Just about everything you need to know is located in the threads which were posted in the forums. I need to consolidate an entire thread to what works in FSX starting with the system build and go all the way through Windows setup, driver setup and FSX setup. Recently I have over-stretched myself time wise, as usual. I took some time off the last several weeks to say goodbye to a friend and in the process escaped to a marathon of FSX FX writing which was a nice break but as of today I am back to the real world.
The key threads are the Windows setup, the Nvidia driver setup thread with Nhancer, and, FSX slider config/tweak setup around page 4-5 of that same thread (also see an update to Nhancer and drivers here:
http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2 ... 2347/45#50 )
FSX has come a long way since RTM. It requires very little as compared to RTM for tweaking and everything is fairly strait forward now.
As for water on max, that will force other areas to pull back so I would play with that at 2x low unless you are in a bush or low impact autogen area. As I said, even DX10 cards on XP do better overall @ 2x low. It all comes down to where you are flying and how high the sliders are set.
as for removing the hacks.. some people wear by them. The only reason I said that is because the hacks are not doing what people think they do and if they are in place during an upgrade, the sim is worse. To me they make no sense past the introduction of SP1 and even then, I found when I did them all several times to test, it made the sim look and run worse. Sometimes people boot and run one area but just do not see the damage they have done overall. I guess for people who run very poor hardware the hacks have use.