The Best CPU for FSX?

I have an i7-7700K, running at its native clock rate of 4.2 GHz on a Z170-A motherboard. I am happy with that combo.

Jorgen

You want the fastest single threaded CPU you can afford. I don't know how accurate their ratings are, but check here: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Even with a fast CPU, don't expect absolute blazing performance. You'll still need to change your FS settings to a moderate level. Especially if you use a lot of heavy add-ons. The CPU in my Sig mostly gives me 25 FPS which is what I have the Sim locked to. You shouldn't allow more FPS to ease the burden of the CPU. 25 FPS is good enough and your eye more than likely won't see a difference between 25 and 30 FPS. You may also want to go into your video settings and select the pre-rendered frames under FSX to 2 or 3. There's a few other tricks too that you can add to your FSX.cfg file. There's a sticky on that in the FSX forum.

Also note that a massive GPU will have little bearing on FS performance. FS is largly CPU dependent.

What GPU would you be using with it? Whilst a monster GPU won't necessarily give a performance boost in FSX, an inadequate one will probably be a bottleneck for the 8700k and stop it delivering what it's capable of.

Good point to note. Broken link btw

First, my GPU is an Asus NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960 with 4 GB of memory.

I have been looking at many Z370 motherboards and they don't seem to have many USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 ports and it doesn't have a keyboard port on the back. I don't want to have to buy a bunch of new peripherals, like keyboards, mouse, joystick, wifi adapter, etc. I don't have anything with USB C and I don't know about USB 3.1. But I am trying to keep the cost down and $330 is a little stiff for the Z270-A MB. I am looking at just over $700 for the MB, the CPU and 16 GB of DDR4 memory. The Z270-A would up that to about $900. The system I have now runs FSX pretty good at somewhat high graphics settings, about 25 to 30 FPS, but when I approach big cities and airports FPS go way down to between 5 and 10. I also get blurries after I have been flying for awhile. And also sometimes stuttering where everything just stops for a second or two while things are reloading. My current system has an Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard with i7940 CPU which runs at 2.93 GHz. I have it overclocked to 3.2 and I have 12GB of DDR3 memory. I mostly fly A2A accusim aircraft and have lots of ORBX scenery and airports.

My main concern about the Z370 motherboards is rather or not I will be able to live with the USB ports they have.

USB 3.0/1 is compatible with 2.0. Meaning you can plug a 2.0 USB device into a USB 3.0 port. I have to do this since I used all my other USB ports. Works fine. You will know that the ports are USB 3.0 with the color blue.

I'm wondering why you are getting blurriness. Do you use a SSD? If not, that would be a great upgrade, and/or a consideration for your new system build. Or you may need to tweak FSX.cfg.

Actually, under FSX's settings what is your radius set at or what ever it's called?

Good Luck!! It sounds like you're aware of what you need to run flight simulators really well, high processor speed! And if you're buying that nice a processor I'd advise you buy more GPU than you think you'll need today. You'll soon find that a lot of other programs live and die by the speed and adaptability of their GPU (graphics processor unit) rather than the CPU with Microsoft flight simulators.

Two things I'd advise you to be aware of.

1. A SSD is great for loading and starting a flight quickly. But it really is of little additional value compared to a mechanical hard drive once your flight is loaded. If money were tight, I'd buy other priorities first. Then later buy a nice big SSD. ;)

2. Heat is the killer of pc devices! A good way to help insure your pc is running cool is to KEEP IT CLEAN!! Have a regular scheduled cleaning session to reduce heat issues.

Also I suggest you make sure you have plenty of reserve power from your power supply (PSU) compared to what your pc actually needs to operate. A heavily loaded PSU can end up supplying low voltage to your machine. Since everything has to run at a given wattage, low voltage equals high amperage which equals HIGH HEAT!!:(

Rupert

Great advise to consider, thanks. I do have all my programs including FSX-SE on a 500GB SSD. And my power supply is a Corsair 850 watt unit. I am having a hard time deciding on a motherboard because of all the various options and some MBs have things that others don't and others have things that those don't. I was partial to Asus because I have been using those for years. But I may have to buy something different. I am leaning heavily to the 8700K CPU so it looks like it will be a Z370 for sure, but then there's -A, -X, -H, -P and so on

Also the only "Games" I play are FSX and a couple of racing simulators.

Look at my sig. That is all you need. Plus tweaking the fsx cfg. And getting rid of programs running in the background. I get 30 fps and have it locked at 30 fps. Smooth. No stutters. No CTD's. So throwing money at it (getting higher frames in sim) ALONE won't do it. Tweaking the cfg and finding the proper settings (slider settings) is what is required. Not a $5000 rig. I paid $1200 and you can find equivalent for the same price now a days if you shop around.

Chuck B

Napamule

I just pulled the trigger and ordered some new parts for my computer. This is what I got.

Intel Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake 6-core 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo)

Giabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 5 motherboard

G.Skill Trident Z RGB series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3000 memory.

I think this will do the job with FSX and anything else I can throw at it. This was a combo package @ $680.21

I appreciate all the information I got on this forum to help me get the best setup for FSX at a reasonable cost.