Orb X melbourne intl scenery.

[Geremy Britton]

Well i'm currently with a dual core Dell XPS. Looking at upgrading the graphics card from the standard in there at the moment, and another sounds card too.

I've been so used to building over the last few years, i've only just started looking at the PC spec and software side of things, and this is something i'm not as familar with. Perhaps a stupid question i know you'll be able to answer, for projector detail is it down to the graphics card supplying the image or the projector. Or both? Whats the balance.. You have a fantastic projector setup so i thought it would be best speaking to you sean

[Matt Olieman]

I'll let you all know what it does on a 3.33 GHz i7-980X 6 core with 24 Gigs of memory on board next week. FSX still relies on a single core.

Matt Olieman

[Sean Nixon]

With FS, or to be precise, FSX (any new PC will breeze through FS9), the CPU is king. The faster, the better. The graphics card is less important as pretty much any card less than a year or two old will be hindered by the CPU's performance. Having said that, I'd still put one of the fastest I could in any system I was building.

I'm not sure putting the latest graphics card into your dual core would actually give you any benefit under FSX, certainly not in terms of framerate.

I don't think a dedicated sound card would offer much of a performance improvement either.

As is nearly always the case, upgrading an existing PC has it's limitations, sometimes to the point you'd be better off giving the old PC a new task and building a new dedicated FSX PC.

With regards projectors, they are definately the weak link. Resolution of projectors is stuck in the dark ages. On board graphics cards can easily handle the max resolution of todays mainstream projectors. That's one of the trade-offs of having a large immersive projected image, but the immersion factor more than compensates for that.

Please understand, these are only my personal opinions and beliefs. As I said earlier, I'm still using a Pentium 4 and haven't flown FS for ages. But I try to keep one eye on what's happening on the PC/FS front so I don't get too out of touch!

Sean

[Sean Nixon]

I'll let you all know what it does on a 3.33 GHz i7-980X 6 core with 24 Gigs of memory on board next week. FSX still relies on a single core.

Matt Olieman

Look forward to that Matt.

Yes, that shiny new six core CPU might've cost a bundle, but FSX will only use 1 core! Of course, you could run other apps on it, but that kind of strays away from the general consensus that a home cockpit should run on a network of PC's, leaving the main one to run only FS. It'd be interesting to see some benchmarks from someone willing to experiment.

[Sean Nixon]

Matt, may I ask where you are at with your cockpit.

Last time we spoke, you where building an A340, but that was a long time ago.

Regards

Sean

[Matt Olieman]

Matt, may I ask where you are at with your cockpit.

Last time we spoke, you where building an A340, but that was a long time ago.

Regards

Sean

My Shell and base is a 1000 miles from here. I have my Mip, glare shield, pedestal, side sticks and overhead. I'm in the process of assembling the parts I have and a flying I will go.

My primary app for my i7 computer is my virtual pipe organ, which requires a fast CPU and the 24 Gigs to function to it's fullest capacity.

I'd love to get my hands on Orb X melbourne intl scenery to see what it will do on this system.

Matt Olieman

[fordgt40]

Yes, that shiny new six core CPU might've cost a bundle, but FSX will only use 1 core!

Sean

Are you sure? I thought that with the service pack FSX was recoded to take advantage of two core but not multicore

David

[Sean Nixon]

Hello David

It's not really an area I'm too knowledgeable on if I'm being honest. In the last hour or so, I've gotten engrosed in googling the subject and have found several sites that suggest you may be right...

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...d.php?p=105499

Sean

[fordgt40]

Sean

So we were both wrong That link is fascinating - many thanks. I can now think about upgrading my pc on the basis of that thread,

David

[mpl330]

Hi Guys,

And bear in mind that Intel have their new range of chips coming out 9th January (Sandybridge). These are supposed to be similar price point to current I5 & I7 chips but with more headroom as there are reports of some overclocking to over 4.5ghz on air as they run cooler. I was about to click order on a new system and had to hold off!

Cheers
Mike