To Upgrade to FSX or Wait for Flight ?

[veryshort]

Hi All ,
long time no post .... ok so here is the question I have for everyone ...

I have tried FSX a couple of times before but have thrown it out due to poor performance at the time I was running it on Win XP I have just upgraded to Win 7 64bit and am wondering if I should give X one last chance ? Im running FS9 flat out with heaps of add-ons and its great never faults .

Here are my machine spec ...

Intel Quad Core 6600 2.4G currently Overclocked to 3.3 With a V8 Cooler on it .
4G DDR 800 Matched pair RAM
3x Sata Drives ... Win 7 on Sep FS on another
Nivida 8800GT 512meg Graphics card { getting a little old now am open to upgrading this }
Silverstone 550W PSU
Win 7 64bit

Or Should I wait till Flight Comes out next year and upgrade the whole machine then ? The above spec were what I used the first couple of times I tried X I just wasnt running "Vista/ Win 7 "

Im interested to see what everyone thinks ?
Cheers
Andrew W

[IslandBoy77]

If you're happy with FS9, stay there for now. By the time you spend all the dosh you'll need to run FSX well, along with add-ons, the next sim should be close to release. I'd say now is not the time to get into FSX if you're happy with FS9. Your overall setup is fair, with the graphic card being too weak for FSX. In fact, I'd say stay on FS9 until whatever sim next makes an appearance has been out for 6 months or so: let others feel the "bleeding edge" pain. I'd say it would be time for a whole new rig, as things have moved on quite a bit. My rig is similar to yours but with more RAM & better graphics - I'm waiting until at least March / April until even think about upgrading, probably July / August.

[deeknow]

QUOTE (veryshort @ Oct 31 2010, 03:28 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Or Should I wait till Flight Comes out next year and upgrade the whole machine then ? The above spec were what I used the first couple of times I tried X I just wasnt running "Vista/ Win 7 " Im interested to see what everyone thinks ?

Hey Andrew. My machine spec is not a great deal different to yours and FSX is running just "ok" to be honest, whereas FS9 is going great guns. Having said that it sounds like you have a license for FSX so why not just install it and do some simple testing, I know there are a ton of tweaks, and probably addons you could install but I think you'd get a reasonable impression of FSX performance but install a couple of your favourite addons.

The thing with waiting for the next gen sim is how long will it be till addons are available to make it the experience you can get on FS9 or X with all the great stuff out there right now. You could be waiting a couple more years. I'm with IslandBoy and say stick with FS9 on your current rig, either that or upgrade now and go for FSX and dont worry about MS-flight

[toprob]

In don't know if you'd notice much difference going from XP to Win 7, but I agree with Deeknow -- there's no reason why you can't keep FSX even if it isn't your 'main' simming choice.
Your system is very similar to those which first gave 'good' performance with FSX, until the 6600 came along it just didn't work well. I'm also aware that some people who tested FSX early on, before SP1, were disappointed -- this includes everyone, really, as without SP1 it is a complete dog.

[veryshort]

hi guys ,
Thanks for the replies ..... I dont own FSX anymore so thats why I was thinking of spending the money on it again .The thing that is concerning me is all the add-ons now are only for X and there are some great add-ons coming out that I start to think ....hmmm wish I had X { I hate that feeleing as my wallet starts to get the jitters } FS9 is starting to date and slip into the background .can I please ask for puter specs as to what everyone else has found to run X very well or what they deem very well .I Dont mind spending some money to upgrade and Im capable of building my machines .given now people are getting X to run a little better than when I tried it quite nice to know what specs are doing the job .Im very keen to upgrade my GFX card and would love some ideas as to what would be the goer , as an idea have started looking at i7 chips and new mem etc .

Thanks again for the help Im very greatful
Cheers
Andrew

[IslandBoy77]

Hey again Andrew. I think I'd still counsel waiting - unless you're prepared to stick with FSX for a few years. You're right that more add-ons are always coming out for X, but I'm still surprised at how much good stuff there is coming out, even now, for 9.

