Lets see what the geeks think...

[Guest Captain Vala]

4 gb is overkill for RAMWell the reason I'm going with 4 is because 4's the max my MB can handle, and I've got 4 slots, so why not fill them up? I mean there is nothing we can do about it anyways, so why not do it now?>May i suggest a Creative Audigy 2 ZS?Actually I had an Audigy2 in my list, for roughly about $50, and since my the expenses are getting real high ($2200 just for the CPU) I thought to cut it, since I'm getting a PCIeX1 sound card on my MB... but maybe I should get back to the Audigy again...Thank you guys,I would still appreciate more inputs from everybody...Vala

[Guest Robin.B]

Unless you are in an urge of wasting a lot of your money, no, DON'T fill them up. Because once it's time to upgrade again, You'll kill yourself for buying that 4GB of ram because now you will have to throw it away to get the latest, fastest ram once again ;) Get a max. of 2GB as the difference between 1GB and 2GB is negligible as well. I do video editing with pro programs, I play FS, I play lots of games and have lots of tasks open at once but 1GB ram still suffices. Well, almost ;)

[Guest LO006]

($2200 just for the CPU)That's awfully expensive JUST for a CPU.Where are you getting all your stuff? I found the AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 939 on newegg for 473 bucks...unless i'm retarded and not understanding something :-lol

[Guest Robin.B]

>>May i suggest a Creative Audigy 2 ZS?>>Actually I had an Audigy2 in my list, for roughly about $50,>and since my the expenses are getting real high ($2200 just>for the CPU) I thought to cut it, since I'm getting a PCIeX1>sound card on my MB... but maybe I should get back to the>Audigy again...>>Thank you guys,>>I would still appreciate more inputs from everybody...>>ValaUNless you would prefer to use onboard sound until creative releases their X-Fi soundcards, go with the Audigy 2 ZS, as sound cards don't need PCI express for now ;)

[Guest Robin.B]

Hmm there has to be something wrong here. Even the highest CPU today (Athlon FX-57) costs just over 800 bucks :S

[Guest aarskringspier]

I just purchased a FX57 San Diego for my new build and it was 1100

[Driver8 0]

>One thing to keep in mind when it comes to MSFS, you are>generally bound by your CPU's speed, not your video card.> (assuming you have a half-way modern card already)Yes and no.MSFS IS CPU intensive, no doubt.But, the Video card plays a HUGE part in there as well. For example, the single-biggest performance killer on my machine is clouds. Likewise, i have tested this, and landing at a demo of one of the add-on airports brought my machine to a crawl - until i removed the static aircraft. That is almost entirely video related.Even with AI traffic @ 100% on my machine, it's the polygons the video card must chomp on, not the CPU processing, that likes to eat my framerates. Now, i have a halfway decent CPU, but it is the older generation Athlon 64, and it's handling the loads just fine. Add-on aircraft, with lots and lots of guages and calculations and such, don't play anywhere near the role in performance as a thunderstorm in the area does :)Of course, i have the display settings tweaked to where i get all the eye candy MSFS has to offer up close, yet everything remains just smooth on landing in the vast majority of weather. No frame goes to waste! And, the biggest things that made the difference were ground shadows and clouds, which are video intensive.> (one thing I'll note from the lessons learned catagory ... DVI>connected monitors do NOT display anything during your bios>post sequence as they are a driver based interface. Only once>the operating system gets the driver loaded do you see>anything. Be careful of DVI only monitors/panels ... I have to>use my poor TV to get into my bios now!)That has to be a hardware thing then. My old computer (that the wife "appropriated" for her business, thus forcing me to buy an even better machine for myself :) ) has an ATi 9700 Pro hooked to an LCD display via DVI only, and it shows all POST data and BIOS settings and stuff just fine.Well, the only exception to that was when the CPU died, but i can hardly fault the DVI for that! (I CAN fault my electric company's cruddy power feed to my house though... Which brings up another lesson though - BUY A GOOD POWER SUPPLY!!)

[Tabs 2,790]

What the heck are you guys talking about??? I just saw pics of FS2004 running in SLI on twin 7800GTX's on Tom's Hardward - they were using 16X Supersampling AA with it - looks amazing.One of the other beta testers is running a 6800GT SLI rig with FS2004 and would probably beg to differ with you as well.All of that said - get the single 7800GTX - it's faster than twin 6800's and you'll be able to add a second one later for even more performance when they come down in price a bit. This is what I'm doing next month...HardOCP tested X850 Crossfire already and it was nowhere near as fast as even a single 7800GTX...

[Guest]

buy only 2 sticks of ram, and get an audigy 4. This card rocks

[jeffhunter 0]

Why not halve the RAM (2 gig is plenty) and go for a faster chip, like an Athlon 64 x2 4200+ (about USD537 vs 475 for the 4000+).I agree with the post suggesting an Audigy, btw.Jeff

[Guest Captain Vala]

wow lots of replies here, THANK YOU EVERYONE... I LOVE YOU ALL! :D jk>$2200 just for the CPUWell as you guys may know, CPU is also referred to what we call the tower (which is the coputr box!) I'm not talking about the CPU chip.BTW I'm buying most of my stuff from Newegg.com ... a great web site for this purpose.Also, now that I've seen you guys say all of this, I'm probably gonna go for only 2 gigs of ram and put the money toward a better CPU chip and maybe a sound card... the audigy.Another QUESTION about the hard drive.Are fast hard drives... for example the 10000RPM with 2.99ms worth the extra money comparing to the good'ol 7200s with 8.9? I was thinking of getting a 34gig western digital high speed HD ($113) for games and a 120gig 7200 Maxtor ($40) for the files... good idea or not?Vala

[jeffhunter 0]

I've just put in a 10,000 rpm 36 gig Raptor for my OS, and use a 200 gig sata for data.Jeff

[Guest Ray CYYZ]

Buy 2x SATA drives and Raid 0 (Stripe) them ... much better performance then any single drive. Even 2 slower drives will outperform any single one as they are both working together to crank up the throughput. (you can also drop down a notch in the pricing this way and not pay the bleeding edge price for the top of the line.)If you really want to go to town, 4x in two different stripes. I've got 4x 300's ... scary how I only have 23 g on one and 46 g on the other free now ... proves the old story ... your crap will expand to fill your drives no matter how big they are :-lolRay

[Guest Robin.B]

Instead of getting the raptor 36 GB, get the 74GB one. It's bigger, faster and much quieter.And get the 2nd harddrive 200GB. It'll surprise you how much stuff will come up to fill all that with a computer as fast as that one. I bought a 160GB disk and I am looking for ways of clearing some disk space because my disk is almost full in just 5-6 months!

[psolk 3,040]

Definitely two drives in Raid-0 as someone else mentioned. If you can do it, go with 4 and do Raid 0+1 so you have performance and redundancy. I run Raid-0 and would highly reccomend it.-PaulLiquid Cooled (100 degrees outside right now, a/c is struggling to keep up and my cpu and vid card are at 28 celsius)AMD64 34002 Gigs HyperX DDR 4006800 GTDual Maxtor 120 Gig in Raid-0Dual Samsung 997 DF monitors