May 12, 200719 yr I'm pretty new to MSFS 2004 and I'm currently running on a 10 month old Emachines with Celeron 3.2ghz processor, XP Home edition, ATI Pro 1300 XT video card and 2gb of RAM, locked and getting about 25 fps at climb, cruise and at default airports, down to 10-12 fps at my home simflyers KPHL (Philadelphia Int'l.) on taxi, and I'm fairly happy with it, but I would like to go with a Pentium 4, if at the right price. I run FS GENESIS down to 32m mesh, Ground Environment Pro and RealEnvironment Pro (No Active Sky YET) addons, and a couple of ProjectOpensky planes, but nothing too taxing (yet).I just got an email from TigerDirect this morning offering the following for $399:Microsoft Smooth Skies! -- Chuck B. MACHINE 1:FS2004/WinXP Pro 64, Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 Clocked to 4.35 GHz, Corsair H50, Asus Maximus Formula, 4GB PNY XLR8 DDR2 @1067, ATI 4870 and 4650, WD Raptor 10K RPM 160 GB HD, Seagate 500 mgb 32mgb cache, 2 Analog 2HTGs w/ 3 19" I-INC flat panel monitors 1280x1024x32, and 1 17" at 1280 x 1024, PC Silencer 750 Quad, FSPassengers, FSUPIC, (Payware), WideFS MACHINE 2: Dell Dimension, P4, WideClient, FDC Live Cockpit, Pro Flight Emulator, Active Sky v6.5 MACHINE 3: ASUS u81A Laptop, Windows 7 (what a joke!), WideClient, FlightSim Commander
May 12, 200719 yr A 250W power supply isn't going to allow an upgrade to any reasonable 3D video card, including the 1300XT...in fact it's not enough for what's already on the PC.Integrated audio...yuck. Even an old OEM SB Live! card is a better choice.I don't think you're gonna see much of an improvement over what you have now. I'd save my money and apply it to the future system.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile Bob Scott | President and CEO, AVSIM Inc ATP Gulfstream II-III-IV-V Sys1 (MSFS20+24/XPlane12+11): AMD 9800X3D, water 2x240mm, MSI MPG X670E Carbon, 64GB GSkill 6000/30, nVidia RTX4090FE Alienware AW3821DW 38" 21:9 GSync, 2x4TB Crucial T705 PCIe5 + 2x2TB Samsung 990 SSD, EVGA 1000P2 PSU, 12.9" iPad Pro Thrustmaster TCA Boeing Yoke, TCA Airbus Sidestick, Twin TCA Airbus Throttle quads, PFC Cirrus Pedals, Coolermaster HAF932 case Sys2 (P3Dv5/v4): i9-13900KS, water 2x360mm, ASUS Z790 Hero, 32GB GSkill 7800MHz CAS36, ASUS RTX4090 Samsung 55" JS8500 4K TV@60Hz, 3x 2TB WD SN850X 1x 4TB Crucial P3 M.2 NVME SSD, EVGA 1600T2 PSU Fiber link to Yamaha RX-V467 Home Theater Receiver, Polk/Klipsch 6" bookshelf speakers, Polk 12" subwoofer, 12.9" iPad Pro PFC yoke/throttle quad/pedals with custom Hall sensor retrofit, Thermaltake View 71 case, Stream Deck XL button box Sys3 (DCS/P3Dv4/ATS/ETS): AMD 7800X3D, MSI MPG X870E Carbon, Noctua NH-D15S, 64GB GSkill 6000/30, EVGA RTX3090 Alienware AW3420DW 34" 21:9 GSync, Corsair HX1000i PSU, 4TB Crucial T705 PCIe5 + 2TB Samsung 970Evo Plus, TM TCA Officer Pack, Saitek combat pedals, TM Warthog, TM RS300 FF wheel/pedals, Coolermaster HAF XB case
May 12, 200719 yr Chuck,Glad to hear you've taken up such a great hobby!The rig sounds a good cheap buy. However, you'll need a better GPU than an ATi 1300 Pro in my opinion. Perhaps a Geforce 7600, or an ATi X1900 which can be had for small monies nowadays I believe. 512MB RAM is pushing it too, and I would consider a cheap sound card perhaps. The 250W PSu is borderline also. Perhaps 350W - 400W might be better.What display res. are you using?Overall, I would say apart from the RAM, the GPU and sound card (or rather lack of) it sounds OK for FS9 for the time being.Scratch1964
May 13, 200719 yr Author Hi, Scratch>>What display res. are you using?>1152x864x32 (I think) Why? Should I lower it?Thanks!Chuck Smooth Skies! -- Chuck B. MACHINE 1:FS2004/WinXP Pro 64, Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 Clocked to 4.35 GHz, Corsair H50, Asus Maximus Formula, 4GB PNY XLR8 DDR2 @1067, ATI 4870 and 4650, WD Raptor 10K RPM 160 GB HD, Seagate 500 mgb 32mgb cache, 2 Analog 2HTGs w/ 3 19" I-INC flat panel monitors 1280x1024x32, and 1 17" at 1280 x 1024, PC Silencer 750 Quad, FSPassengers, FSUPIC, (Payware), WideFS MACHINE 2: Dell Dimension, P4, WideClient, FDC Live Cockpit, Pro Flight Emulator, Active Sky v6.5 MACHINE 3: ASUS u81A Laptop, Windows 7 (what a joke!), WideClient, FlightSim Commander
May 13, 200719 yr The upgrade will give a very minimal boost over what you have right now, if you do want to upgrade in a year or so, forget about P4 and go C2D (or Quadfather).As far as the rest, without going into too much details, minimum PSU's nowadays are 450 to 500w+. I can't think of any company in their right mind still offering a poor (and i bet non-branded) 250w PSU. You can't expect that PSU to power all that + a decent GPU, thats in the long run just asking for problems.And as far as the resolutions, one needs to know that whenever you increase the monitor resolution, your GPU needs to work an x-amount harder to render and to display the images on screen, and sucks more juice from you PSU. For example you might get 30FPS with a X1300 at 800x600, but you might get something like 15FPS running 1280x1024.in all,don't upgrade and save you money for a real worthwile upgrade.
May 14, 200719 yr Author Thanks to everyone for your help. Based on your recommendations I have decided to take a pass on this "deal".Best regards and thanks again.Chuck Smooth Skies! -- Chuck B. MACHINE 1:FS2004/WinXP Pro 64, Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 Clocked to 4.35 GHz, Corsair H50, Asus Maximus Formula, 4GB PNY XLR8 DDR2 @1067, ATI 4870 and 4650, WD Raptor 10K RPM 160 GB HD, Seagate 500 mgb 32mgb cache, 2 Analog 2HTGs w/ 3 19" I-INC flat panel monitors 1280x1024x32, and 1 17" at 1280 x 1024, PC Silencer 750 Quad, FSPassengers, FSUPIC, (Payware), WideFS MACHINE 2: Dell Dimension, P4, WideClient, FDC Live Cockpit, Pro Flight Emulator, Active Sky v6.5 MACHINE 3: ASUS u81A Laptop, Windows 7 (what a joke!), WideClient, FlightSim Commander
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