Well, it took forever, but after at least 4 years of getting by with my venerable P3-450 (recently "upgraded" to a P3-550), I'm finally about to put together a brand new system. Before I place the order, I'm wondering what experiences (if any) people here have had with any of the following equipment for the currnt generation of flight simulators.Here's the system I am thinking of:CPU: AMD Athlon64 3000+ (socket 754)MB: MSI K8N Neo Platinum (socket 754, NForce 3-250Gb chipset)Case: Antec Sonata (w/TruePower 380 PSU, if I understand correctly)Video: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB DDR 8X AGPHD: Samsung SP1614C 160GB, SATA, 8MB buffer, 7200rpmDVD burner: Pioneer DVR-107BK 8x8 DVD-RWRAM: Kingston 512MB DDR400 PC3200 KVR400X75C3A/512 (one stick for now)FDD: Mitsumi 1.44MBOS: MS Windows XP Pro w/SP1 (DSP/OEM)(I'll probably be using the onboad Realtek audio at first, since I've read that the Audigy2 doesn't get along with some of this hardware ... also, my budget is strained to the limit by the above system, and an Audigy2 would push it over the edge).Any observations would be appreciated!- David Sandberg

Both Fly2 and FS2004 should do great on that system. I don't have Jane's, so I can't speak to that. My system (below) is inferior to yours, except the amount of RAM, and I've been pleased with FS2004 performance.I would think that 512 Mb RAM would suffice, as long as you don't have anything significant running in the background while running flight sims. I've become spoiled with a Gig of RAM. I no longer bother to shutdown any background applications when I'm running RAM-hungry apps like FS or Photoshop.Asus A7N8XBarton XP 2800+Radeon 9500Pro2 x Corsair 512 Mb CMX512-2700C2 Western Digital Special Edition 120GbLiteon 812S DVD-RWToshiba DVD-ROM 16x/48xAntec 430w TruepowerWindows XP home

Thanks for the response!In the last few days I've had enough people tell me that I was going to want a gig of RAM that I've given in to the crowd and upped the spec of my system to include that much. I'm a little concerned by reports that Janes FA-18 won't run on a system with more than 512MB of RAM, but I can't hold up the performance of everything on the new system for the sake of that one aging sim (as much as I'd finally like to see that one fly the way that I always hoped it would).I placed the order for the barebone tonight (deep breath). Now I've just got to settle on a hard drive (tough decision), and then decide where to buy the Radeon 9800 Pro from, and whether to go OEM or retail on it. In particular, the OEM versions of the Radeon at mwave.com give me cause for concern ... after reading the descriptions there, I'm not sure just where the cards have come from. I'm almost inclined to go with a retail box from newegg instead, even though it will cost an extra few bucks, just so I know what in the world I am getting.- David

I don't know if you're familiar with zipzoomfly.com (they used to be called googlegear), but I've bought all my components listed above, and more, from them in the last couple years. So far I've been very satisfied with them.Good luck!(Believe it or not, I still occasionally run fly2k with infometar.)Dan

Mostly I run InfoMETAR to check on the local weather conditions these days, independent of any sim. It may not be the best way to do that, but it's still the one that's all mine. :)

Hi David,I don't understand why any program would care if you had more RAM. I could understand if it need more than you had?You should be proud of InfoMETAR. I coupled it with other MSFS weather addons to use external weather when the built in external weather didn't exist or was limited.Since I am flying in the real world now, I regularily visit http://aviationweather.gov/ . The Government seems to have put a lot of effort in building this site.W. Sieffert

>Hi David,>>I don't understand why any program would care if you had more>RAM. I could understand if it need more than you had?I'm guessing it had something to do with the program trying to calculate available RAM, and that calculation code being unable to get a proper result with amounts of RAM in excess of 512MB (since that was probably quite rare on desktops back when FA-18 was released, and hence was probably never tested). That's no excuse though ... it's still evidence of poor programming, plain and simple.Since this is getting off topic, I'll mention that all of the parts for my new machine should be here by the end of next week. Now I just have to hope for no DOA gear and a smooth final assembly process! (crossing fingers)- David

Do cross any ribbon cables either! Usually won't blow anything up, but the floppy, CD-drive, or hardrive won't work.The above is usually the cause of my poor eyesite and small workplaces.W. Sieffert