Hi guys,I think my five year old (!) MoBo and Processor have finally reached the end of their useful life. I am tired of FPS in the teens in detailed sceneries. I would be curious to hear people's recommendations for a new board and processor. What will provide me with the smoothest simming experience and will allow the greatest future flexibility? Ideally, the budget should be around $800-1000. But feel free to suggest your ideal choice. I will consider spending more, if you can persuade me that the incremental benefit is worth it. Many thanks in advance.Mishahttp://www.commerciallevel.com/base/suppor...46supporter.jpg

Really not a lot to tell. What are your current specs? You say in the teens in detailed scenery, well even with high end rigs, AI, weather and detailed scenery, it's about the same, just the way FS is coded.Best I can offer is get the best CPU you can as this makes the most difference in performance.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International

No I don't agree. With a good system, properly optimised it is possible to lock your frame rate at 34 fps. Mine is! With everything maxed out. Courtesy of FS-GS and Michael Greenblatt.Cheers,Noel.

Michael,I have a pathetic Athlon XP 1500+ on a K7T 266 Pro2 motherboard with 1GB RAM. The graphics card is a Radeon 9600XT, which I would like to keep for the time being as it's not even running at full potential at the present due to the limiting effects of this motherboard. I think I have configured things pretty well to get the framerates I am getting. It does drop into single digits with the less framerate friendly aircraft/airport/weather/AI combinations. I mention teens as a rule in generally detailed addon scenery with weather and AI. Yes, better frames should be possible with a better rig. I was really hoping more for detailed suggestions as to what boards are good and what techincal specifications to look for. Thanks.http://www.commerciallevel.com/base/suppor...46supporter.jpg

Misha, my post is long, I hope I don't bore you. :)I assume you will keep your current monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.That will help you keep your budget below $1000.Now, the question is, will you go dual-core or single-core. We all know well how single-core cpu's and dual-core's work with FS at present. But Misha we also know that things will change...also, it may be that since you kept your present system for 5 years, you might do the same this time around. Who knows where FS will be in 5 years.For that reason, I'd lean toward getting a dual-core cpu. If you're talking AMD then you're talking a 4400+, which is a good price/performance point right now. The 4200+ has less cache and isn't a whole lot cheaper. But...if that is beyond your budget, then single-core is still viable:You could go single-core, since FS presently isn't directly helped all that much by the dual-core. A 3700+ San diego is only about $200, which is nice, and I don't think you'd be lacking horsepower in FSX with that. The FX55 or FX57 would also do nicely, but it's expensive in terms of the performance. You can overclock a 3700+ pretty close to FX levels because of it's 1 meg cache.I'm not as familiar with Intel's cpu's right now, but I hear this new Conroe cpu (to be released later this year??) is supposed to be a good one, levelling or bending the playing field with AMD.Motherboard: I like ASUS A8N series if you go with AMD. The key here is to decide if you want SLI or not. If you may decide in the future to run 2 vid cards, then you'll want a SLI motherboard. A lot of people like the DFI LanParty motherboards too. I feel like DFI's boards are thouroughbreds, but maybe a tad less stable than the old nag ASUS boards.Abit motherboards are generally fast and stable too.These are all Socket 939 Motherboards. The new AMD socket (M2??) is not out quite yet.RAM: Get 2 gigs of ram. Absolutely no less. And get decent stuff--the price difference between cheap ram and decent ram is only about $40-$50. ($160 vs. $200 or so for a matched pair of 1 gig sticks). And you thank yourself for getting decent ram in FS. Corsair, Mushkin, OCZ, Patriot are, among others, pretty good.POWER SUPPLY: Get at least a 500watt power supply. I know you don't need it with your present video card, but I also know you will want to upgrade that video card at some point. (Probably you are smart to hold off on that, since DX10 will change the vid card scene next year.) At any rate, in the future, you may run SLI so keep that in mind. 500w+ will be your friend.CASE: You might be able to re-use your present case (ATX is still the standard) but if it doesn't cool well, you might want to look at a new case. The key today is keeping it all cool--much more so than 5-10 years ago, I'm afraid. FS uses 100% cpu, and FS makes my cpu run hotter than anything else! I have a CoolerMaster Praetorian case, which has 3 fans. If you want a really nice cooling case look at the Antec P180 or the Coolermaster Stacker. They cost a little more than the Praetorian but if you're building a monster system they are a good bet.VID: Remember that since you will be keeping your present vid card, that card WILL become your bottleneck. You can put a fast cpu with it, but you'll only be as fast as the card lets you go. So don't be too disappointed with a brand-new 4400+ and you wonder why you're only getting 20 fps. But as I said, I think you might be the smartest among us by waiting on the vid, as FSX + DirectX 10 will change the video card scene a lot as it relates to us FS-Fanatics.HARD DRIVE: Get enough storage, 250 gigs minimum. You'll thank yourself later when FSX + addons are gobbling the gigs. FSX will have higher resolution mesh, and that alone will eat up the gigs. Since you don't want to break the bank, you don't need a 10000 rpm hard drive; stick with a 7200 rpm drive.In short, FS is cpu-intensive. Put your $$$ toward the fastest cpu you can afford. I hope you are still awake :)Rhett

