new pc

[Guest 160732]

I have decided that my p4 1.6 shall be my future office pc and I therefore shall buy a new and faster machine for flying. I want to be 100 % sure that it is the wright machine and would like to have a few sugestion on the matter.Ole

[Guest Zapper]

If I may make so bold:My squad, http://www.raafsims.net, uses a standard box for our flight simming. This is an excellent machine and the PMDG 737NG really rocks on it! Not to mention running LOMAC and IL2 like a dream.Mainboard: Asus A7N8XOnboard it has 6 USB ports, 2 Ethernet cards, great sound that operates flawlessly. It is a Serial ATA board as well which is a good thing if you want to use those HDDs as well as loads of other useful features.CPU: AMD 2.6GHz BartonMemory: As much as you can afford but not less than 512MVid Card: ATI Radeon 9800Pro (probably the dearest thing you will have to buy)You might get away with only a 1.8GHz or 2.0GHz CPU and 512M RAM but the video card is where you must spend cash if you want your sim experience to flow. It is usually where machines fall down and choke.I also have an excellent ViewSonic Graphic Series G90f+ 19" Flat Screen monitor which is well worth the little extra you pay. Go for a Flat screen rather than a larger curved screen is my recommendation.. Ihave a high quality 21" curved as well but prefer the 19" flat.A helpful addition is a Track IR2 and a full suite of CH USB controllers (Fighterstick, Pro Throttle and Pro Pedals) For my money I wopuld not buy a yoke. Any aeroplane can be flown with a stick but try and fly a fighter with a yoke ;) Seriously.. a cheap stick such as MS Sidewinder (avoid Force Feedback at all costs) is cheap and gives you everyting you need. If you can afford more then but good quality. I have owned just acbout every stick out there including a TM Cougar and the CH USB Fighterstick setup is the one that stands out from all the rest.Use only Windows XP Professional and I strongly recommend TrendMicro Internet Security.Hope this is of some use to you,Rgds

[Guest Nickman]

If you decide to upgrade your CPU, then you'll probably need a new motherboard. I would suggest to either get an AMD Athlon XP 3200 or Intel Pentium 4 2.8 ghz or higher. Both the AMD 3200 and P4 2.8 run at the same performance (even though the AMD is at 2.2 ghz). A new video card will also help your performance. I would suggest getting a nVidia ultra.Nick B.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/800driver.jpg--AMD Athlon XP 3200+ @ 2.2 Ghz400W Power supply3x 80 mm Case FansSoyo VIA KT600 Dragon PlusnVidia GeForce FX 5200 128 mb2 x 512 PC400100 GB Western DigitalMicrosoft Sidewinder Precision 2

[Guest Buck Bolduc]

A few months ago I built a new machine. It five me between 50-60 frames (FPS)no matter what the wether, traffic, airports, etc.Athlon 64-3400 CPU.MSI Neo Fsr2 Mobo.1 gig Corsair TwinX LLP(2x512) Memmory.ATI 9800 Pro 128mb video card.Antec True Power 430 watt PSU, Max output 410 watts.Put the memmory in slots 1 and 3.Tommorow, June1 I have 2 new WD Raptor 10,000 RPM drives I will configure as RAID 0.Killer system, trust me.If you have money to burn wait a few days and take a look at the new AMD socket 939 chips. Look at the MSI Neo Platinum mobo, with dual channel memmory. The new chips are rated at A64-3800.In either case, when MS realeses WinXP64 you will be able to use it and you wont have to upgrade for a long while. With the P4 or prescott in it,s present form you will be obsolete this fall, JMHO. With Win AMD64 you will get a 10% increase in performance running you 32 bit apps., under Win AMD64. Been there, done that.Regards

[Guest JamieG]

hey ya'll i hate to butt in here--i have the ATI 9800 Pro and I think that might be causing stutters for mne. I see a lot of you have it and have similar specs to my systemDEll XPS P3.0 w/HT on200 gb hdd1GB DDR SDRAMATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB with Cat. 4.4 (are the omega's any good?)SB Audigy 2 Card4.1 SpeakersDell M992 Monitor 19in. Optical Mouse/Dell KeyboardMy frames are in the 20-30s (locked in that range). I have a defragged HD and scan dissked HD--but it stutters like every second. It looks as if the plane takes two steps forward and one step back.) Any ideas would be great!

