Hey guys and gals. I have a large income tax refund coming. I intend on spending it wisely, but there's a good chance I'll have a fat chunk left over after bills and other boring stuff. Around March of 2013 I accidentally gave my then only X-Plane 10 machine a coffee enema. True story. A perfectly timed divorce and the birth of my baby business caused me to blow through my savings before I could replace the thoroughly rinsed laptop. I've been out of the simming world since then. Boy oh boy am I getting the itch to blow some of that tax refund money on a new computer. Since my last one was a lil ol' MacBook Pro, and the one before that was a 2007 iMac, I don't have any real world experience on high end Windows machines. My instinct is to look at the most expensive stuff (by Intel and Nvidia) because "expensive means good". That rule holds true for the most part in the entertainment production business that occupies my day job time slot. So here's the nuts and bolts of my delema. Say I go all out on a TitanX. Will I see a noticeable difference over the next card down in the product line? I'm not sure what all the bells on these new fangled cards do with relation to what XP10 needs. Same goes for processors. If I shoot for the top of the heap, will that get me improved performance over the next chip down? or the next chip down from that? Are there currently unused features in these high end devices that X-Plane may some day utilize? These seem like silly questions to me, I know. I've been simming since 2004 on sub-standard machines, and now I might have the chance to go balls out on a new one. I'd like to know if any of you have had positive (or negative) experience by going straight to the top of the pile when purchasing components. Thanks!