FSX CPU/GPU Advise

So FSX is the first game in a while to really push the limits of the top-end CPU's/GPU's on the market, leaving us all grumbling at the quality and/or frame rates we're getting upon the initial install. Perfect example: last night I installed FSX for the first time on a Intel Quad Processor (Dual Socket/Dual Core at 3.2GHz) machine with 3G's of ram and a GeForce 7800 GT video card. I was horrified by the initial display and immediately dived into the display config. Only after an hour of tweaking did I start to see images I expected, but at horrible frame rates (<5 over cities). I imagine I still have many more hours of configuration ahead, but I don't expect drastic improvement.

I'm however not discouraged. With the debut of DX10 and supporting video cards (namely nvidia's 8000 series - which will blow away its predecessors), help is on the way. For the people who are upgrading your systems now: DON'T, unless you have money to burn. In the next 6-12 months, the technology that FSX was built for will mature and be affordable. Please keep in mind as you begin to think about your new hardware:

- Because FSX is a multi-threaded application, dual core machines will in fact help a little since terrain loading and background process happen on a different thread. Do not however sacrifice too much speed for cores. Get the fastest machine you can (for the purpose of running FSX).

- Don't buy a new video card until something that runs DX10 is in your price-range. There is simply no reason. Also FSX DOES NOT support SLI for DX9 or below cards according to Microsoft. That means running FSX on any of today's SLI configurations does NOT offer any improvement in game play.

- According to Microsoft, FSX was made to run on up to 3GB of RAM and rarely utilizes more than that. So for the extremist who put in 4+ GB, you are waisting your money (especially since RAM is expensive).

- Lastly, to drive the steak through the heart, make sure you buy SATA hard drives when your upgrading/building your PC. SATA speeds are approaching SCSI, but are pretty much priced the same as IDE's. That way you are not bottlenecked at hard drive bandwidth.

I'm not sure if this artist rendition is for real, but as soon as DX10 hardware matures, we could see (and I expect to see) graphics like this:

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2006/222/reviews/931252_20060811_screen001.jpg

I made the mistake of spending a fortune on a geforce 7950, not realising it wouldn't support all the new features of dx10

To be fair to the card, it is actually getting very good frame rates on fsx but once all the new cards have been out a while and the patch has been released for fsx and directx 10 , i'll probably flog the 7950 for what I can on Ebay and get a dx10 card

Cross with myself for making that mistake lol as I'm usually up to speed with hardware issues.

In the interest of a good old debate...........

I agree with:

Although FSX is not touted as a Dual-Core optomised product is does take advantage of the 2nd core in a minor way.

I agree with:

I disagree with:

Whilst Microspft and ACE say FSX is not SLi optomised, there was a marked and substantial improvement from using one 7300GT to using two in SLi. FPS did not improve greatly but the quality of the image did and it allowed me to increase my sliders.

I disagree with:

I haven't paid too much attention to the amount of RAM used whilst FSX is running but I know my memory commit charge never went much over 1GB.

I agree with:

But if they can afford, well no harm done.

Undecided:

Artists impression are very rarely accurate.

And this technology is precisely what?
Even if the DirectX 10 cards are an order of magnitude performance over present best cards [ and I have no idea if they are or not ], that will only help if the FSX is being constricted primarily by the graphic card performance [ and I suspect it is but I am far from sure ], however if FSX requires additional processor power the next big advance in processors is quad core in which the quads are individually slighly slower or equal to present high end single processor chips and and as FSX can not properly utilize dual core processors how will quad core make any improvement?

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer