I "never" stated that anti-aliasing is a bad thing, but rather in the case of FSX, which is a directX 9 product, and as such can not take advantage of the features in superior cards that support directX 11

FSX Deluxe Edition and Acceleration Expansion Pack combined as a single product = FSX Gold (see this: Microsoft - Flight Simulator X: Gold Edition)

The gold version should include the acceleration pack. But I think they come on separate disks, so you should install FSX itself and then run the acceleration addon installer, which should take care of updating the base version to the latest one. That's from 2007 by the way. See how old the soft is?  

virge wrote on Aug 7^th, 2013 at 2:02am:

I very much agree although I'd like to point out that the reference links given in my previous post should show a bit of the image improvement coming in with using antialiasing. And, as said, I'm happy to provide some example shots with a very good candidate for the use of antialiasing, the VC of the CS 707. Beautiful as it is, those gauges need a proper environment. And that's just one example.

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That's most likely where we differ a lot. I wouldn't sacrifice antialiasing and I also doubt that the low fps scenarios in FSX are caused by it. If your approach or departure at a crowded airport comes in with low fps, you are most likely seeing the CPU limit of the old sim engine. Therefore, the remedy would either be to increase the CPU speed or to lower the scene's detail. No change on the antialiasing.

Low fps due to the use of (too much) antialiasing might happen in clouds, hence the tip to go the rather small step from the GTX650 to 660. The product name numbers of those cards may be close but the performance increase is very significant. In fact, it's pretty much the largest increase in performance on the whole Nvidia lineup with just going one model further. So the next step, which would be from going from the 660Ti to the 670, is much smaller for example.

I think that, with picking the 660Ti, the OP has made the right choice to allow for even cloudy skies to receive proper and fast filtering. I myself only run a GTX570 (which gets outperformed by the 660) and can happily report some good performance in cloudy skies. Now if I would crank up the antialiasing some more or if I had a smaller card, I would see more impact. So, on that point, we may agree to some extent.

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Partial agreement. But it's a case by case decision. When looking at the current prices for the i7 and 'corresponding' i5 CPU and the close to zero effect on FSX when it comes to the small technical differences, a 'longer lifespan' can't be assumed. Even on a modern sim engine, which would be X-Plane, the i5 doesn't lack of any power as the modern sim engine makes more use of a modern graphic card. So, for this future and lifespan, you are equal on the old FSX engine and better off with the larger graphics card on e.g. X-Plane or DCS World.

The examples for making use of the i7 incorporated tech were given before. They did not include any current sim engine. That's from testing all of them. So, indeed, there is a choice to be made when it comes to buying the stuff and, most of all, looking at the price steps for getting the bigger equipment.

virge wrote on Aug 7^th, 2013 at 1:38am:

I think we need to remind ourselves about the fact that antialiasing itself isn't bound to any API (DirectX 9 vs 10 and 11). So you can and will have the ability to filter regardless of the API in use. To add, my example links showed two other DirectX9 titles, Skyrim and Half-Life2. http://captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1375581365/9#9

Now there are differences when it comes to forcing the graphics driver to make use of antialiasing. With DX9 based titels, you can force the use on the driver level while the standard for DX10 and above aims to keep the options application based. So the games themselves are supposed to offer a menu. Side note. Later graphic drivers from Nvidia and AMD also allowed to enforce AA on DX10+ titles, at least for some.

In the case of FSX (and P3D by the way), we are somehow lucky to look at mainly DX9 based engines (with the FSX 'DX10 preview' being the exception) as we can make use of tools like Nvidia Inspector to set up the filtering in a very detailed way. By this, you can alter any kind of mode, separately for the full screen level and the one of the transparent textures, the ones being used at the gauges, trees, fences and so on.

Again, the fact that the game is DX9 based does not imply any downside when it comes to AA. And no DX11 graphics chip will suffer from the fact that it now has to filter the old DX9 game. As the cards grew stronger over the years, you now actually have enough raw power to apply even the most demanding filter levels to FSX and other old games. The more one invests, the more antialiasing he will be able to use without losing too much in cloudy FSX skies.

Now that's the big differentiation one has to make when it comes to FSX and big graphic cards. They don't really raise your fps (unless you compare them to very low budget models), but they can keep your fps steady even when using a lot of AA in cloudy scenes. By this, I absolutely agree that, if one doesn't want or like AA, it's of no use to buy such cards. But, as pointed out, I highly doubt that fuzzy gauge needles and shimmering scenes are what simmers like. I repeat myself when pointing at the fact that PC based gaming happens on low-ish dpi screens. Hence the 'need' for antialiasing, as pointed out in previous posts.

So I have to ask for a bit of patience since my FSX rig is at home while I am not.   If I get there, I can show some example shots on the 707, which has very nice and sharp gauges but receives a lot of improvement when the transparency antialiasing is in use. In the meantime, the example links given before should do the trick. Note. With moving pictures, the gain is even bigger as the shimmering on the whole scene is largely reduced.

I never denied that better hardware is ultimately better for the simulation, but we were trying to balance performance versus a specific budget, concerning a specific simulation, and specifically for FSX. Remember that was the thrust of the questions by the poster.