I know it's not the best sticking with an older-gen sim like 9, but you've got so much sunk into it already, and it runs great, that jumping to FSX and having to buy all those add-ons again when a new sim is 12-18 months away seems like money not well spent. If you only had a couple of simple 9 add-ons, I might be inclined to say have a lash at X, but since it sounds like you've got a large number, your cost isn't just better hardware, but lots of software spend too. FSX is ok, I suppose, but it does have some awful "flaws", and it takes an insane amount of tweaking and farting about to get it to run well. Further, one has to be spending at least $2000-$2700 (box only excl Windows license) to get a rig that will run FSX well - unless of course you only fly up high. That being the case - where you spend little time down low except for takeoff and landing, then your current setup with all the tweaks will probably run FSX passably well. My rig is thus:
- Intel Q6700 2.66GHz not overclocked (yet)
- 8GB DDR2 800
- ATI 1GB HD5770 GDDR5 Video
- 1 x 1TB 6GBMB Cache SATA3 HDD (but running off SATA2)
- 1 x 64GB SSD SATA2 for FSX only (100MB/s transfer)
- W7 64-bit
- Creative Sound Blaster Xtreme

I get 30-70fps over anything but high-complexity stuff, with most of my FSX sliders to the right except for water & autogen. Flying over complex stuff like Godzone RealNZ WN & AK is only 12-15fps (sometimes as low as 10-11 which is c r a p). I've been experiencing odd issues on my PC which I think is a dying motherboard, so it's probable that I will get better results once I resolve that. Further, I have applied NO tweaks at all, as I've had to re-install FSX a few times this year already, and just haven't got back to tweaking.

[Timmo]

I say go for it- FSX is cheap as chips (just picked up another copy for my laptop - $35 for FSX Gold + Acceleration off trademe) and the default aircraft etc will probably keep you occupied for a while until Flight comes out (which will be a while)- There are some really decent freeware FSX aircraft many of which surpass a lot of FS9 payware aircraft......Your system wont hold you back at all (just don't pay too much attention to the frame counter- It's the fastest way to kill immersion )

jmtcw

[AndrewJamez]

I say dont wai t for the next sim. It will be years off and even then it will take more time before you see any addon aircraft and scenery let alone for New Zealand.

[Bazza]

I also say go for it.....

My system is at least as "modest" as yours and I can achieve frame rates in the 20's to 30's, sometimes I wonder where some of the advice comes from.

Suffice to say, I am enjoying FSX although initially didn't think I would swap over. There is plenty of good stuff out there besides expensive payware, take Ant's Tiger Moth as an example.
My FSX cost $10 on TradeMe (acceleration) and while you mightn't be lucky enough to score a result like that, suggestions that you need to spend in the vicinity of K2/K3 amuse me.

Depends a lot on whether you want to fly the planes or create a museum of aircraft and scenery. My thoughts anyway.. Good luck with it.

[ZK-MAT]

Yeah go for it for sure.

Nothing ventured nothing gained and all that stuff. Timmo's comment about not looking at the FPS is very true, I am using FSX on a very modest machine, and think the ground textures, night lighting and even the default city roads and aerial pictures of buildings blow FS9 away, even if I get the odd stutter over Wellington and Tauranga. The only thing I find is that I may have to refresh my scenery after coming down to land from spending an hour or so at 30,000', but I just cannot fire up FS9 now, as when I do it looks so bland, even if the scenery is crisper for me.

[Venge]

In my opinion any project with an expected completion of 'next year' is really saying they have no idea when it will be done and it could be as soon as a year. However, it usually ends up being longer.
It more or less boils down to how long do you think FS9 is going to keep you occupied. If you feel it will be a blast for the next few years then I would run with it.
If you are like me and see a shiny new thing over there and want to give it a go. There is no way waiting what could be a few years for something new is going to happen in my world...

[spongebob206]

I'm with Timmo and the guys,

Go for FSX, The next sim is yrs off and then the add ons.

happy Flying

[veryshort]

Hi Guys ,
Thanks very much for all your advice ,not to mention different opinions which is great ..... a good point about how long add-ons will take to appear for "Flight ".Im not too concerned about payware add-ons for X as I have decided to be very picky as to what add-ons Im prepared to buy ... I prefer to fly IFR in the airbus 320 but do enjoying flying into very detailed airports .Yes you can pick up quite cheap copies { legit ones ...hahaha } of X on TM thats probably why I have posed the question .... I do think flight will be this time next year at the earliest so it might well be worth the struggle to give X one last go .

