Hi everyone,I've been simming for 15 years, and the last two have been full of tweaking, tweaking and tweaking---and I'm incredibly anxious, because I can get a newer system in about a week. Currently I have a:Celeron 2.5 mhz750 megs of ramNvidia Geforce 5500fxI want a system that will reasonably keep fps above 20, maybe 15 in the worst case. I never fly in vc, nor do I use simflyers scenery.I'm on a budget, so the options I have are limited to an AMD 64 3xxx, or possibly a AMD 64 4000-4200 X2. Is there a tremendous difference in performance between the 3500-3800? Is it necessary to go up to the 4XXX, or will fs run fine with the 3's (I can upgrade later for fsX)? The systems I've been looking at have similar everything (board, AC sound, 1gig pc3200 DDR SDRAM). One difference, is that the 3700 is a 2.2mhz with 1GB of L2cache, and 3800 is a 2.4 with 512 L2. The 4XXX are 2.2 with no info on the L2.I run Active sky 6, ultimate traffic (probably gonna get something different), usa roads, PMDG 737, Wilco 737, JCA md's. I would add more stuff if I know that the sim will run at a decent pace.So, is this enough to get a difference in performance? Any ideas or suggestions would be fine. I don't want to spend more than 900$.What video card ($150-275) would be best, and should I go with pci express or not?Also, does the L2Cache play that much of a role in the sim?Thanks a lot,JoHnp.s...I'm posting another thread regarding a sound and video driver issue:-)

Hi John,You may wish to take a look at this thread here:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...11757&mode=fullThe budgets of those two sites may seem higher than yours but I think you can use HardOCP's list as a starting point and just take some things out. You make no mention of getting a monitor so I'm going to assume that you are going to use your existing one. Same thing with your speakers. That will bring the total down to around US$1,400. Can you keep your existing hard drives? If so, that will bring your total down to $1,180. Then, it's just a matter of getting a cheaper CPU (say, a 3500+) and possibly a cheaper video card too (6800GS? Or the X800GTO?). And yes, you should get PCI Express.FS9 tends to scale more with CPU than with video card (in other words, FS9 performance improves more with increases in CPU than with video card). Note that the opposite is generally true with most games other than FS9. So if you play FS9 exclusively, spend more on the CPU but for anything else, you'll want to spend more on the video card.Having said that, I tend to choose CPU last because there are so many different speeds (and therby price points) that you can just get whatever will fit your budget after you've accounted for everything else. I think anything above a 3500+ should be good enough for the time being.Hope this helps.Edwin

Hi Edwin,Did you prefer AMD CPU than PIV. How system is yours ?ThanksWaldemar