I have been wanting to upgrade my PC for awhile and I have gotten tired of waiting so here is what I have done. I am upgrading from the following to the following which include:Athlon 1.2Ghz (100Mhz DDR bus)512Mb PC133 SDRAMGeforce256DDR 32MB 30Gb Maxtor 7200 (2mb cache)New system:Athlon 1.733Ghz "2100XP+" (133Mhz DDR bus)512Mb 333 DDR SDRAMGeforce4 128Mb80Gb WD 80Gb (8mb cache)I really wanted to wait for the Athlon "Barton" XP 3.0Hhz (2.4Ghz and 166Mhz DDR bus) but can't seeming that it is at least 3 months away...So what I did was purchased the Asus A7V8X motherboard (Tomshardware.com winner!) which will allow the Barton to be poped right in with its 166Mhz bus option.What should I (and others like me) expect when the new system is up and running? I have the parts which are laying on the bench in my garage just waiting for me to get going... I just hope my wife does not notice them since my plan is to put it together Saturday and just replace it with my old system which she probably won't notice... You guys know what I am talking about...Anyway, both systems run (will run) using Windows 2000 ProI will post some pre and post framerate posts...Anyway, what should I expect?Thanks,Robbie

I would expect your wife to find out when she pays the bills!Very nice hardware you have there. That WD drive is the best IDE drive out in the market. Your FPS should most definitely go up. DDR RAM will give you more performance. Extra MHz never hurts either. I don't play flight sims so I can't tell ya exactly what to expect. But you have a nice system there.

We both pay bills equally, but trying to explain a thousand bucks on getting a few more frames per second will be a hard one to muster. Most folks here understand...As soon as the Barton 166bus DDR 300 MB (with an addition of 512 onboard cache) comes out, I will get some of that CL 2 3200 DDR to put in there to make the frames go out the roof (well go up a few more in reality)...at which time the NV30 will be in mass production as well...Thanks for your input!Rob

Robbie, with the wisdom that only comes from trying to understand women, wrote : "I just hope my wife does not notice them..."hehehehe :-)Boy, do i know what're talking about ! Funny, i also plan to upgrade my old bike (P3 600 running on a Ge-Force 2 with 256 sdram)AMD will be my choice too, as for the motherboard, still don't know, guess i'll wait to read your comments, that is as soon as your baby is on tracks and you tested itGreetings from the City of Lights,Jeff "DELTA401, traffic at 9 O'clock is a B727" --- "TOWER, could you give us a hint, we're using digital watches, DAL401"

The truth is, she will notice and I will get nagged at... But, man, I love this flight sim stuff... It's the only hobby I have and care about.I will post pre- and post- system framerates and give you my impressions.I am going to start building tonight...

Rgr that my friend, i'll stay tuned and eager to read your comments.For your lady, well, dinner with candles, a good Bordeaux wine, all that plus the plaintive voice of Mick Jagger in an old Rolling Stones vinyl record, should do the trick (at least it works with me.... sometimes ;-))Cheers,Jeff "DELTA401, traffic at 9 O'clock is a B727" --- "TOWER, could you give us a hint, we're using digital watches, DAL401"

Your frames will definitely go up and you will have a smoother ride (less of the little micro stutters when you turn) as long as you keep your current display settings. Your system will likely perform similarly to mine:p4 1.9 (old pin configuration)734 megs or ram (Rambus memory)Geforce4 4200 with 128 megs of DDRSanta Cruz sound cardWith most sliders set near the top of the scale, no dynamic scenery, ATC at about 45%, I get about 20fps which is where I set my frames slider in a complex plane like the DF 737 or the PIC 767. Dropping AI, reducing texture quality, flying a simpler plane, reducing effects etc and I can run around 24 routinely. Frames do drop precipitously however, at highly detailed airports. Will need to wait until airports are rendered in GMAX for any big improvement there.

Here are the settings I am usingMax on everything in the display setting and weather on default. I have the frames set at 30 (default) - My settings are 1600x1200 on both machines.Anyway, at Meigs from the 2D cockpit C182, I am getting between 10.9 to 13.6 on the old computer and 14.1 to 16.9 on the new computer so that is only a 3 to 4 frame increase!!!! Does that sound correct?Yuck!!! Also, I am not getting the option for 1600x1200x32 only x16Could this be due to my video driver?Thanks!Robbie