My Future Hardware Upgrades

[BoeingGuy 0]

Hi everyone,My 8800 GT and its drivers have been killing the computer lately, so I'm looking at the ATI Radeon 4870 X2. I want to be ready for FS11 and TS2 as well. Will my current system specs along with an X2 cut it? Or should I wait until late 2009-early 2010? I might also grab a VGA cooler because the 4870 chips run very hot---70C idling and 90C under load!According to Wikipedia: "The specifications for the architectures of the R800 and R900 families are "closed", with the specifications of the R1000 family being developed."Also, if I do get a 4870 X2 or any other type of hardware upgrade, how will my motherboard and power supply hold out? Will I need to upgrade them as well? Is this video card too powerful for this processor, and is the processor still useful for FS11 and TS2 era games?Sorry about my ranting :)Thanks!

[Guest UlfB]

>I want to be ready for FS11 and TS2 as well.Build yourself a new pc later this year based on the upcoming Nehalem cpu-family, which will use a new socket, LGA-1366.Ulf B

[Guest ledzzepplin]

BoeingGuy,What kind of issues are you having? Is it affecting FS9 or X?I noticed we share the same CPU. Did you notice any gains after overclocking?

[BoeingGuy 0]

Hi Rick,It's affecting all 3D applications. The "graphics driver stops responding then successfully recovers", according to Windows. I know it may sound pity, but it's given me more blue error screens in one week than it has in all the 7 years with my old computer. I'm probably gonna get a 4870 X2 for this.About the overclocking, there certainly was a 5-10 FPS increase after overclocking. The farther you can go, the better.

[Guest UlfB]

Do you still have this problems if you remove your overclock of cpu and gpu? How do you know that it's the graphics card that causes your blue screens? Are you sure that your overclock is stable? I know from my own experience that my pc would pass stress test, but still didn't manage to run FSX without blue screens. So I had to ease up on my memory settings.Ulf BCore2Duo X6800 3.3GHz4GB RAM Corsair XMS2-8500C5BFG 8800GTX, Creative SB X-FiFSX Acc/SP2, Vista 32

[BoeingGuy 0]

Ulf! That was it! Thanks!But now all my hardware is down to stock speeds.Which one(s) can I overclock again while keeping the system stable?Thanks!

[Guest UlfB]

BoeingGuy,This was good news :-)I think that your system was close to stable when OC:ed.You could start off with keep the GPU at stock speeds and set up your original OC for the CPU. If you don't get any blue screens, the problem probably is with the OC:ed GPU. If you still got the blue screens, you could start of decreasing your FSB/Memory OC:Ease up on your memory timings/speed and then run memtest and FSX to see if it's stable. If not, ease up on your memory timings/speed and try again.If easing up the memory timings/speed doesn't help, you should lower the FSB freq, and run memtest/FSX. If not stable, lower the FSB freq and test again until stable.The same process goes for the overclocked GPU, if that seems to be the cause: Ease up on memory speed and test. If not stable, ease up some more. If not stable, start easing up on GPU core speed and test.Once your reach a stable system, it's time to tighten your memory speed/timings until you reach the point where the system gets unstable. Then you ease up the settings once more and test. You should now have a stable system.OC:ing is a pretty time consuming business.Ulf B

[BoeingGuy 0]

Thanks a bunch Ulf,Everything is back to normal. The video card overclock was unstable so now I have it overclocked at a stable level.Thanks again!