Another option is getting a used CAD workstation: CAD workstations often come with dedicated NVIDIA graphics card, while those are not optimized for "3D gaming", they often provide plenty of bang for the buck - depending on where you live, you can check out craiglist, ebay etc - and a workstation with 32-128gb of RAM, SSD drives and dedicated nvidia graphics will often be in the $500 US range. And even if you're not satisfied with the CAD GPU, you can easily drop in another graphics card for roughly $100-150 US.
To see for yourself, look for a "HP Z800 workstation" - at the very least these will typically come with 32 gb of RAM, there are cheaper/less powerful variants available, too:
HP Z600
HP Z420
These days, CAD graphics card typically come with 12+ gb of VRAM
https://greenpcgamers.forumbee.com/t/36 ... puter-blogback in 2019 someone wrote: Using the criteria above you can build a good to borderline high end gaming system using a HP Z800 Workstation.
Sample Configuration:
HP Z800 Workstation
1 x 6C Xeon X5690 3.46Ghz 12MB 6.40GTs
32GB PC10600R (4 x 8GB)
Samsung 256GB 6GBPS SSD + Samsung Evo 970 NVME.2 SSD
GTX1080 w/8GB Graphics Card
1 x 10/100/1000 Network Port
1100W Power Supply
DVD-RW
10 Pro 64Bit
We have tested this system with games like Dota 2, CS Go, PubG, and The Division. The frames can range from 60FPS to 200FPS depending on the game and settings that you choose. The system was tested using a 144Hz 27" Acer Monitor.
Again, FlightGear isn't optimized for such GPUs, and such GPUs are not optimized for 3D simulation, and shader units - if in doubt, read up on how gaming GPUs differ compared to CAD GPUs
Speaking in general, a Z800 with 64 gb of RAM and 12gb of VRAM does offer quite a bit of horsepower, for only 300 bucks (or even less)
A dedicated gaming GPU is typically 100-150 USD these days, even though I am still not suggesting to currently buy one:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/terri ... -late-2020https://www.graitec.co.uk/hardware/cad- ... g-graphicshttps://graphicscardhub.com/workstation ... hics-card/Given how FlightGear is being developed and designed, I would not expect to spend more than 300-400 USD on hardware currently (hardware that will be good enough for the next 3-5 years probably) - FlightGear is facing some very real architectural issues, and even with the changes currently in the pipeline (compositor, compositeviewer, WS 3.0 scenery/LOD and ortho scenery), you're unlikely to benefit from purchasing top-notch hardware currently - it's best to keep your budget in the low hundreds (200-350) and then incrementally update a solid platform like the Z800 (e.g. by adding a better graphics card over the course of the next 12-18 months).
Right now, I don't quite see how purchasing a high-end system makes sense.
FlightGear really isn't very optimized, and it's not very good at leveraging dedicated gaming systems - and FlightGear is lacking built-in tools to gather performance stats, i.e. to track what's going on at the subsystems level, and at the sub-subsystem level (think Nasal GC; property I/O, swapping, RAM/VRAM utilization etc).
So, if you limit your budget to ~300-350 USD, you can still set aside 10 USD/month to have the option to upgrade your graphics card (or RAM/CPU!) every 18 months or so, without having to change the whole system. My assertion is, it will take more than 5+ years for FlightGear to fully leverage a system like the Z800. Thus, 400-500 USD/5 years is something like 100 USD/year or 9 USD/month, or 0.30 USD/day