I work on the idea that my PC has around an 18 month life span when Flight sim is involved I only play one game { FS } and dont mind spending a little money on a high end machine to run it given that it is one of two hobbies .I have a feeling that my current machine is pushing that 18 month mark hence the time to look at options for upgrading ..... the down side is that I still believe there isnt a PC on the market that can run FS to Full Spec .Im keen to know what GFX cards people are running and what they think of them Im running dual 20" monitors .

Thanks again to everyone who has posted here its great to get everyones input as I was really disheartend with microsofts last effeot at a flight sim .

Cheers
Andrew W

[IslandBoy77]

Hey Andrew
You will find that many people here are using nVidia cards as the "gurus" deem them to be the "best" for FSX. It is true that all the mid-range nVidia's are more powerful than the ATI's, however the top ATI's beat the top nVidias, and the mid-range ATI's are about $50-$75 cheaper than roughly comparable nVidia's. I've found the Intel / nVidia combo to be too expensive for the result achieved - why spend an extra $300-odd on a rig for an extra 5-10fps with Intel / nVidia, when an AMD / ATI combo costs less and uses less electricity into the bargain (typically, mid-range ATI cards use about 40% less power, not sure of the exact ratio for CPUs but know it's less).

I started out with an Intel / nVidia combo, and was disappointed with the results. I've ditched the nVidia 8800GTX (768MB) for my current ATI 5770 and was pleased with the slight increase in performance, less power usage, and was $100 cheaper than what I would have otherwise spent. Next year, I'm upgrading from my Intel to an AMD CPU. I build computers for a living, and I've been regularly disappointed with the lack of value returned by Intel & nVidia. I only tried the I/N combo because all the "gurus" claimed it was the only way to go. I'm here to say that I/N is NOT the only way to go, and one can have a cracker of a system for less money AND not support a dodgy company like Intel along the way.

Anyway, you will find there are very polarised opinions about CPUs and video cards here - there have been a few thread in the last month discussing both. The short of it is this:
- If you want expensive horsepower, don't mind spending money and paying for more electricity, go Intel / nVidia
- If you want cheaper slightly less powerful horsepower, want better value for money and want to save on your power bill to boot, go AMD / ATI

Whichever way you go, the only way to get good performance out of X with the most "pretty" graphics is to tweak the life out of it (someone posted a link recently to the "guru" Nick's post on tweaking: haven't worked through it yet, but he is an unabashed I/N supporter and has no time at all for AMD / ATI, and offers tweaks that specifically favour I/N)

[veryshort]

island boy .... Thanks very much for the info ..... I use to be an AMD fan but yes I was convinced Intel was better ... Im not sure yet the jury is out .Yes I too had been told Nvidia was better but im open to ATI if I can get a high end ATI that might be better spec'ed then I will ...... im noticing at the mom that not a lot has been gained in core clock speed { unless you want to pay $1000 ++ } its only really a memory gain and a bit gain ... the funny thing is its a major comprimise ... same sort of clock speed as my 8800GT but less bit speed more memory ... or .... more clock speed /memory but less bit speed almost the same as my 8800GT its really weird ...hahaha .

Im happy with my chip set as I have been able to overclock it to 3.3 from 2.4 I have just put a better cooler on it and its very stable under load so Im leaning to upgrading my graphics card and maybe a bit more memory if needed ... Im aware that you can now get 1300 FSB boards { so nearly double mine } but really is it worth it ??

I always believed that something is wrong with a program when you have to spend more time tweeking the heck out of it just to get it to work well MS let them selves down here with X we as consumers shouldnt have to fix there products to the degree that X has to be { my opinion here people } yes FS9 can be played with as well but not to the same extent as X .

Again Im open to opinions on GFX cards please you can read so many reviews etc but unless you can compare simular systems with people who are trying to achive the same thing as I am you just end up going nuts and buying the wrong card ....hahaha .

