Donny AKA ShalomarFly 2 ROCKS!!!I'd like my next rig to be an Athlon, and Emachines has some seeming bargains for Intel too. What I like about Emachines is much of the price of a Dell plus upgradeability. I've noticed even their 512 MB can now go to 4 gigs for example.The T6524 comes with AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 1024 DDR (512X2), ATI R5482 chipset, ATI Radeon Express 200, 128 shared video memory with PCI-E X 16 slot for upgrade. AC '97 audio 6 channel, 1 DVD R-W and a 48 speed CD-ROM.That's the one thing that worries me. Does that mean it won't take an AGP vid card? I don't care as much about the vid card that comes with it, FLY II runs fine on old stuff, FS9 is CPU dependant and I don't plan to get FS10 for a few years anyway but the current latest cards will be cheaper then. Have an ATI Radeon 7500 laying around though- how does the Express 200 stack up against it? Could I use the Radeon with this rig if it is better?I've been getting 30 FPS with a Dell sans vid card, so I am not all that worried about it even if I could only use PCI. I plan to lock the rig at 15 FPS anyway and am not interested in traffic, but like multiplayer.Has anybody tried Emachines for simming? The T65T4 is $650 before a $50 rebate.http://emachines.com

I have heard conflicting reviews about the ATI Radeon Xpress 200. One review lauded it and another complained about frequent lockups in Battlefield 2. I don't know enough about the chipset to comment but if I were to make this purchase, I wouldn't go with the ATI chipset because ATI just doesn't have the track record in chipsets yet and I wouldn't want to be the guinea pig!The latest chipsets have all moved away from AGP so I doubt you would be able to find a "current" machine that could take advantage of your AGP card. (There's a chipset from ULi or maybe SiS that has both AGP and PCI Express but I don't really trust the brand name. NVIDIA's nForce3 is AGP but that's already a previous-generation chipset given the introduction of nForce4.) Frankly speaking, your Radeon 7500 is so old that I don't think it would be make a difference anyway.If I were you, I'd build a new machine based on the nForce4 Ultra chipset and get a new PCI Express video card. US$650 (I assume you're working in US$?) is a tight budget but it can be done. Take a look here:http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MVGSBG...0708_3550661__8If you use the AMD system as a baseline, take away the monitor, operating system, speakers, mouse, and keyboard (I presume you can use your existing ones), you end up with a system costing $695. Getting a slower CPU should then allow you to hit your budget.Hope this helps.Edwin

Donny AKA ShalomarFly 2 ROCKS!!!The thing is, the Radeon works better with FLY II, and FS9 is so CPU dependant my bro's rig that doesn't even have an accelerator card gets better frames than my current rig.I'm not planning on running traffic or high load scenery (maybe elevations though). Not sure if the savings or extra performance would be worth the extra hassle. But I'll look into the possibility of a custom rig, thanx for the advice. Best Regards, Donny:-wave

Donny,You may want to take a look at my post here:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=11514&page=Sorry that I didn't realize earlier that Sharky Extreme recommended a Socket 754 CPU.Hope this helps.Edwin