8mb cache hd's with Flight Sim

[Guest]

Obviously you would want to spend money on a new CPU first then video card secondly. After you made sure that your system had adequate RAM, the few extra dollars for an 8mb HD does make a difference at times when it counts, or that has been my experience anyway.At the time I had the following system:Athlon 2100+VIA KT-400 chipset512Mb SDRAMNVidia GeForce4 4200Maxtor 30GB 7200 RPM HDDuring most situations, I had few problems. However, when I was at complex scenery airports (and being that I keep most hardware settings maxed) whenever ATC would call, I would get brief, but noticable, stutters. Again, keep in mind that I have full ATC and traffic, so my system stays busy. Anyway, I interpreted this as system overload. During situations like this, the HD is active. You are moving and the buildings of SimFlyers Airports are popping up, traffic is passing you on the ground, air traffic is coming from all directions, and the ATC is almost always going in the background, so RAM is constantly being updated by the HD. Between ATC calls, the system would run smoothly (other than the obvious and common framerate issues) but the ATC in the background would often be the straw that broke the camel's back and would contribute to the stutters. I reasoned that if I could grease the wheel and allow info from the HD to come in more smoothly the stutters might go away. Since I was going to upgrade my HD anyway, I spend the extra 20 dollars and got one with the 8mb cache instead of the standard 2mb cache. I purchased the WD 80GB 8 cache HD, and the stutters magically went away. So, I would recommend that if you are in a similar situation, spend the extra $ and get yourself a WD 8mb cache HD.Robb

[Guest]

Ok here's the thing for fs2002 and on the 8mb cache wont do that much at all but if you have the cash then i would get it for all the apps am very happy that i got mine, not for fs but just in general, since fs is not the only game i use. the main thing about flight simualtor is the big fact that the most important part of the whole system for this game is the cpu, then everything else comes to play memory video card and hardrive.

[Guest KenG]

Oh come on! Next you'll be telling us that going from AGP4X to AGP8X with todays games does not provide a 2X increase in performance. ;-)BTW, I have an 80 GB 2MB cache harddrive and an 80GB 8MB cache harddrive. I haven't noticed a tremendous increase in MSFS performance. However, it can't hurt to have the extra buffer for both MSFS and other apps.