Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

X-Plane 10 and a new PC

Topper

Topper

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 17, 2007
1,186
0
I am buying a new PC just to run X-Plane 10.
X-Plane 10 at higher renderings is just too sluggish on my Mac Pro.
I will use my Mac Pro for everything else.
I want to thank Apple for their glorious upgrade to the Mac Pro.

My new PC:

Processor - Quad-Core Intel® Core™ i7-3820 3.60GHz 10MB Cache
Motherboard - Intel® DX79TO - ATX - Intel® X79 Express Chipset
Memory - 4 x Crucial 4GB PC3-10600 1333MHz DDR3
Case - Antec Twelve Hundred V3 - ATX Full Tower - Black
Power Supply - Corsair HX1050 - Modular - 1000W Power Supply
Hard Drive - (2) 1TB SATA 6.0Gbps 7200RPM - 3.5" - WD® 7200.14
5.25" Bay - Samsung 22x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer (SATA)
Video Card - MSI NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr III/OC 2GB GDDR5 (2xDVI, 1xHDMI, 1xDP)
Operating System - Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium (64-bit) with Recovery Partition
 
Topper said:
I am buying a new PC just to run X-Plane 10.
X-Plane 10 at higher renderings is just too sluggish on my Mac Pro.
I will use my Mac Pro for everything else.
I want to thank Apple for their glorious upgrade to the Mac Pro.

My new PC:

Processor - Quad-Core Intel® Core™ i7-3820 3.60GHz 10MB Cache
Motherboard - Intel® DX79TO - ATX - Intel® X79 Express Chipset
Memory - 4 x Crucial 4GB PC3-10600 1333MHz DDR3
Case - Antec Twelve Hundred V3 - ATX Full Tower - Black
Power Supply - Corsair HX1050 - Modular - 1000W Power Supply
Hard Drive - (2) 1TB SATA 6.0Gbps 7200RPM - 3.5" - WD® 7200.14
5.25" Bay - Samsung 22x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer (SATA)
Video Card - MSI NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr III/OC 2GB GDDR5 (2xDVI, 1xHDMI, 1xDP)
Operating System - Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium (64-bit) with Recovery Partition
Click to expand...

Sure is a lot of investment just to play X-Plane. Maybe just buy a real plane.
 
The "Dude";15078301 said:
Sure is a lot of investment just to play X-Plane. Maybe just buy a real plane.
Click to expand...

Cessna Corvalis TTX with Garmin G2000 avionics - $733,950.00
Computer with X-Plane 10 and a Cessna Corvalis TT with accurate, realistic Garmin G1000 avionics - $2,200.00

Odds on me dying in a real Cessna Corvalis TTX - 99 percent
Odds on me dying in a flight sim with a Cessna Corvalis - 0 percent
 
You do know that no current computer will run X-Plane 10 on full settings?

Have fun though, wish I could afford a new computer just for X-plane! Would be interested to here what kind of settings you can reasonably get with it.
 
andydckent said:
You do know that no current computer will run X-Plane 10 on full settings?
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I know that full well. XP9 was bad enough but XP10 is a disaster, nice eye candy but a disaster.
Did you know that XP10 takes over 3 minutes just to start up?
I am hoping for some launch and frame-rate improvements in the next few revisions.

andydckent said:
Have fun though, wish I could afford a new computer just for X-plane! Would be interested to here what kind of settings you can reasonably get with it.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I'll let you know.
 
XP10 runs fine on my 27" iMac Core i7 2009. I had to lower some of the settings compared to 9, but still runs very smoothly.

Plus, I think 10 is still in beta.
 
quagmire said:
XP10 runs fine on my 27" iMac Core i7 2009. I had to lower some of the settings compared to 9, but still runs very smoothly.

Plus, I think 10 is still in beta.
Click to expand...

I ran XP9 at extremely high renderings on my 2008 Mac Pro with a HD 5870 card.
I'm not going to lower my renderings just to make XP10 run smoothly.
I love XP10's scenery. I need a computer that can work with it.
I've got the latest X-Plane revision downloaded. It's something like the fifth revision (10.05r1 or something like that).
 
Topper said:
I ran XP9 at extremely high renderings on my 2008 Mac Pro with a HD 5870 card.
I'm not going to lower my renderings just to make XP10 run smoothly.
I love XP10's scenery. I need a computer that can work with it.
I've got the latest X-Plane revision downloaded. It's something like the fifth revision (10.05r1 or something like that).
Click to expand...

