After extensive research,several "red-eye" evenings, I am completely confuddled and now looking for assistance with my first ever Pc build. Processors are easy enough, ATHLON has many recomendations and the more you pay the better it gets, pretty simple. But when it comes to the M/B I have the choice of few boards here. ASUS A7V-8XL seems to be a good choice (I think it even has a soundcard fitted (?)) but there are also the GIGABYTE 7DX-R DDR+RA and the DFI AD77 INFINITY RAI. Ive tried to look through Tomshardware but I wouldn't know what to compare, even if I could find the boards, LOL. I use my PC for FS2002 almost exclusively but which would be the best performer and can still be upgraded? Even worse, the best price I can get in Spain for an ATI RADEON 9700 PRO is a mere 538 Euros, thats almost 580 US$ x(!!I could almost fly over to the USA and pick one up at this price.As for O/S, Is it really worth upgrading from Windows98 (First edit) to WindowsXP Home if solely for FS ?Athlon 2.6Motherboard ????G-card ATI RADEON 9700 PRO (shipped from the US!) Hard Disk 80GB UDMA 7200 ATA 100CD-ROM 52X LG Memory Kingston 512 MB DDR 33Power LEVICOM 420w power unitHeatsink SVGA LIQUID KOOLANCEAny assistance would be greatly appreciated.

If you are going with an AMD processor I would recommend looking into the NForce 2 chipset. It has nice memory bus and integrated Dolby sound and NIC. I like MSI boards, they are great bundlers and good cost performance ratio. Good luck!

>If you are going with an AMD processor I would recommend >looking into the NForce 2 chipset. It has nice memory bus >and integrated Dolby sound and NIC. I like MSI boards, they >are great bundlers and good cost performance ratio. Good >luck! Do you ever sleep???

LOL !!! It only took you two minutes to answer thats all!!!Which one is the Nforce2 Chipset though? AND FURTHERMORE-why dont you ship to sunny Spain old chap??

Here is a good read on six different nForce2 chipset based motherboards.Opps, forgot the link: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1759&p=1Mated with an Athlon XP processor, probably any of them will give you stellar performance. I have the Abit NF7, which gets mixed reviews in this writeup, but I'm happy with it.A couple of other suggestions.I have an XP 2100+ on order from newegg.com, due to arrive today. This is supposed to be a very overclockable chip, and any of these boards probably allow overclocking. The Abit NF7 certainly does. If I'm lucky, it will yield 2600+ performance at much less cost.Similarly, you should consider getting an ATI Radeon 9500 (not the Pro). With the Rivatuner Soft9700 patch, many of these can be modified to near 9700 Pro specs. At half the cost of a 9700 Pro, you can pay for the mobo with the money you save. Even if the soft patch doesn't work, you won't notice the difference between the 9500 and the 9700 Pro in FS2002. All the patch does is open up 4 more rendering pipelines to improve fill rate. The difference will show up in benchmarks like 3DMark2001, but not in FS2002, which is processor bound.Just some things to consider.Another edit, looking back at the components you are planning to use. Not sure what "DDR 33" means. "DDR 333" perhaps? If the motherboard you get supports it, go higher, like to PC3200/DDR 400 Mhz. Faster memory, and a faster FSB, will probably yield more benefit for FS2002 than the 9700 Pro versus the 9500. The XP 2100+ is nominally a 133 FSB processor, but it should easily do 166 Mhz, and I've seen reports of people pushing it to, or near, 200 Mhz, though something like 185 Mhz might be a more realistic result. DDR 333 would be adequate for an FSB of 166 Mhz, but if you want to push the FSB higher, the DDR 400 would probably be necessary. All of which is only to say that the higher you can get the FSB, the better FS2002 will perform (because the FSB is the CPU--Memory bus, and FS2002 is so CPU intensive).-Basil

>LOL !!! It only took you two minutes to answer thats all!!! >Which one is the Nforce2 Chipset though? AND FURTHERMORE-why >dont you ship to sunny Spain old chap?? Well before I put that banner up I got many questionable sales offers from people in foreign countries. For example "I need to use multiple credit cards for the same order" etc. If something fishy happened I would have no legal recourse. Shipping internationally can be expensive but if that doesn't bother you, let me know.

