It is not how many WATTS your PSU has. It is how many AMPS on the 12V rails the PSU produces. 12V rail is by far the most important one. Watts is a measure of how much electricity your PSU uses, amps is a measure of how much current it can generate.
For example, compare this 520W Corsair PSU.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817139001To your beloved Hiper 580W PSU.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817128002The Corsair has three 18A 12V rails, while the Hiper has one 20A and one 18A rail. So, the Corsair can generate more 12V current than the Hiper even though it has a lower wattage. Hiper is a good PSU, but it is not a high end PSU.
I'm not disputing your perception YF, but to me, smooth and playable is 40+ FPS, preferably around 60.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if your trying to tell everyone that 15 fps is acceptable, I, for one, will have to be on mogadon for a week to agree with that.
The thing is, a flight simulator can be played at a lower FPS, and still appear smooth. You can play FS9 or FSX at 30 fps, and it will look fine, because the gameplay is not fast paced. However, you can't play a first person shooter at 30 fps, it will look choppy due to the quicker gameplay. I personally use a 25 fps lock, so I don't have frame rate drops when I enter populated areas.
b.t.w. the new Abit aw9d max mobo, is not 16X PCIE its each 8X so when you go crosfire you get the 16X, and if I have a good memory, I'ts clearly writen on the box! "poor abit suckers"
As for as I am aware there is no crossfire board that supports 32X crossfire. Maybe R600 will. Only SLI has 32X support.
Last edited by cheesegrater on Sun Dec 17, 2006 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.