Hi all,i have finally decided to get a new pc. Before i finally go through with it, i was curious to know what you think about gateway and their http://products.gateway.com/products/GConf...d=5200xl&seg=hmi was just curious. If you could give me a email with ur opinion, i would really appreciate it.Chase [email protected] Airlines Staff and Adminhttp://www.transloadairlines.com

A Radeon X300 SE is not going to give you the kind of performance you're probably looking for - that's a pretty low end card as far as ATI's stuff goes. If you know how or know a friend who can help, I think it's pretty much always best to build your own system.

Yep even I have a lowly 5700 ULTRA and it plays Half Life 2 just great but anything slower would be a waste of time. Building one is best or buy a game pc..Best Wishes,[h4]Randy J. Smith[/h4]http://www.rawbw.com/~bdoolin/shinault/southparkcartmad.gif[h3]PMDG 747![/h3]Caution! Not a real pilot, but do play one on TV ;-)ASUS KV8 DLX | AMD 3200 64 | 1 GIG PC 3200 DDR | GIGABYTE 5700 ULTRA | ViewSonic VP192b 19" |

From the provided Gateway link: "The 5200 Series has the power you need for demanding multimedia applications at an affordable price. Now with a sleek new look."Though a system may be adequate for multimedia does not necessarily mean it is well suited for gaming. I agree with the others here... this system is not a gaming rig. The video card is minimal at best (only 4 pixel pipelines), and it has on-board sound (which will put all the sound work onto the CPU).Agree also that you should build your own (or at least find someone near you that can assemble a computer to your specs).Good luck,Greg

I have a similar card with a new Dell but the Pentium 3.4. From where I was coming from (Gateway P4/1.9etc) I found the new system stunning. Since most agree FS is CPU bound you will have great performance. The X300SE does everything I expected as far as eye candy , resolutions etc. There is no doubt that the more expensive cards will deliver better performance with AA/AF and that stuff, so if you can afford to upgrade best do it at time of purchase. More expensive later on. I will be going to the X700 or Nvidia 6600GT later on but for now I am quite happy with my rig. Getting >60FPS cruising and good 30FPS near busy airports and with real weather.I have had Gateways in the past and no major problems. They were a bit behind with PCI express so I went with Dell as I needed a PC quicklyGood luck.

If you just want a general-purpose PC then Dell, Gateway etc. are OK. However for more demanding applications (simming/game, music, graphics workstations), custom built is much better. A $1000 system custom-designed for FS2004 would by far outperform that system. Not saying that system is bad (it looks pretty nice though I would have preferd a faster CPU and better videocard...oh and more RAM too :)) but if you can do it, building it yourself is better - Especially if you upgrade from a reasonably new system because you'll be able to recycle quite a few components.If you don't want to build it yourself many stores will put together custom systems and let you choose the components. However, choosing the right components is the hard part. Once you have the PC in parts you might as well put them together yourself. It only takes a few hours at most. Oh and it's great fun too. I love the feeling when you power up a brand new system for the first time and watch it come to life (provided you don't just get a black screen and a siren noise. In that case it's time to panic :D ).

Build ,or have one built for you . It's cheaper and you will get a PC that's more likely to do what you want .One other thing worth mentioning..............Nowadays many "factory assembled" PC such as Dell, Gateway etc. do not come with a "proper" copy of WinXP rather they are supplied with a "recovery Disk" of some kind. In practice this can sometimes lead to difficulties if you wish to restore Windows without losing data on the Drive as the usual method used by recovery Disks is to format the drive and reinstall the system as it was when the PC left the factory.With many of these Disks you can't run such things as the Recovery console - or even "sfc /scannow"(system file checker).I would never buy a PC that did not come with a Genuine MS copy of Windows(With the MS holograph and Product ID ) - not to say that the "customised " versions aren't genuine - but they have been " butchered" and often have a lot of stuff you don't want - and lack things you might want.Just my opinionDave

"With many of these Disks you can't run such things as the Recovery console"Ugh. So what happens if you mess up the MBR e.g. by installing Linux and want to restore? Bye bye personal data? I've lost count of how many times I've had to use the recovery console....