Good Day,Working on a new build from the ground up and could use some advice from the experts.... 1 ....... With a good CPU and video card..... Overclocked Intel Duo E8500 and a ATI 4870 is there much advantage to going with a Raptor 10,000 RPM drive over a standard 7200 RPM drive...... Or how about a large 7200 RPM drive for the OS and normal use with a Raptor 10,000 as a second dedicated drive for Flight Simulator 9 and all the Addons........ Will go with two drives in any case but much cheaper to stay with 7200s unless a big performance gain is possible.......2 ....... Still can

JayDub -- I've been told by several people whose opinions I trust very much that you'll get better performance out of a good WD 7200 RPM drive than the Raptor. That being said, look at my specs: I'm sticking with the Raptor simply because I already owned one and I prefer the faster loading time of the programs -- that's where you'll notice the difference. My CPU and memory, coupled with the realtive small size of my Raptor more than make up for any lost search performance I would gain from a newer model HD. I know because I have run them both on my new build and that's my experience.OS -- I'm sticking with XP and I have 4 gigs of RAM -- all seen perfectly fine by my OS. I fly FS9 almost exclusively, FSX runs very solidly on it, and my system is Flight Sim dedicated so I don't need the latest and greatest Vista has to offer. Besides, while I was building this box I had too many variables in place already to even consider adding the question marks implicit with Vista and my unfamiliarity with it and it's inner workings. If I were buying a computer from a builder or a commercial vendor my decision about the OS wouldn't change because it's been my experience that just becuase someone else is building it, bugs don't pop up in the least likely of places. Again, others here will tell you otherwise, but I just didn't want the hassle. I can upgrade later if need to.Bottom line? My build is less than two months old and now that things are settling down with it, she is strong as a bull and fast as lightening. I still get very mild stutters on short approach with 3 monitors, Bird's Eye View and about a million other addons running, but I haven't even begun any real tweaking yet! :-D

The raptor may shave a couple of seconds from your initial post-boot FS/flight load times, but that's all. After FS andd/or a specific-fight has been loaded once (post-boot), Vista does some magic where they will reload in < 10 seconds. Immediately post-boot, the raptor will might save a couple of seconds. After that first load, it's - entirely useless. In other words, if you already own it, that's great . . . but otherwise a 7200 will provide virtually identical performance. Game play will not be effected under any circumstance. Raptor vs 7200 is entirely about that 1st post-boot program/flight load.There is (thereby) no advantage to a second drive dedicated to FS. That additional complication is just not worth the trouble. Install FS on your boot disk and run a modern defragger. These new ones will position the FS directory to the disk's outer rim (Ultimate defrag, for instance) and you're set. Go with Vista 64 if you are flying FSX. That'll get you out of the OOM danger zone and allow all 4Gs of memory to be used. I'm almost always well into that 3rd Gig of physical memory when running FSX. I also can force > 3Gs of OOM memory (Virtual Space) load-up. That would crash a 32 bit op system under - Any - circumstances. In not too long, my "hard-push" will become a "light-load" and 32bit ops systems will become completely inadequate. Even right now, if you feed it, it will eat. Vista 64 is non-buggy and runs fine.

Chuck and Sam,Thanks for the info..... It is just what I needed to hear.... No Raptor puchased yet so will stay with the 7200s..... Love XP but may still go for the 64 bit version of Vista.... Once ran a dual boot system with Windows 98 and XP and the combo worked fine.... So think I will build a dual boot with Windows XP and Vista 64 to have the best of both worlds.....Thanks again,JayDub