New PC Setup for FS2004

[mcnobody 172]

Hello :-wave,I am probably purchasing a new computer in the next few weeks. Since I am planning to stay with FS2004, I hope following system components might give me a fluid sim experience even with lots of clouds and detailed airports, for a convenient price:Graphiccard: NVIDIA PCIe: MSI NX7900GS-EZ * 512 MB, GeForce 7900 GS, PCIe x16, 256 Bit Processor: Intel

[Guest wayupthere]

Hi Christian,For FS9, that system should do more than enough.Couple of things though.Regarding the CPU,(both the 66 and 67 are architecturally the same) the amount of extra clock speed you get with the 6700,(200Mhzish), is IMO not worth the money over the 6600. You should be easily be able to clock the 6600 close or in some case even over the 6700 (if you understand how-to) ,and save a few bucks to spend on another piece of hardware. So IMO get the 6600, and save some cash.Your RAM, valueRam is nice, but id personally go with HyperX. More stable under overclock (if your going with the 6600) If not, standard ValueRam wil do fineFloppy??? I see no need, ok its not expensive,.. ah well maybe you do need it.As to RAID: I can only say: Know what you are doing, its sounds cool,works very nice when it works, but can be a pain when having problems and when you don't understand how RAID worksLastly: Be sure to check, your PSU and MOBO, regarding compatibility cable wise, whether you need an 20pin cable and 4pin cable on your PSU, or you need an 24pin cable and 8pin cable. You "can" in some cases, MOBO-depending, use a 20pin PSU cable on a 24pin MOBO, but its NOT recommended. So get an appropriate cabled PSU.If XP runs fine for, you stick with that for the time being, Vista doesn't make FS9 run any better, Yes its the future, but what future its going to hold has yet to be seen. Spend your cash,only when your REALLY interested in Vista.Other than that, i see nothing that would not run FS9 very nicely.

[Guest baksteen33]

Hi Davis and Christian, IMHO, that system will smoke FS9 but might have a couple of pre-programmed bottlenecks? The HDs for example. Out of curiousity, what are you upgrading from? Or, how long must the system last? Is the display a 17" TFT? FS9 @ max texture sizes runs fine on a single display with 256MB adapters for example. More than 350MB and you can even run FSX @ max texture sizes. ;-) Computer configuration goes by: Visual result (display config) most important --> GPU --> software requirements - FS leads to a nice CPU! ;-) --> upgrade startegy, etc = underlying system. Doing FS @ 1x 1024x requires a different FlyTendo than one doing 2x 1920x. Ideally include thoughts about displays and hence resolutions that machine or GPU will see. The 3 Rs of gaming: Resolution, resolu

[mcnobody 172]

Hello Davis and Jaap,first of all, thank you both for your friendly help, it's much appreciated :):Davis, I am going to change from the E6700 to the E6600, and I have already read a bit in the internet about overclocking it, I think I am able to achieve that.I have also changed from ValueRam to 2x HyperX DIMM 1 GB DDR2-1066, that again saves some cash and should have no problems with the speed the mainboard supports.I was a bit worried about the RAID configuration too, I guess I will go for a normal Western 150 GB harddrive, those are a bit expensive but I have heard those seem to be quite fast and reliable?I have read the informations about the MOBO and PSU again and regarding pins everything should work fine (the MOBO needs 24 pins and the PSU comes with 1x ATX 24 pins cable, an 8 pin cable is available too), thanks for the tip :).Jaap, my current system is a three year old Dell Dimension XPS (I know!!) with a Pentium 3.6GHz, 2GB Ram and an ATI X800 XT 256 MB, the display is a 17" TFT. It actually works very good, I haven't had any trouble in those three years (except that my CD-Drive stopped working) and FS2004 runs fine on it, but you can still bring it on its knees.I am not sure if I can keep my old IDE hardrive and ATI Radeon card and simply purchase a new mobo with an E6600 and new RAM? That would save me a lot of money and time to reinstall everything?kind regards and thanks,Christian

[Guest wayupthere]

>I am not sure if I can keep my old IDE hardrive and ATI Radeon card and simply purchase a new mobo with an E6600 and new RAM? That would save me a lot of money and time to reinstall everything?Well, regarding your old hard-drive, sure you can just transfer it into the new setup, However regarding the reinstall, you have to re-install Windows anyway (to get rid of any posible problems), because your going to be using a different chipset. So you'll need a newly created Windows driver cache, based on your new mobo.As to you Radeon, sure you can transfer it too, BUT what GPU version are we talking about?. That last thing you want to do, is to create a bottleneck if its a very old GPU.

[Bob Scott 7,720]

I think 2GB of RAM would be money well-spent...makes a big difference in FS9 with lots of add-ons...you don't want those two fast cores competing for storage.You could get along with an older IDE drive, but I'd definitely not keep that X800. Your original choice of a 512MB 7900 looks good to me.Agree 110% with Davis on the RAID, too...IMHO the only good use for RAID is data integrity protection (i.e. RAID 5) on servers and the like...not a good choice for a high-perf gaming system. With RAID 0, since failure of either drive will cause a loss of all the data on the array, you have doubled your chances of a catastrophic loss of data. And RAID can be VERY finicky when overclocking, with BIOS upgrades etc. IMHO the a$$ pain ain't worth the tiny increase in performance you might actually see.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile

[Guest baksteen33]

Hi guys, I would agree too with the GPU, however, @ a single 1280x res and FS9 a X800 is very well suited (w/ GDDR3, a 256-bit bus and doesn't have troubles AA-ing clouds etc). More GPU power at that res won't make much of a difference with FS9. FSX is another story - of course. :-) Kind regards Jaap