Hi - Well, my trusty old PIII 1.2 isn't cutting it anymore.. ;)I'm considering getting a new system, as my old one is finally starting to give out. I don't necessarily need a new monitor.What I'm hoping to find is a great, sub-$500 box, basically - I can upgrade the vid card later if needed, of course.Needless to say it will be used for gaming, among other, lesser activities such as work.I just want to find, I guess, the fastest, most loaded system which perhaps will work fine to start but that I can add a great video card to later.Thanks,Andrew

I recently upgrade from a:Dell Dimension 82002.53ghz P4 533 FSb512 MB RDRAMFX 5900 128 MBFirst I replaced the Grphics Card with a 9800 pro. Cleared up my blurries and image quality and added a very very slight bit of performance, if at all. Then I replaced the 8200 MOBO which was x4 AGP to a 8300 MOBO with x8 and 512 RDRAM to 1024 DDR400. Here I saw an extreme increase in fluidity and overall smoothness of the sim. Then I popped in a 3.4 GHZ P4 800 FSB this allowed me to fly anywhere (my settings are all maxed) without any problems. I am now blazing. Anyway, If you're buying now I suggest you get either a 3.2 or 3.4 GHZ P4, or wait a couple of weeks or so and get an AMD 64 3400. You'll probably need a new mobo as well and a 1 gig of Ram is almost a necessity these days. Then either pick up a 9800 pro for cheap, or wait and get an X800. of course you'll have to tune your system to run to its peak.regards,Andre

Thanks for the heads-up, Andre!

Just curious: why wait a couple of weeks or so for an A64 (given that I just bought a 3000+)? Are you perhaps talking about waiting for the Socket 939 version so that the older boards' prices will fall? I went ahead and bought mine because I'm not convinced that the 939 boards will be out in two weeks anyway ... they keep pushing the date back, and now I read that some manufacturers are saying August 1st ... and I could no longer wait that long to save a few dollars.- David

Hope my suggestions and experience have been of some use Andrew, you're more than welcome. David, you're right, the AMD64 +3400 seem to be far more than a couple of weeks away, i've heard even december perhaps, though probably not that long. i only mentioned it because of the always welcome increase in speed, though the price may be higher than most would pay. at this point in time i think one would do best with either a 3.2 P4 Northwood or a +3200 AMD64. All AMD64 owners i've heard from seem to be very happy with fs9 performance results. invest the left over cash in RAM and a graphics card. btw, you're running an AMD 64 +3000 right? how do you like it?regards,Andre

Alas, I'm still waiting on my A64 3000+ system (with baited breath, to be sure). Or waiting on the parts, to be more specific ... I have a barebone being shipped from one place, and a hard drive, DVD-ROM drive and video card coming from another. Right now it looks like, in an amazing feat of synchronicity, I will receive everything on or about Thursday of this week. Add a day or two for me to assemble hardware, test it at least a bit, and then install WinXP Pro, and then I should be in a position to report my early feelings about it (hopefully with much glee!).While we're advising on current A64 CPUs, let me mention that I went with a 3000+ instead of a 3200+ because from what I've been reading, the performance of the A64 3000+ (with 512K L2 cache) for most purposes is turning out to be virtually identical to that of the A64 3200+ Clawhammer (1MB L2 cache), even though the 3000+ is about $60-70 cheaper. As part of their naming scheme, AMD apparently estimated the larger cache of the 3200+ Clawhammer to be roughly equal to giving up 200Mhz of clock cycles (all of the 3000+ CPUs as well as the 3200+ Newcastle (512K L2 cache) are clocked at 2.0 GHz, while the 3200+ Clawhammer with the additional cache is clocked at 1.8 GHz). However, the benchmarks seem to be showing that the cache isn't worth nearly as much to most people as the faster clock rate. While clock rate isn't everything (sorry Intel), apparently it isn't completely irrelevant either.(edited to change "cache is worth" to the originally intended "cache isn't worth" ... a few tiny letters, but a big change in meaning!)- David

Ok, well, hey.You guys seem to know what you're talking about; let me ask this:My system is a Dell Dimension XPS T500; I've upgraded the processor to a 1.2 GHx Tualatin processor. My ram is only at 384 but I'd be happy to buy more.The video card, however, is an old Diamond Viper 770 Ultra, which was pretty decent when I got it.. but so was Pong ;)Someone in another forum recommended replacing the card with a new AGP card of some type; if I could get away with this for, say, $100 or so - and up my memory - and successfully run FS2K4 reasonably well, that would be great.So again, any recommendations are appreciated! I'm listening!CheersAndrew