Building new PC for sims

[bkthunder]

So here's what I'm going for ATM. I'm looking to run BMS, DCS A-10 and DCS:BS on full settings and get smooth FPS on FSX and Xplane 10 on full / high settings.

 

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68V

CPU: i7 2600K (overclocked just a bit)

Graphics: Ati HD 6950 1Gb

RAM: 8gb (4x 2Gb Kingston Hyper X 1600)

HD: Corsair SSD 60gb

 

 

What do you think? Is there anything major I should look out for with this combination?

 

Thanks

[sobek]

What do you think? Is there anything major I should look out for with this combination?

 

Yes, without trying to bust your balls, i'd say adjust your expectations. These sims are not tuned to have everything run on maxed with the most performant hardware atm. All the setting in the sim are arbitrarily set by the devs to what they think might make sense (and have some margin for more powerful hardware until the next patch arrives). There is no: I have this and this, i am entitled to run everything maxed out.

 

As to your rig, that is about the best that a sensible amount of money will buy you atm. If i were you, i'd take the 2500k and get a larger ssd for the money, though.

[bkthunder]

Yes, without trying to bust your balls, i'd say adjust your expectations. These sims are not tuned to have everything run on maxed with the most performant hardware atm. All the setting in the sim are arbitrarily set by the devs to what they think might make sense (and have some margin for more powerful hardware until the next patch arrives).

 

Thanks, what I mean by full settings is: setting everything on max from the UI, not by using Loman or other external tweaks.

I know both LO and BS can be pushed to have a lot higher settings using Loman, but I'm not thinking of doing that (at least not on A-10).

[Rhinox]

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68V

CPU: i7 2600K (overclocked just a bit)

Graphics: Ati HD 6950 1Gb

RAM: 8gb (4x 2Gb Kingston Hyper X 1600)

HD: Corsair SSD 60gb

CPU: Try to overclock cpu not "just a bit" but as high as you safely can (my 2500k is running at 4.6GHz and yet it not too fast). Use this thread (Z68 is similar to P67)

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1578110

 

GPU: I'd recommend 2GB-version. It costs about the same, and 1GB might be not enough for DCS. And I think it is worth to buy HD6950 with "standard" pcb-layout, not those IceQ/Frozr/Flex versions. You can easily unlock it to full HD6970 by flashing new bios (which is easier to find for standard HD6970/2GB). It is pretty simple and safe, because HD69xx have actually dual-bios. You can have 6950 in bios1, and 6970 in bios2...

[EtherealN]

Thanks, what I mean by full settings is: setting everything on max from the UI, not by using Loman or other external tweaks.

I know both LO and BS can be pushed to have a lot higher settings using Loman, but I'm not thinking of doing that (at least not on A-10).

 

The point is that even then your system can still easily be brought down - all a mission designer has to do is make the mission big and heavy enough, and your system will go slow while running it. You'll be able to run bigger and better than people with less powerful hardware, but every time people upgrade the mission designers push the limits of what can be done. That's what sobek mean, I think.

 

The only way around that is to hardcode the mission editor such that it simply will not allow more than X amount of units or Y amount of triggers etcetera, and that would of course not be well received in general.

[bkthunder]

Yeah, I see what you mean ;) I don't mind having to tune down some options in FPS killer missions, as long as I can run full settings on simpler missions I'll be happy.

 

BTW EtherealN, I see from your specs your system is fairly similar to what I'm going to build. D o you fly other sims? What kind of performance do you get out of them?

[EtherealN]

Unfortunately I haven't had much time to run sims other than DCS/FC stuff lately. (I admit to having alloted quite a bit of my free time to Skyrim. :P ) But I did recently update my Rise of Flight and have been meaning to give it a run.

 

But as a general idea of what a system like this can do:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1330441&postcount=19

 

(Obiously though, that's with TGP off an very limited AI action going on, buit windowed mode, hacked LUA for extra detail and replacement textures etcetera while playing HD video is good enough for me. :P )

 

If you have the money, you could definitely benefit from a 570 or 580. I am a bit of a value nerd so I am relatively allergic to paying big money for GPU's - haven't paid more than ~250 euro since I got a special edition 7800 way back. :P But higher-RAM cards as long as they maintain memory bandwidth are a good option.

 

(Unfortunately I'm slightly rusty on Radeons so you might want to translate the 570/580 into Radeon models if you prefer their kit.)

[bkthunder]

Lol, the ponies go well with tank busting!

 

That looks like decent performance to me, what resolution were you running DCS at?

[EtherealN]

1768x992.

 

Exact settings are:

Textures: HIGH

Scenes: HIGH

Civ Traffic: Off

Water: Low

Visib Range: HIGH

Heat Blur: On

Shadows: High

Resolution: 1768x992

Res of Cockpit Dispolays: 512

MSAA: 8x

HDR: Cold

Vsync: off (pointless in windowed)

Fulls screen: off (would kill the second screen with the ponies!)

Cockpit Shadows: on

TSSAA: on

Clutter/Bushes: 500m

Trees: 15000

 

And of course the mentioned High-Lua changes and noice replacements to get longer draw distances for terrain objects and prettier terrain.