Flight Simulator X hardware recommendation request
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- Posts: 104
- Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:42 am
- Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Flight Simulator X hardware recommendation request
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.
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.
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.
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.
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- Posts: 104
- Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:42 am
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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 $$$ increase. A mild overclock of this budget CPU seems the best performance boost opportunity and also the best value option.
My buddy and his wife will use this computer for some other things and if it's only 20-40-60-80 bucks more for a significant performance boost, then maybe I should recommend more cpu and video performance if the price and noise penalty is reasonable.
Also, in the spirit of spcr, lower power consumption generally equates to lower noise.
The automatic overclocking of the i5/i7 CPU seemed easy, but the price ramps up very fast'n'steep. My research showed that more L2 cache and more cores did little for performance vs the $$$ 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.
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- Posts: 104
- Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:42 am
- Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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
> 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
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.