System opinion and comments please

[Guest]

I am about to put this together.Chaintech Videoexcel GeForce4 TI4600AMD Athlon K7 XP 1800 Gigabyte 7VRXP 512MB 184pin DDRAM PC2700 333MHz JNC GM2 Case w/ 300W Power Supply Will run with a 19 inch Sony trintron.Do those of you who get the picture of this combination believe I might get a good running FS2002 with it, do you have suggestion that I schould alter this combination, can I improve it ?Regard

[Guest Joshieca]

Looks ok, you dont mention anything about other stuff such as hard drives and dvd/cd drives, nic cards, scsi cards, etc. If you're adding many of the things I would bump up your power supply to 400W...those ti4600 cards suck the juice.What I would do, is buy a Ti4400 video card and put the extra money toward a better CPU...maybe a 2100+. If you get a video card cooler, well your in Iceland maybe you wont need it :), but you can always overclock your Ti4400 to make it as fast as the Ti4600.[br][br][div align=center][br][link:members.cox.net/fstimes/wetimage.html]Click Here For Weather Image of the Day!

[Guest]

Well this is a maschine entirely for FS. It will have the Western digital 8o gb special edition 8mb buffer along with a cd rom and floppy.The tower will have a 300 watt power supply. Do you really believe that I will notice much difference going to 2100? I understand(dont have the parts yet) that there is a cooler on the card. Is that not enough?Hey Iceland, despite of a cold name I agree, is not cold enough to cool down our pc

[Guest Joshieca]

Well I live in Sweden so you dont have to tell me how cold it gets! :)From what I hear CPU makes all the difference with FS. I have an XP1900+ and a Ti4600+, and still get frame rate loss in heavy traffic areas....a faster CPU is just something to consider. The basic difference between the Ti4600/Ti4400 is speed. Since that card will only be "new" for a few months, the NV30 is coming out soon, it makes more sense to save your $$ on the video card with the 4400 and put that into a faster CPU. The video card's fan is more than enough, but if you overclock it, you might want to get some additonal cooling.Check out what the "kids" are saying here...lots of good info.http://gamershq.madonion.com/- Josh

[Guest]

Arni - Food for thought....With the GF4 and AMD chip you might want to look at a 400W dual-fan power supply. The added cooling of a dual-fan PSU is highly desireable with the AMD and the GF4's eat lots of power. There is a second fan on the bottom of these PSU's which pull air over the chip prior to exhausting it out the back of the case and that's going to help significantly with the cooling situation (but it's not a substitute for the case fans which still have to do their job). You'll also have much better full-load regulation with the increased PSU capacity and less chance of of a low-voltage condition on one, or more, leads. Also, with the 300W you're somewhat limited in what you can add in the future (HDD, DVD, CD-RW, etc) and the 400W will get you around that problem. TripNorthwood 2.2a at 2.72Ghz Abit TH7II-R512MB Samsung 40ns PC800Gainward 64MB GF4 Ti4200 300/57030.30's DX8.1 WinXP ProInwin case / Enermax 431W PSU3DMark2001SE = 12055http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=4088814

[Guest Joshieca]

Hey Trip...What heat sink fan are you using on your Intel CPU??

[John_Tavendale 453]

I agree with the others, certainly get a 400W PSU, Athlons & GF4 cards suck a lot of juice. I did have a Ti4400 and now have a Ti4600, and honestly I can't see the difference in MSFS, so perhaps getting the Ti4400 would be a better option, that way you can put the money towards a more powerful PSU ;)Another suggestion is drop the Gigabyte board and get an Asus A7V333 or Abit board, Gigabytes are known to have some problems.

[Guest]

It get

[Guest]

the Gigabyte board is rated the best one at tomshardware comparing 12 boards with the kt333 chip, but you are correst, rev 1 has problem however it has been fixed with rev 2.Regard

[Guest]

Josh - I'm still using the Intel HSF. I've ordered a SwifTech MCX4000 which should be here soon. It will be interesting to see just how much of a difference the Swifty will make. I hate to have to remove the motherboard just to install it but I've found that I left off a spacer when I originally installed the board so I can fix that at the same time. I don't know when I'll ever find the time to install everything but once it gets here maybe I'll be a little more motivated.TripNorthwood 2.2a at 2.72Ghz Abit TH7II-R512MB Samsung 40ns PC800Gainward 64MB GF4 Ti4200 300/57030.30's DX8.1 WinXP ProInwin case / Enermax 431W PSU3DMark2001SE = 12055http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=4088814