I could run XP9 on extremely high too on the iMac. I only had to lower it down one setting which looks very good still on XP10. Most of the other settings remained the same.
 
Topper said:
Cessna Corvalis TTX with Garmin G2000 avionics - $733,950.00
Computer with X-Plane 10 and a Cessna Corvalis TT with accurate, realistic Garmin G1000 avionics - $2,200.00

Odds on me dying in a real Cessna Corvalis TTX - 99 percent
Odds on me dying in a flight sim with a Cessna Corvalis - 0 percent
Click to expand...

LOL

I hear you, mate!

I still have the '08 Mac Pro (8 Core 2.8, 8 GB RAM) with Radeon 5870. I try to get by X-Plane 10 with most rendering options high enough to make it look nice.
But, I have so many "bad allocation" errors, it makes me avoid high textured places (like the payware KLGA with added Manhattan scenery, etc.) but, sometimes it annoyes me if I occasionally fly across a piece of scenery which seems to exceed the OS X 32 bits RAM limit of 3.5 GB for X-Plane 10, especially if you load lots of plug-ins... and therefore crash this app with the same irritating "bad allocation errors. Etc.

TBO, I think that a 64 bits upgrade to the app to help it overcome the RAM errors will make a huge difference, maybe even more that investing in hardware now. You can pump up the grfx detail but I assume the RAM related errors will increase!
Yes, by removing the RAM as the "weakest link" for X-Plane 10 on a fast Mac Pro, then it will become hugely obvious that the grfx hardware and the CPU will become the next bottleneck. I assume a Radeon 7970 will help us... (why, o why, didn't Apple give us this card as a BTO option for the Mac Pro's?)

I was at the Aviation Megastore (close to EHAM ;)) a few weeks ago, and there was this PC flying FSX..... man o man.. that did look soooo sweeeeeet..!

Yes, it is in Dutch, but you'll probably understand the specs....
Specificaties:
Processor: INTEL Core i7-3820 (4x 3600 MHz) - 4,4Ghz overclocked !
Processor koeling: CORSAIR H60 Hydro
Moederbord: ASUS Sabertooth X79 Socket 2011
Geheugen: CORSAIR 16 GB DDR-3 1600 Kit
Videokaart: ASUS Radeon HD 7970 3072MB DDR5
Solid State Drive: OCZ Vertex3 60GB (t.b.v. Windows 7)
Solid State Drive: OCZ Vertex3 256GB (t.b.v. FSX/X-PLANE 10)
CD/DVD brander: ASUS DRW-24B3ST 24/8/12 speed
Voeding: COOLMASTER GX750 85%, 2x PCIe 6+2 pins
Behuizing: LIAN-LI PC-60FNW Midi Tower
Click to expand...

Ugly POS on the outside... but hey... it will get those grfx details!!

Arrggh.....
 
quagmire said:
XP10 runs fine on my 27" iMac Core i7 2009. I had to lower some of the settings compared to 9, but still runs very smoothly.

Plus, I think 10 is still in beta.
Click to expand...

My 2009 iMac Core 3.06Gz does not run X-Plane very smoothly at all. Its got 8Gb R am and runs everything else fine. However I believe the real problem lies more in the GPU. Mine has a ATI Radeon HD 4670 256 MB so I feel its the lack of Graphics memory that is the main problem. Hence my daily visit to Macrumours to keep up to date on iMac developments. Hopefully they will get launched along with Mountain Lion. Had thought about a powerfull PC to run X-Plane, but I use Mac Apps far too much to waste money on a PC and will just wait to they are updated.

X-Plane is my main reason at looking at an iMac upgrade and am going to go for the top of the range 2012 iMac when they are released. WIll look at getting maximum memory for the GPU and will get probably get about 8Gb extra RAM from Crucial on top of whatever the standard RAM that will ship with the new machines.

Was wondering about an SSD but not sure if that will make a tremendous difference. I do quite a lot of iPhoto and iMovie stuff as well as X-Plane. Aiming on going for a 2TB Hard drive. Thoughts on whether an SSD would make that much difference?

I rarely ever switch my computer off so boot up time isn't a problem. I always have multiple apps open at the same time such as Safari, iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, Keynote and Pages. I have a number of iPhoto libraries (some as large as 100Gb) and my iTunes is well over 130Gb. However when I run X-Plane I normally shut down all other apps.
 
