) and most of this will only show on multi-core machines in the main.Me - I spent over a grand last month. I built a machine around an E6600 dual core (really impressive chip I can tell you - probably the best value chip Intel have ever built) I put a scythe infinity cooler on it and it runs at 3.6 Ghz dead stable (default should be 2.4 GHz). I have turned it down to 3.4 GHz though for the expected high temps in the summer, as the cores were reaching 72C when running flat out for an hour. Most people are reporting on the t'internet that they can OC these chips between 3.1-3.7 GHz. They are brilliant overclockers!
Anyway, back on thread - I chucked in 2 Gig of corsair dominator ram (to enable good overclocking through the front side bus), a Radeon 1950XTX (which also o/c's stable by about 15%), and a XiFi sound card. Motherboard is an Asus P5B deluxe as well - not cheap!
So why am I telling you all this? Guess what? I set out to build the best machine I could and FSX still runs poorly on this machine. I could have gone for an Nvidia 8800 graphics card, but as most of the learned ones know on here, it is the processor that is the bottleneck - there would not be much difference between the 1950XTX and the 8800 cards in FSX. Obviously I was very dissappointed!
I can get 25 fps in unpopulated areas with conservative settings (autogen etc.) but over the fun areas to fly (Big airports with a few AI aircraft) is is back down to a jerky slidshow at 10-15 FPS.
Like I say, I will try FSX again after the patch, but I don't hold out much hope, and I can't get a (much) quicker computer at the moment - they don't exist.
Anyway - the good news...
I have been flying FS9 absolutely maxed-out, over complex scenery, loads of AI etc. and I can get a really smooth 50 FPS and hold it.. absolutely anywhere! So it seems my new computer was worth building after all! It is so smooth in FS9 it seems unreal, and I love all of my old aircraft, including most of them from the superb freeware developers on here. So I am happy for now.
As for the future... I don't think I will be uninstalling FS9 for many years. I now have FS9 tweaked to perfection (and backed-up!) and I love all of my add-ons. I will persevere with FSX though to see how things turn out, but I really think the switch-over will be very gradual, and I can see me using FS9 for a few years yet.
Trying to look at it with my glass half full rather than empty - there is nothing wrong with using them both I suppose.
With the big hard disks these days, it doesn't really bite into your storage space.
I think the FS9 version of flightsim could be the hardest vesion to turn away from upto now. I found it much easier to ditch the other previous versions and make the transition. Then again, it is probably down to the fact that we have been spoilt with so many quality add-ons in FS9 - especially some of the freeware aircraft.
I know what you mean! Hopefully they can gradually improve it. I hope the expected service pack will be the start of the improvement.