Rhett, That's exactly the kind of advice I was looking for. Not boring at all. Many thanks for taking the time to point all of those aspects out. This was very helpful. I will probably not buy right away, as we are about to move (from NY to Chicago), so I will probably wait until after the move. Two teeny tiny follow-up questions. 1. You mention cooling. My current machine was built in 2001 for my wife by my brother in law for the purpose of running AutoCad, Maya and other graphics applications used by architects (my wife since quit architecture, which is why I got the machine for simming while she moved on to an Apple iBook :-) ). The processor is overclocked, though I don't know exactly to what setting. It has a monster of a fan attached to it which makes a heck of a racket. Do you have any reccomendations on fans to minimize noise while ensuring adequate cooling?2. I will of course get a larger and faster HD (I currently have a SCSI 20GB and an IDE 40GB -- just not enough for FS). I understand it is possible to install a new HD, move everything from the old onto the new and then rename the old HD to smoething else and name the new HD with the letter of the old one and all the old registries will work fine. Is that correct? I dread the thought of having to reinstall dozens of payware addons, which require cumbersome authorization procedures and will end up overwriting my painstakinly replaced superior custom textures. Thanks again.Mishahttp://www.commerciallevel.com/base/suppor...46supporter.jpg

>>1. You mention cooling. My current machine was built in 2001>for my wife by my brother in law for the purpose of running>AutoCad, Maya and other graphics applications used by>architects (my wife since quit architecture, which is why I>got the machine for simming while she moved on to an Apple>iBook :-) ). The processor is overclocked, though I don't know>exactly to what setting. It has a monster of a fan attached to>it which makes a heck of a racket. Do you have any>reccomendations on fans to minimize noise while ensuring>adequate cooling?>Well, one thing about it, the fans that come with cpu's are in my opinion, pretty quiet. Your case and power supply fans will be the only fans you hear most likely. Having said that, there are aftermarket coolers you can buy for a cpu; companies like Thermaltake make some really nice ones with copper cooling fins and big fans; but in my opin you really only need those if you're doing some decent overclocking. Mild overclocking, you can stick with the stock fan.Of course if you build a water-cooled system it will be even quieter...heheheh.As far as case fans go, Coolermaster and Panaflo make some quiet fans. There are some other high-quality (read = quiet, efficient) fans for cases out there too; google the term "case fan" and browse the techie sites for those. Here's one such place:http://www.casecooler.com/vanstealquie.html>2. I will of course get a larger and faster HD (I currently>have a SCSI 20GB and an IDE 40GB -- just not enough for FS). I>understand it is possible to install a new HD, move everything>from the old onto the new and then rename the old HD to>smoething else and name the new HD with the letter of the old>one and all the old registries will work fine. Is that>correct? I dread the thought of having to reinstall dozens of>payware addons, which require cumbersome authorization>procedures and will end up overwriting my painstakinly>replaced superior custom textures. >Hmm, I think you could do that. If possible, I might be inclined to burn a DVD with the custom textures on it, just in case. I always do that when migrating FS--I hate to lose my customized things in the sim. One time I lost part of my Israel scenery I was making for FS98 when I upgraded.I would probably hook up the new hd in the new system; then install the OS on it; then put in the SCSI card, and SCSI drive, and get the OS to recognize it. You may have to reconfigure the SCSI card at boot-time to get that to work (my Adaptac 2940U2W card was like that). Then do the same with the 40 gig IDE drive. And then copy all the files over to the new hd that way.SCSI can be tricky, I used to run it on my systems up until about a year ago. Especially tricky if you have the hd configured as Device 0 or a Master and you try to install it in a new system as something other than the primary hard drive--which is what you are thinking about doing.Rhett

Once again, many thanks for your advice, Rhett.http://www.commerciallevel.com/base/suppor...46supporter.jpg