BaldyB

It's tough to be on a limited budget. However, I think you will find an AMD based system easier on the buck's (sorry, pounds?). I put together the following system; 1: Asus Crosshair Hero VII mobo, 2: AMD Ryzen 2700x CPU. 3: Skill 3466 memory. 4: EVGA 1200 Watt PSU. 5: Cooler master Case, had it on hand. 6: Samsung EVO 1TB NVME ssd. The CPU comes with a Prisime cooler, works very well and in almost silent! With AMD you have an upgrade path the don't require a new motherboard every time they come up with a new CPU like Intel does. They are coming out with a 7nm form factor CPU shortly, sampling now! You may save a few pounds buying a mobo with an x370 chipset rather that an x470 chipset, I don't see all THAT much difference, I have both. The BIOS on the ASUS mobo's have game overclock presets for easy over clocks, they work great! I'm running @ 3.4Ghz and 3400 memory. Also running Active Sky, Soft Clouds. GSX for the kids, they love it! Using FSX-SE from steam, no need to worry about user control and FSX_SE, Steam improved memory control big time. If, at a later date you run PMDG, the best!!! on PV3Dv4 they extra cores come into play at 64 bit. LM X-11 is 64 bit, Multi core CPU's are better. With FSX-SE only I get within 3-4 FPS at high density airports of INTELS best. I cannot justify those extra buck's for a few more FPS's! Much less a reduced upgrade path. Love doing flights with PMDG's 747-400F aircraft. PMDG is worth the price!!! I have a few 2TB Western Digital Black 7200 ZEK HD;s and like strong PSU's, you cane allway's add more capacity later on the cheap. I also network 2 machines and run Aivlasofts EFB v2. I also have a few sites on YouTube. Good luck over in the UK Best wishes BaldyB

If you want to beat someone over the head for 3-4 FPS your right. Otherwise go for the Ryzen 2600X, you will not be sorry. And you will do it at way less expense. Plus if you get a mobo with an X470 or X370 chipset you will be able to upgrade to the upcoming 7nm Ryzen to be released this fall. Supposed to run @ 4.7GHz? Go with Intel and be stuck with having to get a new mobo every time they come out with a new CPU? Intel will shortly be concentrating on the sever community to no avail, AMD will beat em their too! Save some bucks. Best BaldyB

Running FSX-SE. Asus HERO Crosshair VII, ASUS Strick RX-580, !6GB Ram at 3600. Ryzen 2600x. This runs as playable as FS9 on the dual CPU Asus work station board I had without the annoying screaming of the old AMD heat sinks. I'm getting 35-40 FPS at high density air ports. I will admit I was surprised. Getting 4.1 GHz on the CPU, not to bad in IMHO. I't still a guess but some are saying AMD's 7nm form factor will run at 4.7GHz? If that's true it will be a real game changer for AMD. The chips are sampling now from what I hear. Eventually we will see more Flight Sims running multy core 64 bit operating systems. I wish Microsoft had sold the rights to PMDG. LM is a defense contractor funded by taxpayer money. Seems to me they could go a little easy price wise on their FS software, they never seem to get enough. The old 4X4 AMD dual CPU system would run FS9 at 90-100 FPS with 2 FX57 CPU's. It would I suspect run FSX at a very playable rate. The setup had one problem outside of expense, it was to word not allowed loud. At that no DIY water cooling was readily available. If you were doing softhing other than flight sims the noise would drive you crazy. I got so I could not take the noise any more. Best BaldyB

You need the Wide version if you run the Client on a networked/other machine. Regards baldyB

Pretty sure I read it in Aivlasofts docs. I already used the paid version of FSUIPC + FSUIPC Wide. I do remember something about seeing other Aircraft problems with v1. I map all my controls thru FSUIPC, many worth while things can be done with the paid version, check it out. Regards BaldyB

It's been a long time since I used a GTX NVidia card, so I cannot say if it's better or worse than the RX-580. All I know is the 580 gives me excellent graphics, no tearing, stuttering, or any other problems. It's fluid and stuff loads fast. My 1700 with the AMD cooler was a lucky draw in the silicon lottery, it overclocked very well. and ran FSX-SE with no problems. Of course the 2700X with the prisime cooler is better yet. I got the new CPU to run @ 4.4 Ghz but I keep an eye on the CPU temp, so far, so good. I think a water cooling setup may allow 4.5-7? On the other hand I think maybe for what purpose, just to see how much it can be pushed? At some point if you have an excellent result it's time to enjoy the rig and let go of the speed issues. Made a quick flight from KMCO to KLAS last night and it was very enjoyable, thinking I may call it a draw and just fly! The last Intel CPU I ran was an 80286, I had a shop and the Intel rep., said I should take my AMD Athlon signs out of my windows. I told him to go and do something to himself and never looked back. Regards BaldyB

