ORBX (regions, smaller airports, updates then latest libraries). And everything was back to normal. Good luck!

Good to hear thanks for the update.

Absolutely ZERO FPS increase. I bought a core 3D sound card and did not see 1FPS gain. It does however give a little better sound provided you have the sound system to notice the difference. I have a altec lansing system with 10" polk audio subwoofer and the options the card gives is kinda cool, but for $100 it was not worth it and back to the store it went. As far as RAM goes I did see a SMALL 2-3 FPS increase when I changed from 1600 to 2133 ram. But thats hardly worth the upgrade either unless your going from 8 to 16 gigs. Biggest difference is still the highest stable OC you can get from your CPU.

Just to clarify a little, I do NOT have Global or Vector but I do have several regions, and in PNW for example you will only see a little bit of a hit in FPS. However when you add higher resolution airports for each region (Anacortes for example), you can expect a further cut in FPS. Also the additional airports give options, so you can dial down the scenery (no grass for example),to minimize the hit. But ORBX is well worth the investment to me, once your use to it you dont want to fly anywhere else.

It should do 4.2 no problem. And the 560 will be ok also. But if you play other games as well you will want a faster video card. Get it and enjoy!

Going from a 660ti to a 970 you will see a small increase in smoothness, especially if you are running into bad weather and/or using 3 monitors. Just dont expect too much so your not disappointed. Now for other games, huge difference. Sorry not what you wanted to hear. Good news is it will fit on the P8Z68 as long as you have room in your case, as its a long card. check first. Your CPU will be fine. I was running a 2600K @ 4.8 with a 560/660/770 and now 970.

Short answer- Yes. You will lose FPS when adding the ORBX scenery. So if your scenery settings were dialed in to give 30fps as you stated then once you add ORBX you drop to 10, that sounds about right.( But worth the trade with added eyecandy) you will have to dial back the scenery a little to maintain 30 WITH ORBX. Trying turning road traffic down to about 5 and airport support traffic to minimum (sorry at work cant remember what its called exactly) also turn things like bloom off, also your AI traffic should not be set to high either. With a carefull balance you will find you can have great scenery and very playable. Also you may be able to OC a little and that will help. I have most of the ORBX scenery and can maintain 30fps everywhere with MOST settings maxed out. (devils canyon @ 4.7 and GTX970)

After trying P3D, and adjusting the visuals to match as close as possible to FSX (I say again as close as possible), the FPS is very similar. However P3D IS smoother. Also as an added bonus you have the option to turn on some eye candy you did not have with FSX. Yes with a performance penalty but you have to adjust to your computers power and own visual acceptance. So really there is no reason anyone should be using FSX anymore. Go buy P3D NOW, and be done with it. You will all be glad you did.

The 2 extra cores you will most likely only reach 4.3-4.5 range which will give you LOWER fps, however a slight increase in texture loading with 6 cores. Considering you have a good overclocker being at 4.8, personally I would keep your system. You have fast ram and the new 900 series v-card will also give a SLIGHT bump.

These processors hit a wall much faster then sandy/ivy did, you may just have to keep it at 4.4 and only about 1.28v, but this will also keep the heat down alot. My 4690k runs at 4.7 then hits a wall and needs a ton of voltage to hit 4.8. ( H110 for cooling ) Also the difference in FPS increase between 4.4 and 4.5 is not really that much. But i understand, you want the most out of it.

This should be + .03 But the bigger issue is your heat. Try re-applying the thermal paste (a VERY small vertical line) on the CPU and reseat your cooler. I dont think I hit 80c @ 4.8ghz. I am using an antec kuler 920 which I think is basically an H60. Even At 80c with prime that should only be 60c for FSX. Let us know what you find out.

I agree. If you have the room, get this card. It runs nice and cool and will work great for running 3 monitors. As long as you have at least a GTX660. This should be the minimum for FSX. You will see another bump in smoothness (NOT FPS) going to the GTX770 and then again to a GTX970.

OK so with the disable preload added. It took 20 sec to boot to the startup screen. then after I select a flight it took 4:36 to load. So if someone is using a mechanical HD I could see it taking 10min. to load, as I am using a Very fast Plextor M5Pro to achive this with LOTS of ORBX scenery.

Glad we could all help out.

If you have an nvidia card you can enable the 1/2 refresh rate in nvidia inspector. Dial the scenery in to not drop below 30 fps FIRST, so try around 45fps, then set the 1/2 refresh and set your fps in the sim to 30 and it will stay butter-smooth.

OK now Im curious, I will check the actual time and report back.

I'm using (3) 24" Dell Ultra sharps on my GTX970. I believe its at 60hz. And I use the nvidia 1/2 refresh rate lock with the scenery dialed in right I can maintain 30fps through ORBX scenery.

I guess a good question to ask is which 2gb card do you have NOW? if you only have an older 2gb card and you want a faster card then yes buy a 4gb card. the 4gb 970 i just got works great and I would recommend it especially for other games.

Control Panel \ change to view large icons and select power options and select "Balanced". This will allow your processor to idle. If you want "High Performance" then select change plan settings then change advanced plan settings then scroll down to "processor power management" and change minimum processor state to 5%. this will allow it to idle and ramp back to 100% when needed. Provided that intel speed step is enabled in bios. Otherwise high performance plan will force 100% by default I believe. EDIT: When I quickly read this posting title I thought it said i2600k overclock contest. LOL. I have a 2600k and a P8P67 also and I have had it as high as 5.15ghz and actually played uhhh flew FSX at 5.1ghz

After installing ALOT of ORBX scenery I also have long load times, maybe 5-10 min. And that is with the fastest computer you can build (basically). You can do a tweek to add an entry disable preload, but then it will just take longer once you select your flight. I was hoping someone would figure a fix for this also. Every computer w/ lots of ORBX will experience this (all the ones I have built).

If the nvidia 1/2 refresh works in 2.5, Good bye FSX...

I just upgrade from a 2gig 770 to a 4gig 970 only because I max out video ram with 3 monitors, very little difference. but for only 1 monitor a 2 gig works fine.