What to buy?

[wilksey01]

Hey
I have a pretty low end PC (especially when FSX is concerned) I am looking to upgrade my pc so that I can enjoy FSX more than I do at the moment. I know the sim is very CPU intensive and the graphics card, although is very important, is not as important as the CPU. I currently have an ATI Raedon HD 5450 graphics card and the card does not handle clouds or water at all, so I was considering updating my graphics card. I am aware however that I will most likely need to upgrade my PSU if I choose this path as I only have a 350 Watt PSU (the PSU is a dell PSU and I have heard that dell PSU's can handle more than other PSU's at the same wattage, not sure if this is true). My other option of course is the CPU. I currently run an i5 650 clocked at 3.2 ghz. Do i upgrade to an i7 to allow the sim more room to operate? Thanks in advance for any responses and help which is given.

System Specs

Pc make - Dell studio xps 8100

i5 650 3.2 ghz
6GB DDR3 ram
1TB hard drive
ATI Raedon HD 5450
Dell 0T568R Mother Board
350W PSU
Windows 7 64bit home premium

[abrussell]

Have you tried reducing the settings for clouds and water?
Bruce

[wilksey01]

Hi Bruce

I have tried reducing settings, but I really don't want to compromise, seeing as I have enough money to do some upgrades i would rather improve the hardware so that I can enjoy more of what FSX has to offer.

[tedk]

Hi Bruce

I have tried reducing settings, but I really don't want to compromise, seeing as I have enough money to do some upgrades i would rather improve the hardware so that I can enjoy more of what FSX has to offer.

Hey - seriously, I do not mean to be snarky here, but I think the best investment you could make is about $30 and that is to find a copy of FS9. (Or maybe you already have it)

I don't have all the details of my 6 year old gaming machine here, but I run both FSX and FS9 and I can run FS9 at 20 FPS and mostly full sliders, and only start to choke or get blurries on some of the most intensive scenery. With FSX, I have to dial it back so far that it's definitely inferior to FS9, and even then it tends to stutter or go slow on quicker transitions.

FS9 (2004) may be a little dated, but if you can't get performance out of it's follower, then it's just frustrating. When the time comes, my next machine will probably be able to handle FSX just fine, but in the meantime it doesn't add value for me. FS9 is fluid and easy, and there is a great deal of freeware out there. To make either program shine, you need some addons; I run Holger's Glacier Bay and Tongass and Misty, and it's a huge world.

tk

[wilksey01]

hey

I used to have fs9 on a previous machine, and when I run it on my current pc I get great results, however I want to be able to take advantage of all the great features FSX has to offer and so I have saved up (for a long time) to upgrade my current system to achieve some good result in FSX. To be honest I probably only need to make a few changes to get to where i would like to be, which is why I chose to upgrade my current system instead of build a new one. I have some money to be able to get some pretty good components, I just need to know which components I should upgrade.

[Paxx]

... I just need to know which components I should upgrade.

One if these will work well with your system.
One of these to power it and the rest of the system.

The GTX550 will compliment your 3.2GHz (3.46Ghz Turbo) i5 nicely and should enable medium to medium-high settings with FSX and typical add-ons generally speaking. The cloud/weather issue you insinuate will probably lesson quite a bit. You would not gain any "more" with FSX with a more expensive, higher-tech card. Other games/sims of course can and will use "more" GPU if you choose to spend more.

Your motherboard is most likely "locked" as far as tweaking the CPU goes, no other CPUs that would work with that mobo would be better for FSX or just marginally so.

The 550w PSU is suggested because 350w isn't enough.

That GPU, PSU and your system will run most current games/sims at medium or better (emphasis on better), that isn't to bad for a 3 year old system with the suggested middle-of-the-road upgrade.

The above links are just a suggestion, I don't know your budget. Finding similar and or "deals" you will have to do yourself.

[wilksey01]

Hi

Thank for your advice! so I shouldn't go for a new CPU because of the mother board? I know the dell mother boards are stupidly restricted and over clocking the CPU is not an option, I suppose the only way to change the CPU would be to also change the mother board, O well maybe a future investment could be the mother board and CPU.

Thanks again for the advice

[trooper1822]

Hello,

Not really knowing what your budget is kinda hampers what advice to give. What I can say is if you have the money, i would scrap your current system. I had a pc that I built that was running a AMD phenom ii 965 BE cpu that I overclocked to 3.8GHz. I decided to switch to a intel based system. I was working on a budget so what I did was I sold off the computer case, CPU, Motherboard, my H70 liquid cooler. I kept my PSU, hard drive, memory sticks, cd rom drive, and GPU. I sold all the old parts for 500. With that i purchased a i5 2500k, new case, new motherboard, and a new H80 liquid cooler. The great think about the 2500k is the k is a unlocked cpu so it can be overclocked. I will be overclocking to 4.5GHz. My old pc could run FSX with a lot of add on stuff at med-high to high settings and I managed 17-20 fps on the ground and 30fps locked. All the new parts cost me 500.08.

In your case depending on how much you have saved up, I would sell your current system and build a new tower, or keep some parts such as you hhd, cd rom drive. If you did that and assuming you have a windows 7 64 bit disk, you could build something like this. Even in its current config it would run fsx very well and if you are into overclocking you could overclock it and easily get high settings.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231428
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119227
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817341018
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131824
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115072
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835181016
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130652

[clutchcargo]

What's your budget?