American Airlines Virtual

Would this card, coupled with an i5 processor and 16GB of RAM let me run FSX at a decent rate?

I think yes. I'm looking at a similar system for my build next month, same processor family, same graphics card. I did a fair bit of research looking for where the performance increase per incremental dollar starts to fall off rapidly. Lots of good information on Tom's Hardware website.

I just did a system upgrade and went to the following:
Asus Z87M-Plus MB
i7 4770K processor
8Gb Ram
120Gb SSD
1TB 7200 rpt HD
I kept my existing 1Gb GTS 250 graphics board (for the time being anyway)

My Windows Performance index is 7.0 out of a possible 7.9 and I run FSX with most all sliders to the right (not all are max'ed out) and I get a constant 30fps. Would probably get more but I capped my fps at 30. Anything above that is a waste since all the eye can see is 24-30fps (movie theaters run at 24fps).

I am very happy with performance I'm getting out of rebuilt rig and I'm not even overclocking anything at this point.

With the rebates and sells I caught at Micro Center I got all of this (minus the graphics card) for $750.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the feedback guys. My rig is not bad. Like Mike, I'm just looking at getting the best bang for not a lot of bucks to make the leap into FSX. I will probably go with this card and a Samsung 120 Gb SSD for the install.