Multi monitor build

[Hails13]

Hi all,

I have the task of building a flight simulator for my air cadet squadron, we are looking at probably 5 or 6 monitors (1920x1080).
Budget is not too much of an issue as we can fund-raise but keeping the price down a bit will make life easier.

The sim will be running FSX with a few add-ons (REX4, ORBX England, add-on aircraft)

I'm looking at an i7 4770, though it is a little pricey so if anyone has any experience running FSX on an 8 core AMD CPU then I would like to hear it.

In terms of graphics cards I'm thinking that crossfire/sli will be the route to go down. This is really where I want some advice as I run 2 monitors on a gtx760 (previously a 5770) but usually I only game on one. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what card(s) would be best. (I'm thinking probably AMD for ease and cost of multi monitors (possibly a pair of 7970s?))

Thanks for any help

 

[barnsley]

The issue is with FSX is that it is a bit too old to run well on AMD cpus due to core usage. Go for an i5, you can get a non k one as you won't be overclocking. I'm pretty sure its not too graphically intensive either so a couple of 670s should be fine. Its had alot of patches since release that probably fixed the gpu/cpu usage issues. They've stopped patching it a while ago so I'm not too sure that AMD stuff will work well with this game, hence the nvidia/intel recommendations.

 

[Hails13]

Thanks Barnsley,

I run FSX on my home rig and with add-ons it uses all of my overclocked i5 (all cores at 100%) which is why I was thinking i7 but I shall bear that in mind.

As for graphics I shall have a play with my 760 on 2 monitors and see how well it holds up.

 

[barnsley]

Thanks Barnsley,

I run FSX on my home rig and with add-ons it uses all of my overclocked i5 (all cores at 100%) which is why I was thinking i7 but I shall bear that in mind.

As for graphics I shall have a play with my 760 on 2 monitors and see how well it holds up.

That is weird, I can't find much about core usage online ( my experience of FSX was on a core 2 duo) but I'd be suprised if it can use more than 4 cores. If it can then you probably should get a 8350, although the performance increase won't be that much better. if it only uses 5 I'd almost be tempted to go for a 6350...

 

[Hails13]

After playing for a bit an i5 is probably enough, it may well just be the amount i have going on in the background usually and the 760 is easily handling both monitors. That said my i5 is far from standard when it comes to clock speeds and an oc isn't really an option

760 seems to be able to handle 2 monitors nicely, I hooked up an old monitor that I have which is 1280x1024 so nvidia surround had everything running in 3840x1024 which looked weird and the frames were definatly lower, a 4gb card may help as i only have a 2gb card.

The other option is 6 monitors from 1 card though i don't think it's a good idea