Hi, I am planning to buy a new computer.....(1) Will a combination of 512 MB ddr ram AND GeForce card give me a smooth flight? say a frame rate of 20-25 per second? It is going to be a P4 2.8 HT 865 GBF Windows XP Pro(2) Is there a difference between GeForce FX and GeForce Ti? Which is better?(3) Is 1024 GB of Ram required? How many times expensive is it going to be over the 512 MB?Thanks.Jinesh

(1) unlikely unless you turn down a lot of stuff or keep out of the busy airports.(2)yes, the FX is newer than the ti, depends on which version you have, the top G4 ti cards are geberally still better than the low end FX cards, maybe even some of the old G3 ti cards may be to.(3) personally i think i gig of ram is the min (although some say 512 is enough), how expensive cannot be answered the market for RAM is allways changing, it can easily be double or half the price it was a couple of months ago, when the price dropped last year i got a gig to add to my strugling 512, and things are much smoother now.

Thanks for the info, Bruce.I shall concentrate on the RAM thing.Jinesh.

Question number 3 is easy :). Twice as much ram is twice as expensive ;)

Hi Jinesh and welcome to this forum. If you go the Intel i865/875 path, just make sure your board has the ICH5-R southbridge. The reason is better driver support which increase the data transfers significantly. As for FS (not Linux, etc.) and display adapters, Ati seems to be the better option. Which one will depend on the resolution you want to run. I.e. for 1024x a 9600, for 1280x a 9800pro should suffice. Atis handle clouds better... If a Nvidia is required, either a 5700 Ultra (for 1024x) or a 5900 and above (for 1280x) should do. Let me note, the difference of a 9600pro and 9800pro on a 1280x1024 TFT is very significant. Generally, I'm confident, you'ld be better off if you got the cheapest or second cheapest AMD64 CPU. I.e. a 2800 or 3000 AMD64-Newcastle. The mainboards for the 64-er CPUs are a little more expensive than a non-ICH5-R ones, however, often cheaper than boards w/ the ICH5-R. RAM-Tip: Let the vendor specify the RAM and preferably plug 1 GB. RAM is a big issue with socket 754 boards AFAIcan judge. Usually CL3 should do. Compatibility is the word. Otherwise, if not AMD64 and i.e. money is a concern, a very good, relatively cheap, alternative (non-ICH5-R) mainboard for Intel Northwood P4 CPUs is Asus' P4X-X/TE. Finally, I would generally suggest avoiding Prescott CPUs for now. This because of energy and thus heat considerations. Northwoods are still on sale in case you want to go the Intel path. Hope this adds food to thoughts. Feel free to ask further questions. Good luck and kind regards Jaap

Thanks very much for the detailed explanation Jaap. My regards to you too and everyone else at the forum.Jinesh.

1) I have found 512MB RAM to be enough for FS (including lots of addons), but this depends on how your system is set up and what other programs you have running. My software setup is quite "minimalistic", both for performance reasons and because I like to have it that way - I don't want tray icons cluttering the screen and background programs popping up and asking me to update this and scan that. It's impossible to say that you'll get e.g. 25 frames with the system - it depends on scenery, aircraft and so on. There will certainly be combinations of scenery, aircraft, addons and weather that would bring even the fastest systems into the teens or even single-digit FPS numbers - on the other hand, in clear skies with very little in terms of scenery and AI traffic you could easily see 100 FPS...2) Geforce Ti is the older generation (Geforce3 and 4), GeforceFX is the newer generation. Just remember that there are a *lot* of different GeforceFX models and the low end (5200 models etc.) are really crappy. Also, I'd personally go with an ATI setup such as the X800Pro or 9800 Pro (not XT - waste of money; only a little faster, much more expensive).3) You may want to go with 768MB if you like to run background applications. IMO, 1GB is overkill unless your software/OS setup is very inefficent. Of course, if 2x512MB (or 1x1GB) isn't a lot more expensive than 1x512MB plus 1x256MB go for 1GB.

Thanks for the tip Jimmi.Regards,Jinesh.