I don't know about the GTX, However with an ASUS Strick RX-580 8Gb card I get great performance. Just finished a new build last night. 1: Asus Crosshair Hero VII x-470 mobo. 2: 16 GB Gskill running @ 3466. 3: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB with ! TB WD Black ZEX running on a tiered setup with Fuse drive, or AMD Store MI. The Fuse bootable disk is the WD ZEX. 4: AMD Ryzen 2700X 2'nd gen. Running @ 4.2 Ghz. After first boot I set up at JFK and was getting 55-60 FPS at a gate. Every time I boot since the machine boot faster, in just a few seconds now. When you consider the cost of ownership vs performance IMHO it's a no brainer. FSX-SE is all I use except for Flyinside on OCULUS at times. PMDG aircraft IMHO are about the best. ! did use a GTX 8800 years ago and it stuttered no matter what I did. The first HDD I bought was a 5 MB cement block looking device in a Digital System 425, it costed $5000.00 . And the 8 " single sided floppy disks with the OS would not fit on the darn thing. The 970 Evo is like a stick of gum, how far we have come! My AMIGA computers had the best graphics with it's 9 view ports etc. Just to let you know, I have been around for a while, I'm 83 years old and I hope they Flight Sim in heaven! Game developers are moving toward multi core engines. Intel has been milking users for far too long. You need a new mobo, it seems, every two minutes. AMD is the way to go. If you want to spend a lot of money on a temporary basis for a FEW frames per second then go for it. I also use Aivlasoft's EFB v2. I have the Client on my other machine, an Ryzen 1700 CPU on a Asus x-370 mobo. This machine gets faster and faster with the EMOTUS Fuse drive setup, I bought the perpetual license for $65.00 to use an SSD over 32 GB. AMD is taking INTEL to the cleaners. INTEL is now more worried about the server CPU market than the gaming market I think? AMD's 7 nanometer chips will show up shortly and will have an improved IPC rate. Best regards BaldyB

Nice interface, runs faster I think but I have a new 2700x chip so it's a bit hard to tell. After getting it setup properly I like it better than V1. You need FSUIPC. It works with the free version with the Client and Server on the same machine. You need the FSUIPC Wide if you want to run the client on another machine. Server = Data Provider, Client ='s old Display Unit. The pay ware version of FSUIPC is worth the money. You can set up your controls for specific aircraft, PMDG, Airosoft, and a bunch of other stuff. Aivlasoft EFB v2 interfaces with Topcat very nicely. I bought both PFPX and Topcat that was offered at a decent price, Getting used to PFPX and I think It will be the way to go along with Topcat . I like it, worth the money IMHO! BaldyB

When go to PMDG help site I cannot log in as an existing customer, but I can log into the one on the right to get past order codes etc. I am looking to get the update for the 300. The PMDG operation center say I have download a new version fro the store, cannot log into Store??? Thanks for any help. Denis P Bolduc

I had a Sandisk Ultrq Pro 500GB and ran out of room. I just installed a Sumsung 1T 960 Pro m.2 NVMe. Now when I load a different Aircraft into FSX the list come up almost instantly. I have all the FSX + the PMDG variants, or at least a ton of em. It's a really fast drive. ASUS VI extreme , 16GB Ram running @ 3200, A Ryzen 1800 @ 4000. I get decent FPS's. The machine is working well The mobo has a gaming pre-set that allows for the overclock. Best BaldyB

It is a non X 1700, surprised me too! I picked it up knowing Ryzen 2 will be released in the spring next year. Just got out of the hospital a few days ago, not feeling well. Best BaldyB

