Planning First Cockpit...Assessing Hardware, help?

Hello, just found these forums and been reading a bit. Thought this a good place to ask my first building question.

I have my main PC: Asus Sabertooth Mobo with an i5 3750k and 8gigs of ram. I have a 256gb SSD(2x128s RAID 0) and a Radeon 7950 vid card. I am currently using 3x 20.1 dell monitors in eyefinity mode for a 5124x1200(bezel comp) desktop. I am running Win7 64bit Pro on this one.

I have two other older pcs and don't know if they would be of any use to me in my building plans. Both will be using XP Pro 32bit. One is a Pentium D 940 Presler 3.2GHz, 2gb ram, 150gb HDD with a Radeon 6850 vid card and the other is a Pentium D 805 Smithfield 2.66GHz, 2gb ram, 80gb HDD with a crappy old 7900GT nVidia vid card.

I am thinking about getting another 7950 to crossfire. I will be 'collecting' three new 24" widescreen monitors for my main eyefinity screens meaning I will have 3-4 20.1 dells as alternates and potential instrument screens for the cockpit.

Lastly, I have an old projector, BenQ W100, 854x480 native res, but I have used it on my HTPC and 360 in 1080i and it looks pretty good!

So, my main question I guess is how to best utilize the hardware I have.

I am wanting to use wideview, active sky and xpax(or something like that) and would probably like to use FSXpand eventually...any thoughts?

I don't have a problem building another pc, just not another main gaming rig, if I have to spend another $400-$600 on pc hardware to make this work, I can make that happen I guess. Just can't fork out another $1500 right now and stay married! :D

Just let me know if anyone has any thoughts!
Thanks in advance,
Ridd

Hi Ridd!

your PC specs seem good to me , however I would sell the 7950 and buy a nvidia evga 680 with 4 gb . It runs 3 screens much better than an Amd ATI card will . I sold my 7970 because of the stutters it always had in fsx . Xfire doesn't work with fsx so don't buy a second one . The drivers are the biggest problem Amd doesn't support fsx while nvidia still does ! And the have adaptive vertical sync together with better shader support it is the way to go !

best regards Remco

Awesome, thanks for the reply!

You know I have actually come to the conclusion that I need to upgrade to that EVGA 680 card! I think if I move on this about Black Friday I should be able to sell my 7950 on ebay for prolly $150 or so...that would knock a hole in the cost of the new card a bit.

I am also leaning toward the idea of upgrading my CPU at the same time to an Intel i7 3770k.

One other question, anyone have any experience with WidevieW? I can't get an answer from their support person and you can't even read their forums without buying a product.

I need to know how much machine I need to have to run JUST two side windows...this would complete my pit with the three 24" monitors out the front and two more for each the left and right side windows.

Well, again, thanks for reading this!
Ridd