Cheers
Andrew

opps forgot to add ... my power supply could also be a problem here as more grunty gfx cards require more power and Im really not that keen to have to upgrade my PSU again an expense I dont think warrants the $$$

[IslandBoy77]

The commonly-referred to nVidias are the 460, 470 & 480. The rough ATI equivalents are the 5770 & 5830.

A note on FPS: while it is not "god", one still wants to have 18-20+ over complex scenery to avoid the "slide show effect"...

[dart15]

Hi Andrew

I too am an ATI convert.

I did my upgrade about 2 months ago and spent at least that amount of time researching and agonising (as you do) over the options. I haven't been dissapointed (yet).

The system I finally built is an i7(2.66 o/c to 3.960 and stable), Asus P58m/b (USB 3 & Sata 6), 6GB Corsair Dominator PC12800/1600 CL8 RAM (I've tightened the timings to CL7 without difficulty), Corsair Water Cooler, Corsair 650W PS. 50GB SSD (OS installed) Raptor HDD for FS and two more garden variety HDD's as libraries plus lightsribe ODD. You may be supprised to know that I sourced many of these components (new) from TM and saved a bundle - particularly on the m/b although I admit to having a few sleepless nights after hitting the "bid" button. Price Spy became my browser home page for while too!

For the graphics I opted for the ATI 5850 which i run with a small o/c. Next step will be to utilise the card's Eyefinity (3 monitor) capability.

I have locked f/r at 36 which is achieved under most conditions with all sliders (except water and vehicle/ship traffic) pegged firmly to the right The whole rig runs very quietly (largely due to the water cooler) and with a lot less heat generated than my previous Nvidea 8800GTS, intel dual core set up.

[veryshort]

QUOTE (dart15 @ Nov 2 2010, 10:05 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Andrew

I too am an ATI convert.

I did my upgrade about 2 months ago and spent at least that amount of time researching and agonising (as you do) over the options. I haven't been dissapointed (yet).

The system I finally built is an i7(2.66 o/c to 3.960 and stable), Asus P58m/b (USB 3 & Sata 6), 6GB Corsair Dominator PC12800/1600 CL8 RAM (I've tightened the timings to CL7 without difficulty), Corsair Water Cooler, Corsair 650W PS. 50GB SSD (OS installed) Raptor HDD for FS and two more garden variety HDD's as libraries plus lightsribe ODD. You may be supprised to know that I sourced many of these components (new) from TM and saved a bundle - particularly on the m/b although I admit to having a few sleepless nights after hitting the "bid" button. Price Spy became my browser home page for while too!

For the graphics I opted for the ATI 5850 which i run with a small o/c. Next step will be to utilise the card's Eyefinity (3 monitor) capability.

I have locked f/r at 36 which is achieved under most conditions with all sliders (except water and vehicle/ship traffic) pegged firmly to the right The whole rig runs very quietly (largely due to the water cooler) and with a lot less heat generated than my previous Nvidea 8800GTS, intel dual core set up.

Hi All ,
Wow an impressive machine with some serious OCing going on Im keen to hold onto my current machine { 6600 Quad Core 2.4 OCed to 3.3 } as I feel I can go a fraction higher with my overclocking but my knowledge on Ocing is limited I have a feeling my machine would benifit from some more RAM so might Double that to 8G .As for the graphics card this is interesting and I have found the info on here very informative ,Im now leaning to the ATI Cards due to my Power Supply only being 550Watts but it is a good quality one { silverstone } Im not very keen replacing the PSU just to run a more power hungry GFX Card .Im currently running a 8800GT card will I see much of a difference stepping up to a ATI 5850 or 6000 Series ? would my machine be able to run X with good FPS { my idea of Good FPS is locked at 25-30}

Thanks again ,
this is really interesting stuff
Cheers
Andrew

[IslandBoy77]