I just built rig using an Asus Crosshair Extreme VI and a 1700. The first board went up in smoke to be honest, Clicked on Return Item on Amazon and the had a replacement on a truck in two hours. Installed the 1700, RX 480, and 16GB Gskill Flare X Memory. Got into and found the drop down menu for the ram and set it on 3200. It instantly read 3200 in the BIOS. Rebooted, DLoaded AMD Master, had CPU Z. I the rebooted into BIOS. I found some presets for auto overclock, clicked on "Gaming" the CPU instantly went too 4.0 GHz. I was amazed! Rebooted and found the memory dropped to 28xx or something like that, rebooted, reset memory too 3200, rebooted and I was somewhat surprised to see it held that setting without further adjustment. I believe I hit the silicone lottery wit this CPU. So I'm running 4.0 at 3200. Just got home from the hospital a few hours ago, did load up FSX and found a BIG increase in frame rates. The BIOS has 5-6 Presets for overclock. The heat sink that comes with the CPU is amazingly quiet it hold the temp about 39c at idle. Thinking of water cooling it with a kit like EK Performants or something like it. With CPU-Z only one Intel chip beat it in single threaded apps. In multi threaded this setup DETROYS all the Intel CPU's. My old machine was an ASUS Sabertooth v1 and 8350, whole different world. In spite of the first boards failings I the this will be a engineering marvel of sorts, it's got more parts and tech on it than most will ever use, like a mini version of that Tread Ripper ASUS Zenith board. The BOIS is down right extensive! I may be able to hit 4.1 GHz? Best to all. BaldyB

Just built a Machine with 1700 on an ASUS VI Extreme board. Used GSkill FlareX and it has NO trouble running at 3200. I updated the BIOS to ver. 1701. Went into BIOS and chose "Gaming" option. It one of four easy overclocking options available in the drop down menu. The BIOS said 4.00 GHz. In the memory section I picked 3200 frequency. The machine is running at those speeds and passes the stress test I threw at it. Downloaded AMD Master and it confirmed what the BIOS reported regarding frequencies and temps. The new BIOS's and 3200 memory speeds are easily possible with the correct memory sticks. I think I have won the silicon lottery as far as this particular CPU is concerned. don't really know I do know a lot of outdated info is online, best to check the dates. Many problems with some newer Intel motherboards and chipsets I'm told? I get over 35-40 FPS at JFK. My AMD Bulldozer CPU gave me half of that running at 4.4GHz. I fly my PMDG airliners very comfortably know with the 1700 and the extra 8 GB for a total of 16 than I did before. When you get away from big areas like JFK. LAX. and the like the FPS's are way up in the 50-60's. Anyone who claims AMD's new Gaming setup suck needs to talk to a doctor! Best BaldyB

I just put together a new build using an ASUS crosshair VI Extreme with a Ryzen 1700. Used 2 GSkill Flare X 8GB sticks. Also installed the new aeges 6 1701 BIOS. It has a few presets in the OC section of the BIOS. I picked the "Gamer" profile. the CPU jumped to 4.0 GHz. I then went to the dropdown list of memory speeds and picked 3200. Now it's running at those speeds. I think I lucked out with this particular CPU? Getting 30 FPS at JFK, my old machine was stuck at around 8-10 FPS's. AMD has come a ways since their launch. I don't have X Plane or P3D so I cannot help anyone with those. Best BaldyB

A guy offered me a new Ryzen 1700 for putting a 1950x Threadripper. He was going to use it but said he came into some money and so the Ripper? He brought all the parts over. I decide to get a mobo and got a ASUS Crosshair VI Extreme. Put it in a Phantek etho full tower. Used a 1000 watt PSU. Installed a Samsung 512 NV/ME ssd in m.2 slot one. BIOS saw the ssd and everything looked good. shut down and installed a 500GB WD HD. Put the temp., AMD 390 video card in. Rebooted, could not get into BIOS. Suddenly a loud pop and a few sparks beneath the video card! Power switch OFF! A small IC chip was scorched Got online with Amazon and returned the board. They had a new re-placement on the way in minutes, 2 day free shipping. New board wouldn't allow me into the BIOS. Cleared the CMOS and used the designated USB port to update the BIOS with the machine off. No go. I thought perhaps the ssd got hammered, it did. As soon as I pulled it out the machine it went into BIOS and updated the latest BIO file 1701 that I installed thru the USB port. I got a label printed up to return the ssd. They offered a refund, must be short of them? Any how the BIOS offers a gaming overclock setting, used it and the CPU is running at 4GHz. I had the memory at 3200. It dropped to 2450 or whatever. I put it back to 25XX. will work further on it. The 1700 come with a stealth cooler. The CPU at 4GHz is 41c. I think I won the silicon lottery. A water cooling kit may be in this rigs future? At KJFK sitting on the runway I get 35 +- FPS. I haven't had time to make a flight, I can tell this machine will be really good. I don't have XPlane, only FSX Steam. Best BaldyB

The 404 code means a page or website will not be accessible. Happens on Avsim too.

