[Dredd]

I've dug this link out a fair few times over the last few months or so, and it still amazes me that people expect so much from FSX with just a simple video card upgrade. I think this link should show you just how few Frames Per Second there are to be gained from grabbing the next card up from the one you've already got! Anyway, it is usefull if you're considering what kind of grunt your PC needs to function "well" within FSX or if you have an older card. You'll notice that the ATi cards don't even come close to the nVidia cards in terms of FPS for FSX, which has also got to be a consideration when looking for new hardware.

http://www.tomshardw...Simulator-X-SP2,785.html

[Baldwyn]

Getting an addition 6FPS by spending £400 on the 8800GTX is hardly worth it. Now that AMD Quads are about £150-200! Cheers for the link once more, and why has the topic been reported ?

[Dredd]

I reported it to get it made a sticky .. seems to have worked too! Cheers!

[Eric]

No problemo.

I also frequent the list, it is a great resource and props to Tom's Hardware for making it available to all of us.

[dvapilot5998]

Holy cow, my vid card was listed at the top! Well done, NVidia!

Edit: I guess I'll just disregaurd all I typed. Anyway, VERY helpful link there, Neil! I sure needed that sigh of relief.

[Dredd]

What do you mean by this?

Quote

are you going to give up what you were saying about the processors and speak of the truth?

[Baldwyn]

futuredeltapilot, on Apr 28 2008, 11:39 PM, said:

Holy cow, my vid card was listed at the top! Well done, NVidia!

Edit: I guess I'll just disregaurd all I typed. Anyway, VERY helpful link there, Neil! I sure needed that sigh of relief.

Do you think they'd have something on there about video cards with processors, or are you going to give up what you were saying about the processors and speak of the truth?

Look no matter what you think it's the processor that can really give FSX the boost it needs. I've overclocked my processor from 2.2Ghz Dual Core to 2.6Ghz and noticed a huge improvement - I have the 8600GT 512MB and only noticed a slight change in performance, however in call of duty the performance is amazing. Different "games" rely on different things to run at it's potential. And that's the "Truth"

[Dredd]

See this link for an indeepth look at GPU's in referance to FSX. As with everything, you must ballance your system, and grabbing a quad core CPU and then adding 128MB of graphics card won't be the same leap as using a 512MB card. Same goes for core speeds and bus bandwidth:

http://blogs.msdn.co...d-consumer.aspx

However, having read and digested that, you'll also find that FSX is extremly CPU bound, which means the code is optimized for the CPU, not the GPU. This is why a CPU upgrade will yield more frames per second over a simular upgrade to the GPU:

This link is for dual and quad cores, and how they handle addon's: http://blogs.msdn.co...-benchmark.aspx (follow the links in Phill's blog!)

Phil mentions earlier on that

Quote

One goal of SP1 is to reduce the CPU-bound nature of FSX which should help SLI by reducing the point at which benefit is shown, eg at a lower resolution.

As we all know, SLI still hasn't been implemented, instead it was deemed more productive to spread the threads over as many CPU cores as were available. Which brings me back to the fact that FSX is still more reliant on a high spec CPU over a high spec GPU.

[Dredd]

SP2's CPU+GPU test:

http://www.tomshardw...ews/cpu-gp...de,1928-10.html

[Mattucheese]

for people that want cheap GPU's go to www.tigerdirect.com