FSX system specs

jamesstables · Post by **jamesstables** » 10 Jun 2007, 20:01

I'm helping a friend with an simulator based on a complete R22 (if some of the ideas we've had work its gonna be fun! :dance: ). Basically, what spec would you recommend for running FSX deluxe, with simkits (full set of) gauges, and triplehead2go?

I'm not looking at a budget at the moment, I think if we know the minimum spec we can work upwards from there.

Sl4yer · Post by **Sl4yer** » 11 Jun 2007, 00:41

James,

If you look around the flight sim forums, you will see that many people are having problems with FSX, usually blurries, stutters or both. This seems to be independant of the hardware being used.

I would hold off until next year before committing to hardware for such a project. By then, the DX10 cards available will be better, with more mature drivers. And some of the performance issues will hopefully be ironed out. I'd imagine texture sharpness would be especially important for a R22 simulator!

If you must buy now, the latest multi-core CPUs are a must, as is lots of RAM and a good RAID array with fast (10K?) drives. But that won't guarantee good performance.

James

Post by **TSR2** » 11 Jun 2007, 01:58

Hi James,

The Quad core CPU is a must, but RAM is more tricky. Thanks to a cockup with some memory I had to return as faulty, I now have 4 GB in my machine. As FSX is still a 32bit appication it won't use any more than 2048 MB of RAM (Even though 4GB is addressable, there seems to be a limit on how much memory a single application can use) This means that if necessary FS will use a full 2GB, leaving 2GB free for the OS and AV etc.

I'm running a NVIDIA 8800GTX and don't get bluries (unless Landing at Heathrow with lots of AI), and although I'm very happy with my setup, it isn't earth shattering.

I also have 15k SCSI Ultra 320 Disks, which surprisingly only have a limited affect on performance, but as the other James has pointed out a Good SATA2 disk spinning at 10k is a good idea, as is separate physical disks for OS / FSX / GenX (or other photo scenery products if your running them)

jamesstables · Post by **jamesstables** » 11 Jun 2007, 18:19

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

I'm actually starting to wonder about using FS9 and upgrade at a later stage, especially since the cockpits aren't something I know too much about, FS9 is a bit more familiar to work with.