New PC ???

[jackcford]

Anyone recently built or bought a PC with Flightsim in mind?

I'm interested in what you consider to be a good spec/recommendation with performance, future proofing and cost in mind. FSX of course....

Thanks in advance

[CBreuer]

Anyone recently built or bought a PC with Flightsim in mind?

I'm interested in what you consider to be a good spec/recommendation with performance, future proofing and cost in mind. FSX of course....

Thanks in advance

Jack,

I bought a new PC recently, but mainly FS9 still in mind :D
Specs:
ASUS P5KPL-E, E8400 Dual Core, 2 Gig RAM, GF8800GT 512 MB and Samsung 750 GB HDD with 32 MB Cache, but I would recommend their 1TB HDD if you would set up a new System from Scratch.
But now ATI is back in the market so you should put an eye on their latest graphics cards.:)

This System surely could run FSX, but I am not willing to switch right now. I am now really happy with my good 'high' frame rates, even in the densest scenery and all AI-traffic set to 100 %. In this configuration I flew into the 9Dragons Kai Tak scenery with the PMDG B747-400F and it was the greatest fun I EVER had:D Mainly because of the approach itself, but that is a different story :P

[Rob D]

I bought a new system that is nearly the same as the above (aside from smaller HDDs, because it's pretty much strictly a FS computer; Laptop for business, Desktop for FS).

Having tested both AMD and Intel chipsets, I lean toward AMD, as it seems to run FS more smoothly than the Intel chips (IMHO; your mileage may vary). I run FSX set at unlimited frames, 85% commercial AI, 50% GA AI, 25% cars and boats, and most othe sliders MOSTLY to the right, and I get frames everywhere from 60 in unincorporated areas down to 15 in highly dense areas (like FSDreamTeam ORD). So I'd say it's pretty smooth. ;)

And all this was less than US$1,000.00, so I'd also say it was economical.

Just my .02 (adjusted for inflation, and easily converted to Pounds Sterling...).

Rob D.

[jwenting]

Pretty much anything you buy these days in the midrange or higher will run FSX quite nicely.

On my decidedly meager specs (by current standards) I get quite acceptable performance.
It's a Core2 Duo E4300, 4GB RAM, 2x250GB SATA2 harddisks, ATI 3870 videocard (512MB vidRAM), and a separate soundcard (seems to make a bit of difference to some machines for performance, and just sounds a lot better).
Add an Asus P5L1394 motherboard (do get a decent motherboard, as the cheap ones have slower bus speeds, pulling the actual performance of everything else down, probably a major factor in the performance problems many people have who buy cheap off the shelf PCs) and I get 20-30fps just about everywhere even when flying around in aircraft like the LDS767 over 30m terrain with real weather, and that with everything set to medium/high.
Only things I keep turned off are aircraft shadows, lens flare, and I turn down the 3D clouds to something like 70 miles.
I do that for performance reasons and (in case of lens flare) because it looks ugly.

[zfly2sky]

Heard that AlienWare PC is the top shelf but don't know anybody
that has one. Made specially for gaming.

They have modified their choices and prices depending on extras.
(see link below) But come to think about it, even the
ones I have talked to with moderate or extreme systems still had trouble with FSX.

(http://www.alienware.com/products/desktop-computers.asp