Yep, the 5850 will give you a noticeable lift over the 8800GT. I had the GTX version of that, and even going to the 5770 saw a 2-3 FPS lift (which was pretty good considering that the 5770 is nowhere near as powerful as the 5850 and uses half the power of the 8800GTX - not to mention very quiet to run, where the GTX was like having a jet engine in my case...). However, a graphic card can only do so much - you'll probably still get some "issues" over complex scenery. But, one never knows until one actually has a lash - especially if you spend time tweaking FSX as well as plonking in a new card. I've heard a rumour that the 6000-series of ATI's are going to use more power than the 5000 series, so check on that before (or if) you go that way. Me, I think I'd wait for the 6000's to mature for a few months before I gave serious consideration to one of those: often, the first lot of a new series can be less than ideal in performance. If you don't want to wait, I'd be going with the 5850 - a proven, known card at the end of a mature, tested, known series. Just a thought based on a few comments I've seen floating about raising concerns about the early 6000's is all: then again, the actual production-model 6000's might be awesome & all the "thoughts" are vapour... As per other comments, it does come down to how you sim - VFR, IFR, fast-movers, slow-plodders, low, high. Even a very modest PC can get pretty good results from X up at 20,000. The devil is in the details... trees, cars, buildings, shadows etc. You could get your target FPS with your current system if you turned off a certain amount of the eye candy (which is not really candy at all, is it - it's what we would expect to see out the window in the real world, but done poorly...).

Your 550W looks ok if you stay with the 5850, but you'd need to keep a close eye on how close you're getting to your limit. I've heard that there are "Watt calculators" lurking about to help work out the total load of a system, but have yet to track one down. Since your OC'ing your CPU already, and adding more RAM, make sure that the Watt rating on the 5850 is not more than the 8800, or you might run into problems. I've been of the opinion that having that bit more head room in a PSU is always good: I think 600W true is a good place to be, as even with a heavy card & OC'ing, one should still have 30-40W free headroom - a good buffer for those unexpected spikes in demand. There's a thought: is your 550 rated as 550 max or 550 true? So long as you can estimate your overall power load to within 10-15W or so, and the total is still 20W or so clear of 550 (or whatever the true rating is - presumably 550), you should be ok.

All this fluffing about is one of the reasons that I find FSX a bit annoying to use: one needs to spend some fairly serious dosh on hardware PLUS lots of tweaks to get the thing to run reasonably smoothly with nice eye candy. But even then, the "default" X is not great, and one then needs to spend even MORE dosh on a slew of add-ons to "justify" all the dosh spent on the hardware and the time spent on tweaking. I know, I know - it's a hobby we all enjoy and "thems the breaks". It is frustrating, though, that in the 21st century we have to "man handle" a program & chuck so much dosh at it to get it to perform anywhere near as well as it ought. And let's face it: as good as some of the scenery add-ons are (and some are truly excellent), X still falls quite short in it's detail depiction of scenery in general (that horrible blown-out JPEG look), where engines like Outerra (I know, only BETA) are already streets ahead in development stage. * sigh *

[cowpatz]

QUOTE (dart15 @ Nov 6 2010, 09:05 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Andrew

I too am an ATI convert.

I did my upgrade about 2 months ago and spent at least that amount of time researching and agonising (as you do) over the options. I haven't been dissapointed (yet).

The system I finally built is an i7(2.66 o/c to 3.960 and stable), Asus P58m/b (USB 3 & Sata 6), 6GB Corsair Dominator PC12800/1600 CL8 RAM (I've tightened the timings to CL7 without difficulty), Corsair Water Cooler, Corsair 650W PS. 50GB SSD (OS installed) Raptor HDD for FS and two more garden variety HDD's as libraries plus lightsribe ODD. You may be supprised to know that I sourced many of these components (new) from TM and saved a bundle - particularly on the m/b although I admit to having a few sleepless nights after hitting the "bid" button. Price Spy became my browser home page for while too!

For the graphics I opted for the ATI 5850 which i run with a small o/c. Next step will be to utilise the card's Eyefinity (3 monitor) capability.

I have locked f/r at 36 which is achieved under most conditions with all sliders (except water and vehicle/ship traffic) pegged firmly to the right The whole rig runs very quietly (largely due to the water cooler) and with a lot less heat generated than my previous Nvidea 8800GTS, intel dual core set up.

Why have you locked the frame rate. from my research this should be left unlimited as FSX uses valuable resources to limited the frame rate!
I believe the 5850 still suffers the curse of ATI cards when used with FS.........shimmer.