FS 2002 hardware question and getting ready for FS 2004

[Guest]

Dear friends flight simmers,I hope this is not off topic, and if so, please bear with me.I have the following system specs:P!!! 933 MHz384 MB SD-RAM PC-133 MHzATI Radeon 7200HD 20 GBWin XP ProMy performance in FS 2002 with all maxed out is fairly poor, I am at an average of 4-8 fps on ground, at any airport in the sim. In the air, I max 15 fps. Something is wrong and anyways I decided to upgrade my system, also in preparation for the much awated FS 2004, available next fall. Here is what I am looking at:Intel P4 2 GHz256 DD-RAM PC-333 MHz80 GB HDSound good? Now the graphic card is a different story. I want to buy a fairly average graphic card and replace it next year for FS 2004. I'm thinking of next year to buy the Radeon RV 300 (9700) or the Nvidia NV 30... allthough my preference goes to Canada.... lolThe cards I have in mind are:-ATI Radeon 9000 64/128 DDR-ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 64/128 DDR-Nvidia GeForce 4Ti 4200 64 DDRMy preference is to the first 2. Can anyone tell me if with the new system I am thinking of getting, and the Radeon cards, will I get reasonable performance for FS 2002? I mean, 4-8 fps is really not worth playing...Thank you so much for your time, oh and one more thing: I do have alot of addons like the Simubuild 345/346, POSKY 767/A330/CRJ, A310, 727 and etc... I realised these could take alot of memory and so I decided to elete them and put them in a seperate folder on my desktop and switch them to the aircraft folder of FS 2002 each time I wanted to fly them. The result gave me a few fps more but it's still dissappointed.Please someone heeeeelp me..Thank you in advance, and God bless,Sincerely,William SEDEF, proud citizen of Canada (but living in France for now, sniff ) The Canadian Angel from France. (GO AIR CANADA !)

[Tobei 0]

Hi!I recently updated to a new system - exactly yesterday! I upgraded from an Athlon 1,4C to a P4 2,53. I'm still with my IBM 80GB, MSI GeForce3 TI200 128MB and 512 MB DDR Memory.I'm not sure about the result! On the hand I now have very stable 30fps in Air AND airports, except Simflyers IAD and comparable scenery where I get 15~20fps with all sliders maxed!So far so god, but on the other hand my frames still drop to an unaceptable 8~10 as soon as some AI aircraft appear! Don't now what's the problem but here absolutelly NO improve.As it is my first day with new motherboard and CPU I might find some config tricks and better drivers, but this is a bit frustrating as these artificial Idiots are in my eyes very important for "as real as it gets"!Hope this helps a bit and some tweaks are always welcome!Toby

[greggerm 312]

If you are considering upgrading, I would suggest a mild change in thinking. :) Any upgrades you do TODAY should be for today's applications. Trying to plan out an acceptable machine for FS2004 is probably a little premature at this stage.Upgrade today if you want to see an improvement in today's apps... chances are, unless you splurge for a COMPLETE new extra-high end system today, there will be room for improvement when 2004 releases.If you are mainly upgrading to position for FS2k4, then I would recommend saving money. I was toying with buying a 9700 card recently, but that will be money better spent when 2k4 releases. It will be cheaper, it will be refined, and chances are, there will be something better! :) My major computer upgrade, where practically everything gets swapped out, is on a 3-year 'ish cycle, and it just so happens that next fall is my due-date! Good luck,-Greg

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On a side note, I hope that link from the MSBeta's site is correct. EIGHT CD's for the MSFS early beta. To me, that means some better textures and a helluva lot more terrain elevation and landclass data.

[Guest]

was wondering how you found out FS2004 will be out next fall? have not been able to find any mention of it at the microsoft site. i know thats generally when they have released newer versions of FS and were due for one next year but itd be best for some of us not to go "nuts" now trying to get all the upgrades we can now.who knows maybe they might skip another year or two to wait for some better technology to come out before they release it.so who knows, the good ole P3's and P4's everyones rushing out to get to be ready for the sim now just might be outdated by that time. i think we can all remember the 90's when the computers were pretty much outdated within 6 months or less.best advice i can give ya is to wait for an official announcement from microsoft. that way you know what kind of specs your really going to need and dont and up making upgrade after upgrade

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

Bill, two observations..1. suggest you cut back on the sliders on your current system.. you can fly quite nicely with a 1 Gig PIII, as long as you keep some of sliders below 100%.. start with the default "medium" setting in the scenery,1024x768x16 resolution and no AA and work up from there.I'm flying a 1 Gig Celeron and get regular 20+ fps in most scenery..2. On your new system, go with 512Meg memory, not 256..As far as video cards go.. you get what you pay for..I'm quite happy having upgraded to a GF4-4200 128 Meg..It has given my system new life.. certainly until FS2004..Living in Canada, I like Canadian cards too.. but the GF4-4200 is the current value leader..