Upgraded for PMDG

[Guest simtrac]

Hi all,I've just had a complete revelation!As a proud PMDG owner, I've been lurking around this forum for quite a while and reading with deep envy those post from those of you who have enough computing power to actually fly the thing, instead of staggering around the sky like I have recently been doing.In the end, I took the plunge and decided to build myself a totally new system, just to fly this aircraft (if I'm honest!). My old one was an Athlon 1.2/Geforce2/484mb RAM - flyable, but no VC and the virtual cabin was a definite no-go area.Last Saturday night, I screwed my new system together:AMD XP 3000+ 400mhz FSBGigabyte 7N00E-L Mobo512 mb DDR RAM80gb HDDDVD RAM burnerGF FX5600XTWin XP SP-1Being a cynical sort, I wasn't expecting much - a few frames better maybe. Well, I was wrong! I am completely blown away! The difference is unbelievable! I seem to remember someone on this forum did an upgrade and ended up spinning around the a/c in spot view - not quite knowing what to do next. Well, I have been doing that in the Virtual Cockpit. Just sitting there like a grinning fool - using my mouse and active camera whirling round the VC and cabin - and this is on a fresh install of Windows XP and FS9 with no tweaks applied!! Job done.Fantastic. Now to get the damn thing off the ground ...Simon

[Guest Ray CYYZ]

I know just what you mean, I went from an AMD 1.4c/512m/gf3 to a P4 3.2/1g/Ati9800xt in one fell swoop. You get that funny look on your face and just stare at things for a while.Ray

[Guest B742FAN]

Hehe that was me spinning around with a grin. It's funny how the human condition works cause now I stare at the 8 loud fans in my case and grumble about how loud they are. It's worth it though. Thats what headphones are for anyway.__Josh

[Guest tmetzinger]

>and this is on a fresh>install of Windows XP and FS9 with no tweaks applied!! Job>done.That can make ALL the difference. Putting on my computer hat (I'm the director of systems engineering for a decent size consulting firm in real life), there is an INCREDIBLE amount of stuff that accumulates like dust in windows operating systems. Background services, modified or extra dll's, device drivers for stuff you removed years ago.Building a flight sim machine with just the operating system and flight sim will perk up even older machines. And if you upgrade key features like going to a hyper-threading CPU, you practically have to reinstall the operating system to properly take advantage of it.Here's an example... I'm too cheap to buy a PC just for flight simulation - I've got a 2.4 GHz P4, 2 GB of RAM, and an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro/128. I do all my normal stuff on this, as well as play flight sim. When I fire up flight sim, I run a batch job that processes any queued tasks, stops no less than 20 background services, and then starts flight sim. Then when I exit, I have a script that restarts the services, or I just reboot. This got me a 20% improvement in frame rates.I'm tempted to go get a 3.2 GHz CPU, but they're still pricey, and I get no less than 15 fps in the PMDG at the worst anyway.Congrats on your new system, It ought to serve you well for at least a year.

[John_Tavendale 453]

Timothy,P4s are due to drop in price within a few weeks.. ;)

[Tabs 2,790]

"I seem to remember someone on this forum did an upgrade and ended up spinning around the a/c in spot view - not quite knowing what to do next. Well, I have been doing that in the Virtual Cockpit. Just sitting there like a grinning fool - using my mouse and active camera whirling round the VC and cabin"LOL! That's pretty much what happened when I upgraded earlier this month - went from a 1.4/512 PC2100/GF3 to a 3200+/1GB PC3200/9800 Pro and man I had the biggest smile on my face when I loaded up FS with full on weather, UT, and the NG and watched in amazment as it rarely dropped below 20FPS!