Yeah with the settings I run it at, it says I am using 256 MB of VRAM. Of course that is all the ram you have on your GPU.
 
Topper said:
Cessna Corvalis TTX with Garmin G2000 avionics - $733,950.00
Computer with X-Plane 10 and a Cessna Corvalis TT with accurate, realistic Garmin G1000 avionics - $2,200.00

Odds on me dying in a real Cessna Corvalis TTX - 99 percent
Odds on me dying in a flight sim with a Cessna Corvalis - 0 percent
Click to expand...

Were you planning to use a joystick?
 
MacsRgr8 said:
why, o why, didn't Apple give us this card as a BTO option for the Mac Pro's?
Click to expand...

I've been using Apple computers for 22 years. That supposed upgrade was the dumbest thing I've ever seen Apple do. The least they could have done was upgrade the video card.

MacsRgr8 said:
Specificaties:
Processor: INTEL Core i7-3820 (4x 3600 MHz) - 4,4Ghz overclocked !
Processor koeling: CORSAIR H60 Hydro
Moederbord: ASUS Sabertooth X79 Socket 2011
Geheugen: CORSAIR 16 GB DDR-3 1600 Kit
Videokaart: ASUS Radeon HD 7970 3072MB DDR5
Solid State Drive: OCZ Vertex3 60GB (t.b.v. Windows 7)
Solid State Drive: OCZ Vertex3 256GB (t.b.v. FSX/X-PLANE 10)
CD/DVD brander: ASUS DRW-24B3ST 24/8/12 speed
Voeding: COOLMASTER GX750 85%, 2x PCIe 6+2 pins
Behuizing: LIAN-LI PC-60FNW Midi Tower
Click to expand...

Very nice. That should work.
I am reconsidering buying a PC.
I run XP10 in Windows on my MP. I do so for two reasons:
1. I've got very sophisticated Garmin avionics for X-Plane. Unfortunately the Garmin avionics are PC only.
2. I think X-Plane may run better under Windows. It is certainly true that AMD cards run better with OS X while nVidia cards run better with Windows.
I am hoping that Mountain Lion will have drivers for the GTX 680. If so, I'll throw that bad boy into my MP.
On the other hand there is a Garmin G1000 available for X-Plane that requires two computers and two monitors just to run it. That would be a good excuse to buy a PC and a second monitor.
I don't suppose you've got any money you could lend me?


skyenet said:
I believe the real problem lies more in the GPU. Mine has a ATI Radeon HD 4670 256 MB so I feel its the lack of Graphics memory that is the main problem.
Click to expand...

They are saying now that XP10 can use a video card with 2GB of vram.

Trav29 said:
Were you planning to use a joystick?
Click to expand...
Yes
 
Last edited:
Topper said:
I've been using Apple computers for 22 years. That supposed upgrade was the dumbest thing I've ever seen Apple do. The least they could have done was upgrade the video card.
Click to expand...

Yep. At least they recognised it and pulled the word "new" from the online store... :rolleyes:
I still baffles me why they didn't go for the obvious thing.... like you said... update the **** video cards! :mad:

BTW, it seems X-Plane 10.10 won't be 64 bits: http://developer.x-plane.com/2012/06/were-still-here-really/

Looks like it will take a long time before we're out of the out of memory errors.
 
Topper said:
I should have known that but didn't. Thank you for the info.
Click to expand...

If this machine is solely for X-Plane, why use two 1TB disks instead of one SSD? I picked up a 256GB 6Gb Vertex for $230 at NewEgg.

Wouldn't that benefit the startup times?
 
Have you bought the PC already or is that just what you are thinking of buying? If you haven't bought it yet, you could easily save hundreds by going with a i5-3570K based build. You don't need SB-E or X79 unless you need more than 16 PCIe lanes (SLI/CrossFire) or 32GB of RAM. Invest in a good CPU cooler and you can easily OC it to over 4GHz without a trouble.

Also, I would seriously consider an SSD as well.
 
belvdr said:
If this machine is solely for X-Plane, why use two 1TB disks instead of one SSD? I picked up a 256GB 6Gb Vertex for $230 at NewEgg.

Wouldn't that benefit the startup times?
Click to expand...

I do use a SSD in my Mac Pro to run Windows 7 under boot camp.
The SSD starts up Windows a lot faster than a HDD.
The SSD seemed to start-up XP9 very fast also.
But XP10 is so slow to start-up, I don't see any advantage. I've tried XP10 with both a SSD and a HDD.

