I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

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JJB17463rdBombGroup
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I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by JJB17463rdBombGroup »

I saw this at newegg.The Phenom X4 955 3.2 Ghz and a Asus M4A79T (790 FX Motherboard)
for $310.I know that the 955 won't be as good as the Core i7 920 in FSX but dang that deal is tempting.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDeal ... mbo.212581

What do you think guys should I go for it? Or should I just skip the temptation and go the Core i7 920 route.
Son of a U.S.A.A.F. 15th Air Force 463rd bomb group 772nd squadron B17 pilot.
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Test Pilot
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by Test Pilot »

Im strongly tempted to try the new Phenom 2 as well when upgrading instead of an i7. It handles FSX very well from reports. But AMD is going to release their newest processor (3.4ghz) in the upcoming weeks, but motherboard and processor for $310 is a great deal.

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CodyValkyrie
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by CodyValkyrie »

Unless you plan on going through the painful and tedious task of overclocking, I wouldn't bother with the Core i7.
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JJB17463rdBombGroup
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by JJB17463rdBombGroup »

Well I went ahead and ordered the combo deal.Just yesterday over at Tom's hardware they had a review of the performance vs cost of the Phenom II 955 vs Core i7 920.They listed the 955 CPU at $245 and the ASUS motherboard at $200 for a total of $450 for both.So I got them for $310 which was a substantial savings.
It looks as if I'll be on my way to building another new system.Now I'll have 3 systems to run FSX.
I'll wait till Windows 7 comes out plus now 1 TB hard drives are inexpensive too.He he I'll probably choose my other choice parts when they are on sale too.
Son of a U.S.A.A.F. 15th Air Force 463rd bomb group 772nd squadron B17 pilot.
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by CodyValkyrie »

You may want to consider getting two 500GB drives, rather than a single TB. It will probably be cheaper too. The benefit is that one hard drive will be operating the OS while the second deals with FS, so there are no collisions on the main hard drive (loose term). You might even consider a raptor drive.

If I ever get a little money together I'm going to get a couple 250GB HDs and do a RAID Stripe 0 for FSX..... maybe.

-Cody
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JJB17463rdBombGroup
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by JJB17463rdBombGroup »

Here is the funny thing.1 hour after I bought the combo deal,newegg dropped the price of their CPU another $5.00 so now the combo deal is even less expensive at $305
Also they had a slightly less expensive 790GX motherboard with the 955 CPU too at
around $255
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDeal ... mbo.211664
I'm thinking about getting several 1 TB drives since they are so inexpensive right now.Perhaps 3 or 4 of them.
Son of a U.S.A.A.F. 15th Air Force 463rd bomb group 772nd squadron B17 pilot.
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by Snuffy »

JJB17463rdBombGroup wrote:... I'm thinking about getting several 1 TB drives since they are so inexpensive right now.Perhaps 3 or 4 of them.
That's funny.

I can recall my first foryay into computers in the mid 80s ... I bought a true blue dyed in the wool IBM XT PC ... it came with a 20 megabyte harddrive and I was wondering how I was going to fill all that space ... :P
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JJB17463rdBombGroup
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by JJB17463rdBombGroup »

I had so many computers that I decided to get rid of around 60 of them.It was a hard decision because I had so many vintage computers that were actually going up in value as collector's items.My house was getting way too cluttered.Out of them I had to throw out 5 I.B.M. PC's (model 5150) and 5 I.B.M. X.T.'s (some of them had the 20 megabyte hard drives and others 30 but they still worked after 26 years).
My brother told me a story about having the first 1 Gigabyte hard drive at the Microsoft Campus.He said that everyone flocked over to see it.I think it was on his Gateway Pentium 60 Mhz system.
Son of a U.S.A.A.F. 15th Air Force 463rd bomb group 772nd squadron B17 pilot.
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by bullfox »

This is the same processor and mother board that I have. I also have 4 gigs of ddr 3 1600 ram and two Radeon 4870's in a crossfire configuration along with a 500 gig hard drive and a 850 watt poser supply. I am running xp. I usually have scenery radius of detail large, mesh 70%, mesh resolution 10m, texture resolution 60 cm, scenery complexity and auto gen density at very dense, and cloud draw distance at max.. With the B377 get about 40fps in the cockpit and 90 to 120 over open ocean with the view outside. Over land I get 40 to 60 fps depending on the scenery. I usually have airliner traffic at 50%. At lower altitudes and near airports I drop the cloud draw distance to 60nm and when landing or taking off I put the detail radius at medium. This way I get 30 to 50 fps around airports. I am real happy with this setup, but if I push it much beyond the above, I start having scenery draw mistakes.
Ryzen 7 5800X3D liquid cooled, OC to 4.5 ghz, Radeon XFX 6900XT Black edition, 2 tb M2 drive, 32 gb ddr4 ram, Asus Hero Crosshair VIII mother board, and some other stuff I forget exactly what.

