CAG this rig beat out two more expensive rigs in our testing:
Gamer Paladin F970 by IBUYPOWER $3300. We use the same zero-point comparison as MaximumPC in our testing
http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Gamer_Paladin_F970
Two very fast rigs it beat:
Digital Storm’s tri-CrossFire Hail Storm $7800 faster than Alienware's best
Main Gear’s tri-SLI Shift $6900-faster than Velocity's fastest
Case
CoolerMaster HAF 932 Full Tower Gaming Case - Black
iBUYPOWER Labs - Noise Reduction
None
iBUYPOWER Labs - Internal Expansion
None
Case Lighting
None
Processor
Intel® Core™ i7 980X Processor Extreme Edition (6x 3.33GHz/12MB L3 Cache) OC'd to 3.8Ghz
iBUYPOWER PowerDrive
None
Processor Cooling
[Free Upgrade] Liquid CPU Cooling System w/ 120mm Radiator [SOCKET-1366]
Memory
6 GB [2 GB X3] DDR3-1600 - Corsair Dominator
Video Card
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 - 1.5GB - Single Card
Video Card Brand
Major Brand Powered by ATI or NVIDIA
Motherboard
[SLI] Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R w/ 4x PCI-E 2.0 x16
Motherboard Add-on
None
Power Supply
800 Watt -- Power Supply - SLI Ready
Primary Hard Drive
80 GB Intel X25-M MLC SSD - Single Drive
Data Hard Drive
2X1 TB HARD DRIVE -- 32M Cache, 7200 RPM, 3.0Gb/s - Dual 1TB Drives (2TB Capacity) - RAID 0 High Performance
Optical Drive
24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive - Black
2nd Optical Drive
[10X Blu-Ray] LG BLU-RAY Re-Writer, DVD±R/±RW Burner Combo Drive - Black
Flash Media Reader/Writer
12-In-1 External USB Flash Media Card Reader/Writer
Meter Display
None
Sound Card
3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
Network Card
Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate + Office Starter 2010 (Includes basic versions of Word and Excel) - 64-bit
Keyboard
iBUYPOWER USB Keyboard - Black
Mouse
iBUYPOWER Internet Mouse - Black
Monitor
None
2nd Monitor
None
Speaker System
iBUYPOWER 2.1 Channel Stereo Super Bass Subwoofer Speaker System
Power Protection
None
Headset
None
MP3/MP4 Player
None
Video Camera
None
Warranty
Standard Warranty Service - Standard 3-Year Limited Warranty + Lifetime Technical Support
You may substitute the ASUS p6X58D as a mainboard for the same results
Never once in all the testing of FSX with SP1 using GEX, Ultimate Terrain, TrafficX 2010 as a base did it drop below 30fps (all settings were full right and set to 100% traffic) anywhere in FSX using Nick N's guides at simviaiton.com (Disclaimer: We did not have FSX Gold or Acceleration for our FSX Deluxe as FSX is not a normal software used for gamer testing).
Ted
By the way: the term lightning fast is a pipe dream!