Help with new machine for XP10

[Keith Smith]

I'm running 8GB. I'm yet to understand what the benefit is of having 16GB+ of RAM unless you're using virtualization to host a few virtual machines, each several several GB of ram.

[Daddy O]

Kieth, did you mean to say NO hyperthreading? Or was that a typo?

[Keith Smith]

I meant my post as it was written, no hyper threading. Benchmarks posted on the x-plane mailing list shows that it hurts ever so slightly. Not enough to care about, but enough to know, certainly, that it doesn't help X-Plane to have it, so there's no point paying for it.

[Jeff N]

I just pulled the trigger on a complete build. Stoked! Went with an i5 3570K, GTX 600 Ti and 8GB of RAM to keep reasonably within my budget (the monitor pushed me a bit over the $1k mark). Should run pretty well. Thanks for your help guys.

[Jeff N]

So...I got my new build put together over the weekend and installed and configured XP10 last night. WOW - what a screamer. XP10 on good hardware is an amazing experience; such a vast improvement over my old MBP/XP9 setup. If anyone is considering a new sim rig and is looking for max bang for the buck, I highly recommend the i5 3570K / GTX 660 ti CPU/GPU combo. The smoothness of FPS consistently in the 65-80 range (down to mid-20s over very complex add-on scenery at high rendering settings) is something that has to be witnessed to really appreciate. And the lighting in XP10 is incredible - dusk and night flying in SoCal is a beautiful experience and version 10.20 reproduces it amazingly well.

Just thought I'd pass on my impressions in case anyone's considering a new sim setup. I've always been a Mac guy but to get the same kind of performance as a PC build such as mine would cost probably 4x as much.

[Pieces]

Great! I'm glad it came together well for you.

[Ryan B]

Cool!