Upgrade

[Guest]

I want to improve my frame rates in FS2002. I have a pretty poor setup, and very little money, so I can only afford to upgrade 1 item of hardware. I'd appreciate comments on what is the most important upgrade to the system.Duron 850Mhz (P3 1Ghz equal)256MB SDRAMGeForce 2 MX 32MBIf you think of other hardware i should incluse let me know. I can only afford to upgrade 1 of these items. At the moment i get frame rates peaking at 20fps but sometimes droping to 4fps and it does not matter what is happening. Windows XP Pro is my OS.Thanks.

[Arklight1 140]

If I were you I would buy another 256 or pref. 512 mb of RAM. Not enough RAM is prob. one of the leading causes of "jumpy" frame rates.More RAM will not improve your framerates but it will stabilize them.Hope this helps :)Shane

[Guest]

Check out your motherboard specifications and put yourself in a new processor. You can get them really inexpensively at www.pricewatch.com. The CPU is the first and foremost piece of equipment in FS2002 performance, followed by the videocard. Get as much CPU as your motherboard will allow.

[Arklight1 140]

Getting a new processor, mobo, vid. card won't do anything if the RAM is bottlenecking the system.Ram, then on to the other stuff. Although your vid. card is lacking a new card will speed things up but the game will still have to write to memory and when that runs out you will start to get all choppy again :(RAM.And no, the cpu is not the first and foremost in FS2002 performance. Just like the fact that it is not nessecarily the first in other games. All your components have to be set up to where they aren't bottlenecking eachother.Shane

[Guest RonB49]

I agree with the others who suggest more RAM but this line bothers me.<< sometimes droping to 4fps and it does not matter what is happening. >>What programs do you have running in background? Cleaning up my OS did more for me than any hardware upgrade. (That may be an overstatement because I only had 64 MB of RAM when I got FS2002 and the first RAM upgrade made lots of difference.) But to continue, I reboot before I start FS2002 and don't let any other programs run while I'm simming; I don't even have a clock on my taskbar. Works for me. R-EDIT to addOops, that was FS2000 that I ran in 64 MB of RAM but FS2002 would probably be the same (assuming that tha FS2002 will run in 64MB). R-

[Guest]

""Duron 850Mhz (P3 1Ghz equal)""Somehow, I doubt whether that statement is true???? Probably more like a PIII 500!!!! Who told you that??? Perhaps, some salesman?? Anybody got a clue?????Anyway, I have a real PIII800 and I upgraded from PC100 256mgs of ram to PC100 384mgs of ram. Crucial ram was in the machine and an extra stick of 128mgs cost $32. Ram will make your machine run smoother. No waiting on exit and quicker changing between programs, etc. But it won't do a thing for framerate in FS2K2. It will however, minimize harddrive access considerably and make for an over all smoother sim. But not more power. If indeed your statement about that duron being equal to a PIII 1Ghz is correct (which I seriously doubt unless you have it really overclocked) then I'd suggest short of a completely new machine that you go for another stick of ram (same brand as you already have) and a GF2 Video Card. A decent GF2. Like the GTS64mg or the Ultra64 mg. They're only about $60 bucks nowadays. Get it where you can return it if need be. The video card will improve you picture considerably, decrease or virtually eliminate any stutters (depending on where you have your graphics sliders and framerate lock set) and provide about as good an experience as you'll ever get with that rig in FS2K2. If you can't upgrade to a better machine, give it a try. Like I said, buy the components where you can return them if you don't see at least a $100 dollar improvement.

[Guest JonP01]

>""Duron 850Mhz (P3 1Ghz equal)"" >>Somehow, I doubt whether that statement is true???? >Probably more like a PIII 500!!!! Who told you that??? >Perhaps, some salesman?? Anybody got a clue????? >Well I sure don't :-lol Actually the machine I use for word processing, spreadsheeting and internet is a Duron 800 and my FS2002 is a PIII 933. They are half a planet away from each other in performance. I couldn't imagine the inherent downgrade I would suffer if I ran FS2002 on my Duron machine. But it DOES make a very good "office" type machine and is great for Microsoft Office and VB programming.

[Guest SD Sim]

If you can only make one upgrade, then get a new CPU. Your 256 MB of memory is low, and stepping up just 128 MB will ensure that both FS2K2 and XP can run with sufficient memory. MSFS is not like other games, it is absolutely processor bound, which has been discussed many times in this forum. What you can get depends on how much you can spend. For $150 (US), you can get both 128 MB PC100/133 memory and an Athlon XP1800+ (your MB will likely support it, but check first). This will make a world of difference.

[Guest]

The P3 1ghz equivilent is what AMD said. I have never compared the 2 so i don't know how far apart they are. Thanks for all the help. Looks like i'll get RAM first.