Croweater

Yes, I meant 6700K. Major typo, I don't see how to edit my original post... Thanks for the info. Oops, I meant 6700k. Sorry.

I suspect that you may be right. Interestingly, when I tried the XP 11 demo on my old machine, the one with the FX8350 at 4.9GHz, I was getting 20fps at KSEA. So I started lowering settings, but nothing would get the fps up, not even 1 or 2 frames. I ended up setting EVERYTHING to its lowest setting, and still got 20 fps. No improvement whatsoever. I just wrote it off as an unoptimized beta problem. If you haven't done so yet, take a look at XP 11 at the lowest possible settings across the board. It's...funny. So, first thing to do to get some better performance is get an NVidia card. Check. I'll start saving my pennies. From what I saw of XP10, slideshow that it may have been, I've never seen anything as visually stunning as the streetlights at KSEA at dusk. I really, really want to get this working. If you guys have any more suggestions, please, let me know. I'd still like to know if I'd see a significant performance boost if I added another 16GB of memory to my system. That'll be cheaper than an NVidia card, and I could probably do that sooner.

The R9 390X has 8GB. Do I need more? I see that the pricey NVidia cards have better clock and memory speeds. How much would that help? What were you cooling with?

1080 for now. Corsair H115 cooler attached to 2 Noctua NF-A14 3000 fans, 1.36V, temps hover at around 65° under Prime95v26.6 and IBT. Guess I finally won the silicon lottery. I think I could hit 4.9 at a low 1.4V, but the temps.

Hey guys, I need some advice. I want to build a computer that can run X-Plane 11 at 40-60 fps with max or very high settings. I'm having a problem getting a computer together that will even get me close to that. I've come to believe that X-Plane is the best (by a wide margin) of the 3 big flight sims out there. That's just a personal opinion I've come to based on my experience with them. I tried to run X-Plane 10 on a system that included an AMD FX8350 8-core overclocked to 4.9GHz, AMD Radeon R9-390X 8GB VRAM, 16GB DDR3 RAM @ 2400MHz, on a PCIE SSD. After I built that about a year ago, I thought it would handle XP 10. It wouldn't. I'd get about 20 fps with medium settings. Fast forward to today, After doing plenty of mind-numbing research about how taxing simulators are, last week I upgraded to an Intel I7 6800K overclocked to 4.8GHz, 16GB DDR4 @3000MHz, and the same R9-390X, same HD. I had learned that AMD's FX series are practically useless with applications that require strong per-core strength because of the FPU-sharing core pairs. I thought for sure that this hot new Intel chip would cure my woes, but it still won't run XP10 at higher than 25 frames in the demo area at medium-high settings. It seems the more I learn, the less I know. I've read that flight simulators are heavily dependent upon per-core performance, and that higher per-core speed trumps number of cores. That's why I selected the 6800K 4 core @ 4.0GHz instead of the 6900K 8-core at 3.2GHz. Did I make a mistake there? Can XP 10 utilize more than 16GB of RAM, with all other system process included? Would bumping up to 32GB lead to a dramatic increase of frames? What about the GPU? I understand that flight simulators aren't really GPU dependent, but is XPlane 10 or 11 an exception to that rule? Should I buy a $600 NVidia beast? Unfortunately, I've spent all I can on computer parts for a good while, and I won't be able to follow this "roadmap" that I hope you'll help me create for at least months, and then only piece by piece for a long while. It may be that by the time I'm ready to buy replacement parts, something new and shiny will be out, and perhaps you can help me more at that time. But for now, I'd like some info. I'm dying to know what I'd need to do to get a system together that will run XP 11 as smooth as glass. I love VFR bush-flying in sims with my TrackIR, but I need fluidity, or it's not worth it to me. So, do you know what I need? I appreciate your time, guys. Chris