Hellhammer said:
Have you bought the PC already or is that just what you are thinking of buying? If you haven't bought it yet, you could easily save hundreds by going with a i5-3570K based build. You don't need SB-E or X79 unless you need more than 16 PCIe lanes (SLI/CrossFire) or 32GB of RAM. Invest in a good CPU cooler and you can easily OC it to over 4GHz without a trouble.
Click to expand...

Points well taken, thank you.
 
Topper said:
Have you tried an SSD with XP10?
XP10 is so slow on start-up, I honestly didn't see any advantage.
Click to expand...

On the .org forums many have tried X-Plane 10 with an SSD.
It makes no difference at all. At most X-Plane reads as much as 20 MB per second. So, even a medium-capable 5400 rpm disk of a laptop is not slowing X-Plane 10 down.

X-Plane 10 has these limits:

1. 64 bits.
Worst limit ATM. If you have very capable hardware and you have the settings very high and lots of scenery extra's and plugins installed, the game reaches the 3.5 GB limit (on OS X, 4 GB in Windows IIRC) too easily and crashes.

2. Grfx card.
Getting to the settings mentioned above, you'll need very powerful 3D grfx hardware. A Radeon HD 5870 is just powerful enough to get you to the RAM limit, but no way near for max. eye-candy settings. A 7970 will help a lot, but even that card won't be able to handle all settings full.

3. CPU.
X-Plane 10 is more "multi-CPU aware" than X-Plane 9 was, but in no stretch of the imagination does it use 4 Cores a lot, let alone 8 Cores.

You know, as it is now, with the 32 bits limit, playing X-Plane 10 on decent hardware (any Mac Pro with Radeon 5870) therefore having the settings nice, but not too high, might the the best option ATM.
Once X-Plane 10 is fully 64 bits and all plugins are compatible, only then would I consider a serious upgrade of the hardware.
 
I too am now going back to Windows for XP 10. I use minimal objects/trees, but very high detail and texture rez (extreme would be nice) and 8x AA. No AI aircraft.

I have settled on the GTX-680, 4GB version if I can find it in stock. I'll often be driving two monitors, but usually they'll be mirrored. I'll have a dedicated SSD, which I have found does make a difference in scenery loading, especially with photoreal textures. No more pauses or stutters after I went that route.

My question is the CPU. My quad '09 Pro @ 2.93 (4870) now gives me about 40 FPS on the ground in the XP10 demo at KSEA with my normal settings (after days of tests and tweaks). In the air, maybe 50 to 70 depending on locale, clouds, viz, etc. I've never seen more than one core at 100%. The rest stay well below 50%

I want to kick up the detail and texture rez to the max, maybe a few more objects, but I want a min 60 FPS, no matter where, no matter what plane, etc.

What do you guys recommend for a CPU? I am looking at a stock E5 3730K hex, or an overclocked one to around 5.0 GHz (major $$$). Also considering a 3770K overclocked, or a stock E5 1620 or 1650 in an HP workstation. All of the OC'd options are custom builds. Which way would you go?
 
The CPU isn't going to help to get you to extreme res, etc. As you pointed out yourself, the CPU isn't maxed out running XP10. The CPU will help with things like AI aircraft. On my 27" iMac Core i7( 2009), it can handle I believe it is 8 AI aircraft without a problem. It will be the GPU that will make the biggest difference.
 
quagmire said:
The CPU isn't going to help to get you to extreme res, etc. As you pointed out yourself, the CPU isn't maxed out running XP10. The CPU will help with things like AI aircraft. On my 27" iMac Core i7( 2009), it can handle I believe it is 8 AI aircraft without a problem. It will be the GPU that will make the biggest difference.
Click to expand...

XP also uses additional cores for scenery loads. I am hitting 100% CPU close to, or on the ground. Tests posted on other forums show OC makes a big difference when all other settings remain the same between tests, so, clock speed DOES matter. The way XP is coded, if the primary core hits 100%, that is a brick wall, the others cannot pick up the slack.

Where I am confused is with regard to architecture (e.g., Z77 v X79), Ivy v. Sandy E, 10mb cache v 15 mb, memory bandwidth, etc. All that stuff. Will it make a difference in XP 10? Example...which would you get:

Stock i7 3930K, stock Xeon 1620, or stock Xeon 1650, or an Ivy Bridge 3770K? The 3770K and 3930K can be OC'd easily.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back