[Guest Zapper]

Jamie.. some more info pls. What manufacturer and what software u running pls? I recommend Catalyst drivers.Tks

[Guest JamieG]

umm i dont know what information you need specificallyMore computer info XP Home EditionFS2004 I had a lot of addons inbut then....I reformatted the HDD (not the quick way--the longway) its 200GB NTFSand I still get stutters on a clean install of FS--I just changed the water textures as per danowats thread, still stutters. Everything else is default. In the backgroundMS Messanger--but not logged in, (I cant figure out how to uninstall that)AOL instant messanger--logged onNorton Anti Virusqttask.exe which is a quicktime app is running in the background (its for itunes--lets me burn cds) As for display settingsEverything is maxed out except the terrain is land only, water is high, mip map is 4, no anti alias in fs. Clouds are at 100% but visibility is at minimum and draw distance is at 50. More about the stuttersThe stutters normally happen in any view but the 2D cockpit, but I have gotten stutters in the 2d cockpit once in a while. It happens when I can see a lot of scenery--if i look directly top down I am fine. I have tried easing up my display settings--that doesnt help.Anything else you need-Ill be happy to provide

[paulcroft 0]

Jamie1. Check this forum for the best video card drivers. I run nVidia so I don't know what they are for your card. Someone will be able to help.2. Stop that stuff running in the background. I assume you know how to stop Norton, AOL IM and qttask. To stop MS Messenger check this out:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/usi...te/stopspam.aspHTHPaul Croft10 miles SE of EGLL

[Guest Buck Bolduc]

I dont know about stutters, dont have em.To shut down MS Mesenger log on as adminstrator, go to administrator tool, DClick on Services, a window will open, the title bar will say "Services (Local)", scroll down and find Mesenger, DClick on the little gear icon, a widow will open, you will see a button that says "Stop" if it,s running, if it is Stop it, then look for a drop down list, it has 3 choices, put it on "Disabled". It will never bug you again!Go to www.black viper.com ( I think) or better yet search for "FSSTART" in the avsim library. It will advise you what to shut down to free up some resources. Just make shure you tell it to restart everything when you close down FS9, or youl find yourself having to reboot.I trust your running WinXP.Regards

[Guest JamieG]

Ok...I tried running FS without any other programs, still get the stutters. As for FSSTART--i wasn't ab;e to find that. Do you happen to know who made it. Thanks a ton!

[vscimone 16]

Try unplugging all your USB devices. Sometimes they can cause stutters. If you see any improvement, plug in each one individually to isolate the problem device.Best,Vin ScimonePMDGwww.precisionmanuals.comhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/devteam.jpg

[Guest zip]

There are two known sources of stutter for ATI cards due to texturing, and if you do a search in the main FS hardware forum (up in this forum board), you will find additional info.I seem to remember an issue with smartgart, and also an issue with using panelastexture or something like that. I have a 9800XT and no problems now but getting FS to behave took a while.Good luck.E.

[Guest JamieG]

thanks a ton--sry I seem to have bad luck searching today--I did ATI and Graphics Cards in the Hrdware search and didnt really find too much stutter stuff--do you remember what you did. Thanks a ton!

[Guest niceguy2782]

You have a mighty large Hard Disk, and it could very well be the cause of the stutters but I wouldn't blame it just yet.The Hard Disk is massive so I would definately recommend you make atleast 3 partitions on that Hard Disk. Havng windows on it's own partition and FS on it's own ... let all the other programs be on the third.If you store some crap files you hardly use and take up a large space on you hard disk .. make another partition for them and dump them in that one.The way your OS gets files is looking through the partition table as to where the file is before it can go fetch .. now you wouldd probably have on hell of a partition table to be accessed there and if your HDD has only about a 2mb cache then it aint gonna help much. Also FS uses a god amount of Virtual Memory which resides on the OS partition, and accessing this at the same time is also another problem. So if you divide all this into partitions as I described above, you should have much much faster access of files.2 x 50gb + 1 x 100gb partition is one option where wndows resides on one of the 50gb partitions and FS on the other .. and all other programs start going on the 100gb partition.or 4 x 50gb partitions.. various combinations will do, but don't make a mess of it. try and keep it organised.1024kb = 1mb and 1024mb = 1gb .... :D :DCheers,Terence

[Guest Buck Bolduc]

Jamie, Did you set your sound to High in FS, it uses up a lot of resources, best to set it to medium.I think FSStart was written by Ernie Allston, could be mistaken tho.I'll try and find it for you, and me.I just install 2 WD Raptors configured as RAID 0 on my rig. After formatting the drives, WinXP installed in 6 minutes, these drives are somthing else.Luck