Flight Simulator X hardware recommendation request

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Wayne Redpath
Posts: 104
Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:42 am
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Flight Simulator X hardware recommendation request

Post by Wayne Redpath » Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:42 pm

Please, if you have Flight Simulator X experience your advice will be appreciated.

A good buddy wants me to custom build a new system for him. His main deal is Flight Simulator X.

I've searched the net and mostly got the usual conflicting junk <DUH!!!>. It seems to me that in spite of the program being FANTASTIC, the coding is CRAP. Microsoft has fired the software development crew because thy failed to fix the program. It has problems with ATI cards, SLI, Crossfire, Vista, Aero, Windows 7 (Vista SE)...

My research has indicated that the best setup for November 2009, with a "limited budget", is a 9800GT and the fastest CPU and FXD you can afford/get.

So, this looks good:

> eVGA e-GeForce 9800 GT SuperClocked 512MB
> Kingston SSDNow V-Series 2.5in SATA II Solid State Drive, 64GB
> Intel Pentium® Dual-Core Processor E6300 2.8 GHz
> Windows XP Home Edition

Your advice will be appreciated.

AZBrandon
Friend of SPCR
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Location: Phoenix, AZ

Post by AZBrandon » Wed Nov 18, 2009 10:24 am

As a former FSX junkie, you're going down the right road there. FSX was originally designed to be a single-core program. Only with SP1 did it become multi-core aware and with SP2 it makes good usage of at least two cores. It is a CPU hog however, and a 2.8 ghz processor is pretty limited, but I guess for a budget system, you can always overclock it to 3.4ghz or so anyway.

As for the video card, I wouldn't bother with that particular card. It appears to be going for $115, and nowadays you can get a GTS-250 for about the same money, and it offers about 20% more rendering power. I see one GTS-250 for $95 after rebate on the Egg, which is a great deal.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. All flight sims are extremely CPU intensive, but generally don't scale much beyond 2 cores. For FSX in particular this is especially true. The only other thing I'll mention is that I have since jumped ship and now use X-Plane instead. FSX was discontinued by Microsoft and still has a lot of bugs, even with SP2 that are never going to get fixed. X-Plane isn't exactly without bugs either, but at least they get fixed since the software company is still alive and well, in fact thriving and growing ever since Microsoft discontinued FSX. You might want to suggest your buddy to also pick up a copy of X-Plane to try it out too. It's only $29 now which compared to the several hundreds of dollars a new PC costs, it is only a couple percent increase in total spent.

Wayne Redpath
Posts: 104
Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:42 am
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Post by Wayne Redpath » Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:58 pm

AZBrandon - thanks for your input.

The automatic overclocking of the i5/i7 CPU seemed easy, but the price ramps up very fast'n'steep. My research showed that more L2 cache and more cores did little for performance vs the $$$ increase. A mild overclock of this budget CPU seems the best performance boost opportunity and also the best value option.

My buddy and his wife will use this computer for some other things and if it's only 20-40-60-80 bucks more for a significant performance boost, then maybe I should recommend more cpu and video performance if the price and noise penalty is reasonable.

Also, in the spirit of spcr, lower power consumption generally equates to lower noise.

RBBOT
Posts: 93
Joined: Thu May 17, 2007 9:02 am

Post by RBBOT » Fri Nov 20, 2009 10:47 am

Shame it doesn't like ATI cards - if ever a game was made for Eyefinity...

AZBrandon
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Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:47 pm
Location: Phoenix, AZ

Post by AZBrandon » Fri Nov 20, 2009 11:43 am

I love ATI as much as the next guy, but ATI/AMD's video drivers have left a lot to be desired in stability for non-mainstream games like Flight Sim or OpenGL ones like X-Plane. I'd stick with nVidia for now, at least until we see clear evidence of a major push for driver stability comes from ATI.

Wayne Redpath
Posts: 104
Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:42 am
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Post by Wayne Redpath » Fri Nov 20, 2009 9:31 pm

my research is continuing...

> FSX is way-way-way-KOOL.
> more powerful CPU's and FXD's help, but looks like we will have to go with a mild OC of the budget CPU
> the 9800GT is out and the GTS 250 is in
> I can't find out if I can connect 2 analog displays to the GTS 250
> the Matrox TripleHead Analog with three $25 used 22 inch CRT displays is an interesting option for $400 but 2 GTS 250's and 3 or 4 $25 displays is more flexible and cheaper
> a eVGA e-GeForce 6200 LE 256MB PCI will run 2 displays for instrument groups

AZBrandon
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 867
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:47 pm
Location: Phoenix, AZ

Post by AZBrandon » Fri Nov 20, 2009 10:07 pm

All DVI ports can output an analog SVGA signal with a converter. Video cards usually include at least one, sometimes two, but you need to check the packaging to be sure. Nowadays its becoming more common to find a DVI to HDMI converter in there, so if you're running two analog monitors you might need to buy at least one DVI to analog converter or ask around to see if a friend of yours has one. I probably have 5 or 6 of them at this point, but I've purchased many video cards over the years.

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