Hi swiesma! The Threadripper is the CPU I was looking for. My old 8350 w/8gb ram etc., gets me 28-30 FPS with FSX-SE. Playable but barely so. A far as running or creating video files while running FSX, forget it! With a 1950X and 60GB of ram sitting on an Asus Zenith Extreme I figure I may have good chance to do so. 4K monitors are becoming reasonable like a Samsung model CF791. I have built many machines for friends and have favored AMD graphics for the lack of stutters, maybe I didn't set em up right? But they mentioned stutters too? I always let my customers and friends watch me put their rigs together. A few new sims are coming that will run on multi core machines, Steam, XPlane11, P3D. and Flyinside for example. Being 84 years young I can't wait. Best of Luck BaldyB

Seems like a year for new sims. FSW, Laminar, LM, and Flyinside. It's PMDG's decision to decide which to go, or not go, with? They are all 64 bit, some are capable of multi core usage. New head mounted displays are coming soon! But VR is the future IMHO. It's possible a new age of flight sims are coming to us free of VAS problems etc. Of course some will make it a bit harder for developers like PMDG to integrate their aircraft. Flyinside's new upcoming simulator should not be confused with what they have now, it's a whole NEW sim! Not sure of any discussions between PMDG and other sim developers however, I am able to use PMDG products well enough to make flights and find the immersion factor astounding. Like Capt. Robert, Dan Church is a real gentleman and is actually reachable on a personal basis. On day 1 the FI sim will use FSX base aircraft, "much improved I read", 64 bit, multi core, Vulkan engine based. It sounds good to me so far. The approach and landing in FI VR blows my mind, feels so real!!! Good luck Denis Bolduc BaldyB

No. Many say they improve with time vs vertigo. The time varies with the user. The thing is the VR immersion is just about as real as it gets, to borrow a phrase! Color me lucky, never had a problem with vertigo in the real world. When getting my private I had a guy getting his instrument instructor rating practice his teaching ability's on me. Wearing the hood while he did a hammerhead stall or other maneuver to put the aircraft in a vertigo producing attitude never gave my vertigo. He said " I like your style, you don't puke on me". I lucked out and got so I could recover using the gauges almost as an afterthought over time. I would suspect if your not overly effected by vertigo, a bit of time will allow you to overcome the problem? Good Luck BaldyB Denis Bolduc

I have not built a new system yet! I did find ver. 1.8 on FSX steam much improved with respect to shimmering. The mouse function is somewhat better but not perfect. I do not have the Oculus controllers, have read some good reports on them. I chose the next to the highest resolution setting and reduced the tool tips size almost all the way down. When using the mouse on the PMDG 747 v3 I get the curly fingers etc. Much improved over 7.x. Not all buttons work perfect but much better now. I just use the direct button when needed. Like the PMDG 777 I need to go into the 747s aircraft cfg. file to the views section and adjust the numbers so that I'm seated at the right position, the means to do so are in Flyinside's Manual. If you don't do it that way you may need to adjust your seating position with the keyboard which is a pain IMHO, when going from outside view to back into the cockpit. For me, shimmering is no longer even noticeable. The gauges are much more readable and seldom needs the zoom function. Before the 737 looked best because it needed fewer resources, I guess? The 777 a bit worse. Now the 747 v3 looks amazingly better, it looks nothing like the monitor cockpit. In fact I briefly wondered if I chose the PMDGs 747 v3, it looks that different, it is absolutely different and amazing at the same time. The size and depth of the knobs on the panel look so real! All the buttons and controls work with the mouse or the direct blue dot etc. The PMDG 747 v3 looks way better than they all did and it's functionality is good enough to make it easy to fly. The FMC can be made easy to program too! IMHO Dan Church and Co. have made a lot of progress, he say's update will perhaps be smaller but much more often. I wish PMDG would partner with Flyinside, what a combination that would be! More Later BaldyB Denis Bolduc

I have not built a new system yet! I did find ver. 1.8 on FSX steam much improved with respect to shimmering. The mouse function is somewhat better but not perfect. I do not have the Oculus controllers, have read some good reports on them. I chose the next to the highest resolution setting and reduced the tool tips size almost all the way down. When using the mouse on the PMDG 747 v3 I get the curly fingers etc. Much improved over 7.x. Not all buttons work perfect but much better now. I just use the direct button when needed. Like the PMDG 777 I need to go into the 747s aircraft cfg. file to the views section and adjust the numbers so that I'm seated at the right position, the means to do so are in Flyinside's Manual. If you don't do it that way you may need to adjust your seating position with the keyboard which is a pain IMHO, when going from outside view to back into the cockpit. For me, shimmering is no longer even noticeable. The gauges are much more readable and seldom needs the zoom function. Before the 737 looked best because it needed fewer resources, I guess? The 777 a bit worse. Now the 747 v3 looks amazingly better, it looks nothing like the monitor cockpit. In fact I briefly wondered if I chose the PMDGs 747 v3, it looks that different, it is absolutely different and amazing at the same time. The size and depth of the knobs on the panel look so real! All the buttons and controls work with the mouse or the direct blue dot etc. The PMDG 747 v3 looks way better than they all did and it's functionality is good enough to make it easy to fly. The FMC can be made easy to program too! IMHO Dan Church and Co. have made a lot of progress, he say's update will perhaps be smaller but much more often. I wish PMDG would partner with Flyinside like they do with FScrew, what a combination that would be! More Later BaldyB Denis Bolduc