Thanks Baz,That made interesting reading........yyyaaaaaaawwwwn, I just fell asleep twice! LOL. No really though, I dont know what theyre talking about so all I can do is look at the results, that was interesting. ASUS came out well but I have an ASUS A7V pc133 board and I am also appauled at their tech support. I asked them to tell me the biggest chip to fit and they were hopeless. I would probably go for your board if it was available here too. I certainly wouldnt know the difference in performance. As for the Vidcard???? jings......I dont know about this one. I appreciate your feelings but it does sound a wee bit complicated, but there again....what isnt complicated. Looks like I'll be buying most of the stuff from my friend above because nothing is available here in Mallorca. basic bits like HD, Memory and CD Rom are ok but we seem to be 2 years behind everybody else.Thanks for the support

A computer expert I'm not, but since flying with MSFS2K2, I have gone through a number of system reconfigurations as I continue to improve the overall experience. As far as mainboards are concerned, I agree that the A7N8X is a great buy right now. This has the most recent nVidia chip set (nForce 2), which has received favorable reviews. However, while this board has a number of nice features (good built in sound, AGP 8X, and dual channel memory), my only fear is that it will be quickly antiquated once the Barton series of processors from AMD is released. To the best of my knowledge, these chips will require a new socket, meaning you won't be able to use them in that new A7N8X that you just bought.Here's the problem - AMD has been promising Barton for quite some time, but have yet to deliver. The CPU may be just around the corner, I just don't know. However I think it's worth waiting for. But if you really want to take on the project now, then you can always buy a new mainboard and processor once Barton is out. As for ASUS boards, I swear by them. Never had a problem with the five computers that I have assembled to date.Best of all, assembling your own computer is fun. But be prepared for some frustrations along the way - there's usually some unforseen problem that arises. Have fun

Hi David... been so long since we've posted in the same thread. Hope all is well with you.I just wanted to add to what everyone has said concerning the nForce2 boards. I've had mine up and running for three weeks with nary a hiccup. Mine is the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, and I couldn't be happier with it. Using one of the new Uber BIOS's I'm easily overclocking my XP 2400 to 2700 speeds. And it's so easy!!. This is by far the best board I've built with (my ninth build). Top quality, well laid out, easy to set-up, stable.The nForce2 chipsets are gonna beat VIA badly at the marketplace. They are faster, cooler running, much more stable, easily overclockable. Simply put, they are a superior product. And they're still in the early period of their development cycle!!!Regards,

Thanks for the tips,I will be ordering my stuff this week and the project will be underway.

Hi Greg,Yes indeed it has been a long time. I spend quite a bit of time now (my wife would argue too much) over on the Bush Flying Unlimited forums. But every now and then I remember to stop by some of my old stomping grounds. My delayed response to this post however shows that I don't make these visits often enough :-roll I'm glad you are enjoying the A7N8X. At my last rebuild, I was torn between that board, or switching over to Intel. Because I have multiple computers running at the same time, I decided that I needed to cut down on the noise (two Volcano 7 fans at 6K rpm were starting to drive me nuts). While I seriously considered water cooling, the fact that Intel was starting to easily surpass AMD in a variety of benchmarks sealed my fate. I'm pretty happy now with what I have, and I'll be able to take advantage of the hyperthreading technology as it comes online. Best of all, the noisiest component of my overall system is the GF4 Ti4600. Given that, I certainly won't be rushing out to get the new FX.Since I last posted, I've seen some early reviews of the Barton chip. Hopefully this will keep AMD in the running as they gear up for the next generation. And I haven't given up on AMD - my "older" A7V333 boards are wrapped up in storage ready to be incorporated into additional views for WidevieW.