It looks good to me and would be a nice rig for FSX.

As was pointed out to Weston here: http://captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1374727539, Crossfire doesn't work for Nvidia Graphics Cards, only ATI. So if you have any future plans to add another NVIDIA Graphics Card, you won't be able to.

Specs on the Gigabyte Z87-HD3 look good, so it wouldn't be a bad option to the M/B you originally selected.

If you go the way of Nvidia, an SLI only capable motherboard is fine. The same applies with ATI and Crossfire. Having it capable of both usually  costs a bit more. But only if you plan to use more than one Graphics Card! If you only plan for a single GC, it doesn't matter if it's SLI or Crossfire capable.

You might be able to save a few Dollars since FSX doesn't really benefit from a SSD. So as long as they are relatively small for their price, you might be better off with a large normal disk. Now the OS is very happy about a SSD while 120gb variant for a FSX installation can run out of space pretty quickly. I'm thinking of large photo sceneries or a lot of liveries for your planes. CS offers a lot.  

To expand on the performance gains (or lack of). You will see nice loading times with a SSD for FSX but the actual ingame performance and even the texture blurry problems aren't affected at all. Now a SSD doesn't hurt but you are spending a decent amount of money for close to zero overall gains. Not to mention the lack of space.

Perhaps you can alter the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 to something like a 660, 660Ti or 760. If you are running antialiasing settings with FSX, you will see a better performance (which actually just means less loss) with the 660 and above. The 650 is very limited in that regard and lacks of memory bandwidth for example. Should be most noticeable in clouds as those drain a lot of fps when being run with higher antialiasing settings.

Bernoulli wrote on Aug 5^th, 2013 at 11:04pm:


If you are buying a new rig that you intend to use mostly for FSX, then there are some different choices you should make especially if you have a limited budget. If your budget is wide open then the choice is easy. Now back to the question of what is best for FSX. First of all FSX is CPU intensive, meaning that FSX benefits most in performance with a fast CPU. If you have to choose between a powerful video card, and a powerful CPU, then the CPU is the clear choice, when it comes to FSX. A quad core CPU such as an i7 3770 or better, is a better choice then an i5, because there also other features in an i7 besides speed that are superior to an i5. The video card does not have to be the best, given the fact FSX is not able to use some of the features that the latest, and greatest video cards can provide. FSX is old code that utilizes directX 9c. If you are going to be running 64 bit programs, then Windows 7 professional is a good choice, but if your programs are 32 bit code based, then Windows 7 Premium is a better choice, because Windows 7 premium is cheaper in price. The reason I say this, is because unless you are going to use the professional version for other things besides FSX, and other games, then there is no benefit. Also the best that FSX can access is 4 GB of ram, and that is providing you are using any version of Windows 7 64 bit. The advantage of having Windows 7 Professional over the Premium version is that the Professional version can access a lot more ram then the Premium version can. Of course this ability to access more of your ram is irrelevant unless you have a game or program that is written in 64 bit code, which FSX is not. When it comes to FSX, SSD drives are not going to give you much benefit. If your monitor displays natively 1920x1080 or higher, I believe anti-aliasing is more of a hindrance on performance, and is not worth the small improvement at these higher resolutions. Two separate physical drives is a good idea. An SSD drive is a very good idea for Windows 7, and some other programs, but not so much for FSX. Finally multiple video cards are a good idea for most newer programs, but NOT for FSX. hope this helps. The general thinking is that windows 7 should be on its own drive, and your games especially FSX on another separate drive.

I once thought that SSDs would give FSX a boost. So I ran a few. As mentioned, only the loading times were nice, the rest remained unchanged. So now it's sitting on a large mechanical disk, in the way you are describing it, one exclusively for FSX and the OS then sits on a SSD. Should be the cheapest and largest solution these days.

Now, if you would plan to keep your FSX folder very small, the 120gb SSD won't harm you. It's just that one can exceed that limit rather quickly. So if there was a larger benefit and if the prices in relation to the size were lower, I'd say it would be more of a go.

A few points to virge's post.
Quote:

I beg to differ. A lot actually, since you don't seem to relate to the image quality improvements on especially analogue gauges in the VC. You can only receive those if you run a method called transparency antialiasing which, usually, isn't as demanding in other games. Now FSX features the rather old-ish system for displaying clouds, which renders (literally) any kind of antialiasing a bigger hurdle, even for modern cards. Cloudy skies need the big cards when it comes to using image quality enhancements. Hence my note on the GTX650 being everything else than a big one. The small step to e.g. a GTX660(Ti) will help a lot.

You are right with saying that a LCD running at the native resolution ensures a good image quality, but since we are not running any high dpi displays with desktop PCs (like e.g. mobile devices would do), the need for antialiasing isn't broken. In fact, it's even more stressed and I doubt that people who ever saw the improvements on the gauges in the cockpit (means lines on digital ones and needles on analogue) will want to go back. Same goes for looking at how fences are rendered or how the edges of the trees come in. Any edges to be precise.