I had a Lincoln V12. A new Ford V6 Ecoboost 2,7 will run all over it, they both gave you a great ride. Intel will give you higher FPS's. But their is more to it than raw FPS's. The average fps is as important as is the presence or lack of stutters, the end result is smoothness or choppy frame rates. When FSX first arrived a friend got it and asked me to check it out. He had an old rig. the takeoff roll would stop and then resume. Prior to that event he came to my shop because he could not download updates. The status bar would stop halfway thru the download. It simply ran out of memory, didn't crash, just stopped. Added more memory and had no more problems. When you have enough resources to generate enough FPS's for smooth gameplay that's what counts. If all you do is play single threaded games then go for intels CPU's. I have a customer that own a machine shop, I built him a new system (supposed to be retired) it basically runs the whole shop, bill of materials accounting, print a barcoded shop follower for each job to swipe when each operation is completed. Each job has to be coded for the CNC boring mills etc. He used to have to take an hour at times to find a job and tell his customer where it was and a completion estimate. Now he does it by typing in the job #, takes about three seconds! After work he like to fly, he does. He tells me he has no problems and is talking about 3PD. He runs photo shop faster than his friends $5,000 Mac pro, like twice as fast? I said a long time ago, It would be close enough. I also stated a few more frames at what cost. Any way good luck to all BaidyB

Some folks are nitpickers. A few sites ran different games side by side, they saw no difference, much like AMD tanks demo. Synthetic benchmarks optimized for Intel do not tell the whole story. I don't care about numbers when what I see with my own eyes SHOWS me differently! " The Ryzen is behind in core efficiency? Are you serious? Do a little research! Best BaldyB

As was pointed out in a PC World article/benchmark. You can purchase a Ryzen 1700 which you can overclock, some to 4.1 Ghz, plus a new NVidia TI and have $20.00 left for a large pizza! The R 1700 excels in 4K but lags in lower resolutions! Even so the Frames are more than playable. I don't know in all honesty how this translates to FSX/PSD/XPlane. However I would be happy with a decent increase in Frames. Last I looked fsx Tube pilots like me do NOT race with other aircraft, FSX is not primarily a racing game. No law says you have to buy or upgrade. but common sense requires a look at the math if you do. Many BIOS fixes are coming. The developers are working with AMD. 4 core AMD CPU's are coming. Many enhancements are in the works. I do not have the stuff on hand to do a proper comparison with both systems, wish I did to see the actual difference in FPS per buck. I do suspect the difference would not be paying Intel a crazy sum of money for a few frames. That you can take to the bank! Best BaldyB

"Most non-flight sim games rely more on the graphics card and that's where gamers tend to make their investment." That's a correct statement. It would also be correct to say that the war games and non sim users far outnumber the sim users. You seem to have missed the difference. It would also be correct to say that game developers are beginning to show more interest in multi core and 64 bit, they are bumping up against 32 bit limitations. If you already own a chip that gives you top performance you don't need to upgrade, no sh**t, why would you? My AMD FX 8350 gives me 18-25-30 FPS at dense airports with PMDG stuff. Could I use a few more FPS's?, yes of course. But it goes beyond that. My mobo is old etc. Regarding Ryzen. If I get an increase in performance of any stripe it's ok with me. And by the way, those who say only the CPU counts in the sim world is full of it. I picked up a Cheap $230.00 RX-480 at the same time I bought the Rift. I saw a BIG difference in FSX instantly, that was before installing Oculus Ryzen is new, new platforms always have teething problems, some chips even have errata. I remember getting a new chip from Intel that had the math bug, free with a complaint. Some mobo manufacturers didn't have enough time to do it right, new versions are eminent. New BIOS's are eminent. Win 10 Core tables will be fixed. If all you do is sim, then go for that very last FPS to be gained. I said from the very start, " If it come close it will fit my and most upgraders needs". I think it's done at least that! The best is yet to come IMHO! Best. BaldyB