Performance Expectations

[Guest Ray CYYZ]

Currently have the following:AMD 1.4c, 512MB DDR, Original GeForce 3 (64MB)Is it worth the effort to pick up COF & PMDG's 737 or am I more realistically looking at dropping some money into a P4 3.2/GF 5900FX combo to not be unhappy?I'm not blaming the app or anything, just asking for info from folks who have similar configurations so I know if it's time for a new machine. I generally do a full machine upgrade every 3 or 4 years, I guess the question comes down to is this the time to do so?

[Guest Max Cowgill]

Depends on how much you're willing to compromise eye candy for performance. If you want to fly COF with all it has to offer, you'll need new components such as the ones you've named. I would, however, recommend waiting a month or so if you can. AMD will be releasing the Athlon64 next month and I believe both ATI & Nvidia will be releasing new versions of their high-end cards with higher clock and memory speeds. Since you're already wanting to buy high-end components, might as well get the best.Max Cowgill

[Guest]

Hey Max,You mentioned you went from a geforce ti 4200 to a geforce fx 5200. How do the two compare? I know the ti 4200 is the superior card, but I haven't been able to find a flight sim specific review or benchmark of the geforce fx 5200 which is a lot cheaper.Good tailwinds,Daniel , CYCW

[fbobum 0]

Max,Noticed your system specs. I have a 2200XP with the GeForce 4200, same RAM as you on a K7N2L board and a 40GB HD @ 7200 RPM. How much detail do you think you sacrifice, if any? Thanks.Rick

[Guest Max Cowgill]

>Hey Max,>>You mentioned you went from a geforce ti 4200 to a geforce fx>5200. How do the two compare? I know the ti 4200 is the>superior card, but I haven't been able to find a flight sim>specific review or benchmark of the geforce fx 5200 which is a>lot cheaper.>>Good tailwinds,>>Daniel , CYCWDaniel, I absolutely HATE this card. No one should ever attempt to play 3d games with it. Games look and play horribly on this thing. I've overclocked it as far as it will go (nowhere near the o/c on my GF4) and it still doesn't give me any kind of performance. I o/c'd it from 250/400 to 300/460 and gained only 10% in 3dmark2k3 and virtually no difference in any games. The *only* reason I bought this card was because it was either this or a TNT2 M64. I only had about $100 to work with at the time and I figured this would be better than a 4 year-old video card.As far as performance specific to flight sim goes, I got higher frame rates, better images (by far) and was actually able to use AA & AF w/my GF4 whereas w/this card I have to turn all the image enhancing features off just to get decent fps. Don't buy this card if you have a choice. I didn't have a choice :(-Max Cowgill

[Guest Max Cowgill]

>Max,>>Noticed your system specs. I have a 2200XP with the GeForce>4200, same RAM as you on a K7N2L board and a 40GB HD @ 7200>RPM. How much detail do you think you sacrifice, if any? >Thanks.>>Rick Rick, I moved down from an AXP 2400+ @ 2.195GHz and GF4 Ti 4200 w/128MB to an AXP 2200+ @ 2.002GHz and GFFX 5200 and the performance difference is noticeable. FS2k2 runs about the same (maybe 2-3fps slower) but the image quality is horrible! FS2k4 I can't even get to run without sacrificing details or else it stutters all the time to the point where it's not even playable. I'm still working on FS2k4 but I might just put a hold on that until I can get a real video card again and get a replacement CPU from AMD.-Max Cowgill