Got Nirvana...now looking for a little Utopia

[btacon 1,789]

FS Community. I've been a member of this community for years, but I've been lurking for quite a while now. Simming kind of took a back seat to life and work, but recently I got the bug again, so I built what I planned on being my last PC for the next 10 years or so. Specs are as follows: CPU -- i7 2600K 3.4GHzZalman Performance HeatsinkMobo - Asus Sabertooth P67Coolermaster HAF 932 CaseCoolermaster 850W Power Supply16 Gigs of Crucial DDR 33 Crucial 128 Sata Solid State Drives (1 for OS, 2 Striped Raid 0 for FS and other games)1 WD 1 TB 7200 SATA 3 HD for data and other programs not needing the striped SSDTwo Lite-ON 24X SATA burnerseVGA GeForce GTX570 with 1.25 Gigs VRAMWin7 Pro 64 bit. As you can imagine it runs FSX like a bat out of hell. As a matter of fact it runs ANY game like a bat out of hell! That's the great part. Now the only problem is I'm getting annoying flashes when I pan, especially in external view. Not excessive mind you, more like one for each compass point if I do a 360 pan. I've read some threads on the topic, and there are many theories and suggested remedies out there, but none seem to put it to rest or solve the problem. I'm hoping that there may be some new ideas floating around here. Thanks in advance, Braun

[drewsaw2 3]

Nice system Braun. What do you contribute the already good performance to the most in you opinion? Obviously your CPU and GPU are tops

[btacon 1,789]

Hi Drew. I think your observation concerning processor and GPU are spot on. The faster the proc and video components, the faster the overall system especially in FSX. Knowing that and knowing that any PC is more than its individual components, for me I think the next link in the performance chain on my newly built PC are the SSD drives. I can't articulate just how fast the system boots with the OS residing on SSD. Additionally, the Striped Pair for FSX and other important games makes the loading and initialization process go like greased lightening! What used to take a minute or so (loading screen of FSX) now takes 10 seconds or less. This is with high-density scenery installed (UTX US, Canada, and Alaska). So to summarize, in my opinion for FSX, having a fast proc and vid is foundational, but almost as important is disk I/O. A task the striped SSDs handle with aplomb. Best,Braun PS...anyone have any clues as to how to handle the screen flashes I'm seeing? I certainly can live with them, but would rather not! :-)