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JJB17463rdBombGroup
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by JJB17463rdBombGroup »

bullfox thanks for the tips.What resolution are you running at?
I am hoping to get up to 1920 by 1200 resolution and having it run smooth.In fact I'll need a new monitor to get that resolution too.
Son of a U.S.A.A.F. 15th Air Force 463rd bomb group 772nd squadron B17 pilot.
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by bullfox »

I have a 22 inch wide screen monitor, and I usually run 900 X 1440. I need an aspect ratio of 1.6 to 1, and the only other suitable resolution is 1050 X 1680, but I don't see much improvement at that resolution so I usually run at the lower 900 X 1440.
Ryzen 7 5800X3D liquid cooled, OC to 4.5 ghz, Radeon XFX 6900XT Black edition, 2 tb M2 drive, 32 gb ddr4 ram, Asus Hero Crosshair VIII mother board, and some other stuff I forget exactly what.

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JJB17463rdBombGroup
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by JJB17463rdBombGroup »

Perhaps I should have gone for a different choice in parts.
I can get all the hardware for a Phenom II X4 955 quad core system under $600 with these choices they could be modified though.

Here is a $600 BUDGET Phenom II X4 955 quad core system specifically to run Microsoft Flight Simulator X.Some other Flight Sims definitely.It will play First Person Shooters and other games though perhaps not ideally at high settings/resolutions.Myself I use to play lots of FPS games but I am sick of playing them right now (It gets boring after playing 100's of them).
Yes a core I7 system would be better but try to do it for $600
Honestly I need to double check the parts especially the memory to see if it's on the Qualified Vendor List for that specific motherboard.

hec HP585D RETAIL 585W ATX12V Power Supply - Power Cord Included - Retail
AND
HEC 6C60BS Black / Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
Combo Price: $47.98
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDeal ... mbo.215519
Cheap Power supply and case here although I am not worried about them.

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor - Retail
AND
ASUS M4A78-E AM2+/AM3 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - RetailCombo Price: $259.99 (and $10 rebate)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDeal ... mbo.211664

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-4GBPK - Retail
Original Price: $69.99
You Save: $5.00
$64.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231188

XFX PVT98WYDFH GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
Free WOW & COD game with purchase, ends 7/31
Original Price: $134.99
You Save: $6.00
Price $128.99
$114.99 after $15 mail in rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130339

Why this graphics card for FSX? FSX doesn't perform much better with either crossfire or SLI.The Nvidia cards do better than ATI cards and the 9800 GTX+ performs well.Here it is under an older Toms Hardware Chart
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gami ... 2,782.html
Now I am only using one card on a AMD GX motherboard.Seems strange on a ATI based board but with only 1 card it works.Forget about SLI (because it won't work on an ATI designed motherboard) but with FSX it's not needed.

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM
$69.99
Free Shipping*
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136218
An older hard drive but one that still rates very well and is well liked.You can insert any other choice though.
There was a 1 TB WD hard drive for just $10.00 more.

LITE-ON Black 22X DVD+R IDE 22X DVD Writer - Retail
$27.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827106327
I quickly inserted this one.Probably not the best choice but pick another one.

Total Cost for just the hardware (using the stock AMD CPU cooler too).
This system would be best to run at stock speeds
$599.93 - $ 10.00 mail in rebate- another $15.00 mail in rebate = $574.93
So this is a under $600 budget AMD Quad Core system specifically to run
Microsoft Flight Simulator X.Sure it won't beat a Intel Core i7 system for FSX but then it should perform well.By the way I saw a chart that showed a Core i7 920 system overclocked by about 50% and the performance in FSX improved by somewhere around a meager 10%.I don't know why this is the case (unless that chart was wrong) because overclocked Core i7 920's seem to get better framerates in
other genre's like first person shooters.Ideally FSX would be better with a Core i7 920 and a NVidia card but at under $600 this budget AMD Quad Core Phenom II X4 955 system with the NVidia 9800 GTX+ should perform quite well.I did choose a very cheap case with a very cheap power supply so if one wanted a better case and/or a better quality power supply the cost would be higher unless one guts out an obsolete system for the case,power supply and the DVD burner which would lower the price even more to under $500.
So I did make my first mistake on ordering that initial combo deal and raised the price by around $50 however
that's not a bad mistake when it only increases the price by $50.I think like CodyValkyrie said perhaps I should get 2 hard drives on for the system and one specifically for FSX so that would make my total system cost around $694.92 with the rest of the parts.
Son of a U.S.A.A.F. 15th Air Force 463rd bomb group 772nd squadron B17 pilot.
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bullfox
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Re: I was thinking about building a Core i7 920 system but

Post by bullfox »

I would say that when I went from one video card to two in crossfire, my frame rates almost doubled, so I did get an advantage from the crossfire. Second, I would not skimp on the power supply. With my setup the 850 watt Coursair is adequate, and I would not go any lower wattage on a high end system like you are building. I wound up spending around $1000.00, although I don't remember the exact details.
Ryzen 7 5800X3D liquid cooled, OC to 4.5 ghz, Radeon XFX 6900XT Black edition, 2 tb M2 drive, 32 gb ddr4 ram, Asus Hero Crosshair VIII mother board, and some other stuff I forget exactly what.

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