Hello fellow grounded pilots,

imurdaddy · 24-03-2014 6:01pm #1

Im currently looking to build a pc to feed my addiction to flight and im not sure what spec pcs I need and also softwares are best I ran fsx heveiley modded before my machine took off for the last
flight lol.

so any advice on machine specs and software addons would be great. I love flying commercial in europe africa and ga in europe and aus nz.

any tips be great

thanks

Matthew Gleeson · 25-03-2014 11:42am

imurdaddy wrote: »

Im currently looking to build a pc to feed my addiction to flight and im not sure what spec pcs I need and also softwares are best I ran fsx heveiley modded before my machine took off for the last
flight lol.

so any advice on machine specs and software addons would be great. I love flying commercial in europe africa and ga in europe and aus nz.

any tips be great

thanks

I'm not too in the know on this but definitely an i7 with lots of GHz! Fsx is a processor intensive game! I've also heard people getting excellent results with solid state hard drives as well! With regards addons you can't steer wrong with anything by pmdg, uk2000 or carenado. There are lots of other good ones too and I advise you take a look at orbx and horizon vfr products too! Happy simming!

Simon Gruber Says · 25-03-2014 1:26pm

I'd recommend for processor an i7 4770k, overclocked as much possible while remaining stable on your system. FSX is all about processor speed. I built a custom gaming PC with dual high end graphics cards, solid state drive, the works. It can run any new game maxed out yet FSX still runs like a dog. I have an i7 3770k overclocked to 4.4GHz and get okish frame rates in addon scenery airports with a PMDG aircraft, often dipping below 20fps. I could get higher by turning graphics down a bit, but I like how it looks on my settings

BeardySi · 25-03-2014 1:44pm

i7 isn't particularly necessary as FSX isn't capable of running truly multicore, i5 is perfectly sufficient. If you're considering P3D in the future it might be worth going for more cores though... Clock speed IS important (or the ability to overclock).

Good RAM speed is more important than quantity - as a 32bit application FSX can only access up to 4GB.

Get the best graphics card you can afford, Nvidia cards tend to be best for FSX.

If you're running with DX10, you can shift a lot of the processor load onto the graphics card and smooth the whole thing up a lot, but you'll need a reasonable card. In DX9 mode, the processor is doing a lot of the graphic work leaving the GFX card under-utilised. It's a no-brainer for me but every individual setup seems to respond differently...

My machine is a few years old at this stage - an i5 running at ~4GHz with a GTX560 graphics card. Running in DX10 mode I can run with the sliders practically on full (max autogen!) and REX4 HD clouds (2048px resolution) in ORBX scenery (the likes of PNW, not the lightweight UK & Ireland packages!) with lots of detailed AI without problems. That said, I don't fly the big complicated tubeliners (GA and classic propliners for me!), so I'm easing the load there.

SSD's will speed up your load times drastically, but if you're adding a lot of HD addons you'll run out of space FAST!

Simon Gruber Says · 25-03-2014 2:37pm

Treadhead wrote: »

SSD's will speed up your load times drastically, but if you're adding a lot of HD addons you'll run out of space FAST!

Very true. I have a 250GB SSD with only Windows and FSX on it and it's only got 10GB free at this point.

BeardySi · 25-03-2014 3:48pm

That's the one thing putting me off them atm I just can't justify the cost of a big enough one! My FSX Folder is a shade over 300GB atm (and that's after a clearout!)

Skyknight · 25-03-2014 5:27pm

Simon,
You could create more free space on the SSD if you were to farm out the scenery(contained within the add-on scenery folder) to a folder located 'remotely' on a conventional SATA drive. Changes would have to be made to the scenery.cfg file, but that should not be to much of a problem. This is assuming you have not already done so. Just a thought

Simon Gruber Says · 25-03-2014 5:52pm

Skyknight wrote: »

Simon,
You could create more free space on the SSD if you were to farm out the scenery(contained within the add-on scenery folder) to a folder located 'remotely' on a conventional SATA drive. Changes would have to be made to the scenery.cfg file, but that should not be to much of a problem. This is assuming you have not already done so. Just a thought

I bought the SSD specifically for it so it's fine for the moment. I did however recently purchase P3D v2 and am testing it to see if there's any major performance enhancements. If there are, I'm going to make the switch.

BeardySi · 25-03-2014 5:58pm

Skyknight wrote: »

Simon,
You could create more free space on the SSD if you were to farm out the scenery(contained within the add-on scenery folder) to a folder located 'remotely' on a conventional SATA drive. Changes would have to be made to the scenery.cfg file, but that should not be to much of a problem. This is assuming you have not already done so. Just a thought

I thought the whole point of using an SSD was to have the scenery on it so it loads it a lot faster? - Scenery and AI traffic are the two things that really seem to slow down (my) load times...

Skyknight · 25-03-2014 5:59pm

Simon Gruber Says wrote: »

I bought the SSD specifically for it so it's fine for the moment. I did however recently purchase P3D v2 and am testing it to see if there's any major performance enhancements. If there are, I'm going to make the switch.

Sweet:D.

Simon Gruber Says · 25-03-2014 6:02pm

Skyknight · 25-03-2014 6:18pm

Treadhead wrote: »

I thought the whole point of using an SSD was to have the scenery on it so it loads it a lot faster? - Scenery and AI traffic are the two things that really seem to slow down (my) load times...

SSD

, Sorry Tread, t'was just a thought, and not a bright one. I myself would have thought that if one were getting a SSD, one would put the OS in one partition(allowing for about a minimum of 15 or 17GB spare) and FS in another (on a 250GB). In an Ideal situation, well

, I would have another 250GB SSD for FS and associated scenery.

BeardySi · 26-03-2014 11:03am

Oh and I meant o add - go with Win7, it's a much better platform for FSX, 8 throws up lots of issues for folks - they can be overcome, but why bother? Win7 is a great OS...

Simon Gruber Says · 26-03-2014 1:28pm

Ever since upgrading to Windows 8.1, sometimes when I alt tab from FSX or something interrupts it, my joystick will no longer be detected by FSX until I restart it. It's very annoying. It's to do with power management settings in 8.1 that cannot be turned off. I have even disabled it in Device Manager and in the registry to no avail.

John_Mc · 27-03-2014 10:30am

Simon Gruber Says wrote: »

Ever since upgrading to Windows 8.1, sometimes when I alt tab from FSX or something interrupts it, my joystick will no longer be detected by FSX until I restart it. It's very annoying. It's to do with power management settings in 8.1 that cannot be turned off. I have even disabled it in Device Manager and in the registry to no avail.

I had that on Windows 8 as well. Ended up reinstalling W7 under dual boot. It's a problem with Windows disabling the USB to save power.

I read that you can setup the power plan to not do this, but I never got it working and found it less hassle to go with W7.

Simon Gruber Says · 27-03-2014 6:37pm

John_Mc wrote: »

I had that on Windows 8 as well. Ended up reinstalling W7 under dual boot. It's a problem with Windows disabling the USB to save power.

I read that you can setup the power plan to not do this, but I never got it working and found it less hassle to go with W7.

Yeah, tried every fix for it and it still happens. I don't know how it still works when I disabled it in the registry but oh well. I just keep fullscreen and use my iPad for charts etc.

Hello fellow grounded pilots,

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