higuys23,
Welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums!
Besides being the Intel Thermal Specialist here at Tom's, I'm also the FSX Xpert.
For FSX, the 4790K is your best bet. It's 4.0GHz out of the box, and will overclock to a minimum of 4.4. With liquid cooling 4.6 is common, and with a clean chip even 4.8 is possible.
Actually, FSX shouldn't be thought of in terms of a "game", which automatically invokes thoughts of powerful graphics cards in CF/SLI configurations in order to get the best frame rates. None of that works with FSX.
As I've written in many threads, FSX is a "simulation" that runs on the extreme CPU edge of the CPU <-----> GPU performance spectrum. FSX is very heavily CPU bound, but lightly GPU bound. As such, FSX will utilize every bit of CPU horsepower that you can afford to throw at it. FSX is also one of the very few titles that takes full advantage of the i7's Hyperthreading feature, which improves
minimum frame rates over it's i5 counterparts.
Even as old a title as it is, FSX will pull the most powerful present day computer down to it's knees with all features max'd out. FSX as well as X-Plane love Intel i7 processors, and are both multi threaded programs. Frame rate scales nearly 1:1 with clock rate, so a high CPU overclock is key to getting the highest frame rates.
On the GPU end of the performance spectrum, FSX runs better with nVidia drivers, so a mid-range card is more than adequate, such as a GTX 760. Unlike a typical "game", FSX does not respond to high-end overclocked GPU horsepower. Additionally, CF/SLI configurations can actually cause a slight decrease in frame rate due to the increased CPU interrupts and clock cycles required to maintain muli-GPU overhead.
As a former pilot, I run FSX and X-Plane quite often, and have built many rigs in the past specifically for that purpose. Just so you don't misunderstand, I hold no loyalties to corporate logos such as AMD / Radeon / nVidia or Intel; I'm simply loyal to whatever combination of parts gives me the highest FSX frame rates.
I've built many AMD rigs; my last was an Opteron 170 overclocked to 3.0. Back in the day, nothing could touch it, and it ran FS04 extremely well. When FSX was released, no one had anything that could run it well ... until Intel's "Conroe" Core 2 was released in `06. That's when I switched from AMD to Intel.
In `07 FSX SP1 was released, which made FSX multi-threaded, so I upgraded from a Dual Core to a Quad Core, always overclocked as fast as voltage and thermal specifications would allow. Later, SP2 gave us more enhancements, and as hardware advanced we were able to increase image quality and detail while maintaining acceptable frame rates.
Now I'm running an i7 4770K overclocked to 4.7, and it's still not enough ... but FSX does run better than ever! Today I would buy the i7 4790K. So the bottom line? Build an i7, cool it and overclock it!
CT
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