how much would your recommended spec cost?
Since I removed watercooling, it shouldn't cost much more than the PC you posted. About $1450 using prices from newegg not including case which would add around $100.
and ive always had ATI cards is Nvidia better or is personal preference?
In general GAMING applications, the graphics card hierarchy in terms of speed goes something like this:
Radeon 5970, GTX 480, Radeon 5870, GTX 470, Radeon 5850, GTX 465, GTX 285, Radeon 5830, GTX 275, Radeon 4890, GTX 260 216, Radeon 5770, Radeon 4870.... (slower cards go here).
However, FSX is somewhat peculiar in many ways, so what's good for general gaming is not the best for FSX.
FOR EXAMPLE:
The Radeon 5970 is actually two Radeon 5850's stuck together and sold as one card, and FSX has no use for dual graphics cards so the Radeon 5970 is pointless for FSX. The 5970 is extremely expensive anyway.
Furthermore, a resident guru said the Radeon 5870 was approximately as fast as a GTX 285 in FSX. However benchmarks have shown the GTX 470 and 480 being significantly faster than the GTX 285 in FSX, therefore I can deduce that the GTX 480 is the fastest card for FSX, and the GTX 470 is the second fastest card for FSX, both being much faster than the GTX 285 and Radeon 5870. I have not tried this, however, it's just from what I've read and what I have been shown. The GTX 470 is an extremely good gaming card also.
I have no brand preferences except to Seasonic, Gigabyte and ASUS, but there are good reasons for that. I have used many Nvidia and ATi cards, never had a problem with any of them so I recommend what ever card is best at the time of posting. I previously was using an Nvidia card, but I upgraded to an ATi simply because the ATi card at the time of purchase was better than the equivalent Nvidia card. Basically, there's a reason for everything I post.
and im interested in OC'in but i know very little about it and how to do it. ive watched vids on it and its all a foreign language to me. lol
You can just stay with stock cooling and downgrade the motherboard to Gigabyte X58A-UD3R if that is the case. Then upgrade to a Tuniq or Noctua when you're ready to overclock. It takes a while to learn though.
is the OC'in something i could do my self?
Yes - but it can void the warranty if they find out. Also changing the heatsink voids the warranty if they find out. As always it puts more stress on parts of the computer that can make them fail - but then again, I've never fried anything. And I know plenty of people who overclock and will continue to overclock because they consistently do not damage there computers by overclocking.
how easy is it?
It's really easy, just you need to know how to do it. It took me a few months of occasional reading till I felt comfortable doing it.
is it true you can do it just through the BIOS.( and no im not even 100% sure what BIOS is.)
Yes.
It's system setup. When you turn on the PC before Windows starts to load, all this crap will pop up on the screen that will say things like, "PRESS DEL TO ENTER SYSTEM SETUP". And then go press delete a few times and change settings.
Last edited by Slotback on Fri Jun 25, 2010 12:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