Examples.
Here's one shot from another DX9 engine showing a single tree without and with antialiasing. http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTMyMjQ1MzM1NG1SdFV6cExsSmZfM18yX2wucG5n Now one may think 'would I ever see the difference when the picture is moving?' That's a good question and the answer is yes. People often refer to the effect as 'shimmering' as the movement causes the sharp edges to sort of.. shimmer.

For folks asking 'what is antialiasing and why would I ever need it?', perhaps Wikipedia helps to explain the basics. But I've found the articles really working with pictures to be better. For example, take this one explaining the method especially for fine lines. http://www.anandtech.com/show/2116/13

For more basics, more pictures and more examples, this one is very good. http://www.overclock.net/t/1329979/anti-aliasing-the-basics

It mainly describes why lines come in 'edgy' on low dpi (dots per inch, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_per_inch) screens like the ones we are running on a PC. If any of you would run a very modern '4K' screen, this low dpi statement doesn't apply. For the rest, it does. If you want to see high dpi screens in action which would indeed render antialiasing useless, pick some of your friend's phones and tablets. Mind that they have the 'retina' displays (as Apple calls them) or just head for a current Samsung or HTC model. Those are very high dpi displays (350+ dpi) where you can't make out the single pixel basis with the naked eye. Hence the marketing name. As said, for normal PC displays, this high dpi scenario isn't really available. At least it's very expensive and card would have to render the native 4K resolution which is 3840 pixels × 2160. Only when being run on a 'small' display, you will achieve high dpi though.

So, in short, low dpi displays like ours will always need a picture improvement like antialiasing and texture filtering to allow for a sharp and non-shimmering impression.  


For the guys wanting to try certain antialiasing methods, perhaps check out the ones being labelled supersampling. Those can work full screen and/or just on transparent textures. And the image quality gains are huge while, the higher you go, the performance demands also increase. That's actually the way to stress modern cards, even in other games, since no one will run a GTX680 without antialiasing when it's available. Fps gains are only one factor for huge cards, image quality is the other one.

So if you haven't tried it so far or always wondered how it works, looks and feels, I'd encourage you to do so. To be honest, the fact of never having tried would be the only way I can imagine someone saying that it 'is not worth the small improvement.'  

Since I'm currently far away from my FSX, I can't provide some personal screenshots. But I'll be happy to do so with one of my favourite planes, the 707. With the analogue gauges, it's very obvious how transparency antialiasing helps and why I'd even call it mandatory. Not to forget that the scenery around you, especially trees, receives an enhancement too. With 'bigger' cards, that's possible.  

Quote:

The i5 processor Bernoulli was planning on is a quad core. The i7 model features the so called Hyper-Threading feature which doesn't do much for FSX. That's from my experience running such a CPU, disabling HT and then testing FSX. No difference.

When comparing current Haswell CPU cores (which he planned on), we are talking about two main differences on the i5 vs. i7 cores. The existence of the mentioned Hyper-Threading feature and 8mb over 6mb 3rd level cache. When running at the same clock speeds, FSX won't care for the HT and does not react to the extra cache. So the main gain for extra performance will happen when increasing the core clocks, which any 'K' model will allow. By this, Bernoulli may have picked just the right model as this is a 'K' and also comes in way cheaper than the corresponding i7 variant.

If he would want to run other applications, especially scientific or video encoding ones and/or if the price difference wouldn't be as big, I would agree with the i7 being the way better choice. Currently, for FSX only, I very much doubt that in value terms.

Relevant question of yours. Well, the thinking is to avoid disk access when FSX is running. Hence the need to keep the OS 'there' and FSX 'somewhere else'. Physical borders. The OS always does something on the disk.

So it doesn't matter if you put other things than the OS on the FSX disk, as long as the OS can do its stuff and, when FSX is running, no other programs access the special FSX disk. The only downside with placing other programs on that disk will be the loss of space (not very relevant with drives >1tb) and the increased fragmentation (slightly relevant, but manageable). The latter being a pro point for SSDs i've missed so far, they don't need to defrag but it's not like mechanical drives (especially the ones offering much free space) demand a defrag run every week or so.

FWIW -- Conventional wisdom, from almost the beginning, says FSX should reside on it's own, dedicated hard drive. I won't quote the AVSIM FSX Guide because it's copyrighted, however the AVSIM Software and Hardware Guide for FSX was assembled, and is maintained, by Paul Johnson and is available to members on the AVSIM Forum. If you read Nicks *FSX Bible* over at SimForums it's covered in even more depth. Nick, as abrasive as he sometimes is, is still the ultimate FSX Guru -- all things considered. (my opinion)

Ideally, you should have 3 drives - one for the OS, one for FSX and one for all the other stuff.

Too, I have also read, many times, that a mechanical drive should not be filled beyond 60-65% and an SSD drive not beyond 80% for maximum efficiency. That should also be a consideration when determining the size of storage.