What sort of PC

Roar83

Hi there. i have being using FSX for a few years, i have being just running it off my laptop, hooked up to my TV.
i was just wondering, what type of PC spec do some of the serious flight simmers out there have, and what sort of price ranges would you be looking at.

iPlop

Motherboard:Abit fatal1ty fp-in9 sli motherboard

CPU:Intel Q6600 quad core cpu

Memory: 8GB DDR2-800

Graphics: 2 x Nvidia 8800GTX in sli

Os: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

I built it 2 years ago(originally with vista ultimate) and it's a savage PC ,BUT there is some lag in FSX.Bear in mind MS launched FSX in 2006.What in the world were they expecting people to be playing it on:rolleyes:Every other game or program will run without a flaw.

bandit197

Contrary to popular belief, with hardware prices today it is possible to build a PC perfectly capable of running FSX for under 500eur. This does not include monitor, keyboard or mouse.
If fact with secondhand parts Id be confident I could put one together for about 300-400 eur.
Running FSX is the easy part. However some third party addons, scenery, aircraft etc are very badly optimized and are poor performers which results in lower frame rates. Avoid these.

Nforce

bandit197 wrote: »

Contrary to popular belief, with hardware prices today it is possible to build a PC perfectly capable of running FSX for under 500eur. This does not include monitor, keyboard or mouse.
If fact with secondhand parts Id be confident I could put one together for about 300-400 eur.
Running FSX is the easy part. However some third party addons, scenery, aircraft etc are very badly optimized and are poor performers which results in lower frame rates. Avoid these.

Yep..it's possible to build a decent FSX rig for €500...but you'll have to be realistic with the slider settings. Since the services packs were released FSX can be made run very well (sp1 introduced multiple core usage). Sli/Crossfire is of little benefit,however, unless running very high resolutions.
FSX is one f**ked up code,though. It was a very rushed development by MS and hasn't proved as popular as it's predecessor FS2004, which probably led in part to the scrapping of the ACES team who put it together. DX10 is poorly implemented. Even today's top computers (i7 980x,12GB of fast RAM etc) can struggle with all the slider's maxxed, high resolution and high AA/AF. One of the worst performance hits in FSX is running scenery objects/aircraft that were built for FS2004.

I built my current sim PC 3 years ago,specifically for FSX and it has largely remained the same config ever since then...

Intel QX9770 @ 4.2ghz
EVGA 790i Ultra mobo
4gb of 2000mhz ram (originally 8gb of 1333mhz)
Nvidia GTX285 (previously 2x 9800GX2)
2x Samsung 64gb SSD (one for OS another for photo scenery)
2x Samsung 1tb (one specifically for FSX)
2x Hitachi 500gb
running off a Dell 30" 300wfp monitor @ 2560x1600

In game performance is pretty good ....with nearly everything maxxed out, DX9 mode I'm getting ~30fps everywhere (locked at 30)

Roaster

Right folks the father-in-law is an avid Flight Sim player but knows very little about pcs. Now his current one is starting to give up the ghost and he wants to get a new pc. This is the spec he has given me. Just wondering what you guys think (and would an Alienware pc suffice - I'd prefer to buy a pc outright as neither of us have any experience building one)?

TIA

Spec
Processor: intel core i7 processor with a good liquid cooling system
Motherboard: i7 chip using triple channel memory(ddr3), two cards, of 1500 - 2000mb combined
Video Card: Dedicated, ideally nvidia GTX 480
Clock speed: 1800 - 2000mhz
System memory: 8GB required Corsair's dominator series and Kingston's hyper X specifically mentioned
Hard Drive: SSD 500GB range
Power supply: 800 - 1200w

ytareh

Roaster wrote: »

Right folks the father-in-law is an avid Flight Sim player but knows very little about pcs. Now his current one is starting to give up the ghost and he wants to get a new pc. This is the spec he has given me. Just wondering what you guys think (and would an Alienware pc suffice - I'd prefer to buy a pc outright as neither of us have any experience building one)?

TIA

Spec
Processor: intel core i7 processor with a good liquid cooling system
Motherboard: i7 chip using triple channel memory(ddr3), two cards, of 1500 - 2000mb combined
Video Card: Dedicated, ideally nvidia GTX 480
Clock speed: 1800 - 2000mhz
System memory: 8GB required Corsair's dominator series and Kingston's hyper X specifically mentioned
Hard Drive: SSD 500GB range
Power supply: 800 - 1200w

An Alienware to that kinda spec could put ya back closer to 2k than 1k !!!Youd build it up yourself for around the 1k mark ,maybe less and have a better machine...