"I am now convinced that it is better to be a late adaptor than an early one. I am now looking forward to building a new machine again in 3 years time - whatever specs it may have then, I don't know. But I do know that it will run FSx brilliantly - along with all the great addons that will be developed over that time." Barry, my man, you read my mind, perfectly stated!RH

HelloI also have a ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA, it has been rock solid I am using a C2Duo 6600 at 2.61 along with 2 gigs of PC3200 DDR400memory and an AGP ATI X850XT slightly OC to 533 core 566 mem.My very bloated 77.3 gigabyte FS9 installation runs smooth as silk.This is it for me until FS11

>I managed to do a very inexpensive upgrade - with a>considerable increase in performance.>>Over the past 3 years, I had already upgraded my Vid card,>power supply, 1 gig RAM and a second 7200RPM IDE harddrive>>BUT - my vid card was an AGP card, and my 1 gig RAM was DDR300>RAM. >>So I used an ASROCK motherboard which takes either PCIE Vid>cards or AGPx8 cards, DDR or DDR2 RAM , and either SATA or IDE>drives. The new MOBO also gave me AGP x8 and USB2 - an>improvement over the USB1.1 and AGO x4 which I previously>had.>>All in all, the upgrade only cost me $375 Australian dollars ->and I am more than pleased with the result. I used a Core 2>Duo 6600 CPU.>>BarryI did basically the same. I have a "decent" AGP vid card and good DDR ram, and a new IDE hard drive so I was unwilling to totally revamp my system, so I got that ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA mobo because of it's ability to handle both DDR and DDR2, AGP and PCI-e, IDE and SATA HDDs. Went with an E4400, overclocked it from 2.0 - 2.9GHz on my second boot. For a total outlay of about $190 I went from 7-9FPS (unplayable) on short final at KORD with traffic maxed but detail sliders turned down, to 20-25FPS with everything maxed (traffic, detail, clouds, etc) on short final at KORD w/ 150 planes milling around the airport. I love it. My old system was an Athlon XP 2500+ Barton that was slightly overclocked from 1.8 to 2.0GHz (I bought it 3 or 4 years ago). The only thing that is slightly disappointing about the ASRock board is the FSB lock at 290MHz - if you want to go higher than 290FSB you need to volt-mod it. Still - I overclocked the thing 45% the second time I booted it up and it is rock solid.My SuperPI times dropped from about 48.9 seconds on the old system to 18 seconds on the new system, almost 3x as fast. got the board for $62 and the proc for $124 from mwave.

Well I've been all over the net to find this board in the USA and it appears to be a discontinued item by ASROCK. Any one aware of which model took its' place? Or, are there still a few floating around out there? Help appreciated.I will email ASROCK as well.Thanks,Jim

>Well I've been all over the net to find this board in the USA>and it appears to be a discontinued item by ASROCK. Any one>aware of which model took its' place? Or, are there still a>few floating around out there? Help appreciated.>>I will email ASROCK as well.>>Thanks,>Jimnewegg still has the 4coredual-sata2 listed which is the exact same boad as the 4coredual-vsta just not optimized for windows vista. if you are running windows XP it will serve you just fine (based on the research I did when I was ordering this board a month ago, which was extensive). newegg.com also has a few open box versions of the board listed (there are like 5-6 different iterations of this board, 2 AMD and 3-4 Intel, one optimized for windows Vista and one not. off the top of my head i can think of" 939dual-sata, 939dual-vsta, 775dual-sata, 775dual-vsta, 4coredual-sata, 4coredual-sata. each of those has both PCI-E and AGP slots, DDR and DDR2 RAM slots, and IDE and SATA hard drive connections). but yes it appears it has been discontinued which I thought was the case when I ordered mine. I was actually going to get the AMD version and I waited a couple days to order, then it became not available. so I quickly ordered the socket 775 4coredual-vsta version, which also appears to be gone. so I would definitely say the availability is dwindling quickly. it is not available at all from the vendor i bought mine from (mwave.com) so if you're going to get one, you'd better grab one from newegg very, very quickly. they probably only ave a couple left. heck, at 50-60$ it's not like it'll make you poor on the off chance that you get it and don't like it. i like mine just fine though, not as great as the high end boards out there, but it enabled me to use a FAR faster CPU without having to spend a bunch of money on a new vid card and RAM and new SATA hard drives (which would come with the unbelievable frustration of having to reinstall a million different add-ons for my MSFS).one thing to be aware of, MANY reviews stated that the people who purchased the board had to reinstall windows, which often means that you'd lose your FS installation. However I PERSONALLY did not have to reinstall windows when I got mine... my previous windows install worked perfectly and still is. i seem to be in the minority in that respect though.

its quite interestingisnt it.. I actually have this new rig for fsx and it performs quite well, though im still a little dissapointed i cant run highly complex add ons at busy airports.. Theres something wrong about having smooth performance in fsx with pic 737 or lds 767 etc etc when your sharing a buy airport with hardly any other traffic..So i ecided to re install fs9 and the addons just for complex big tube flying.. My god.. smooth as silk and busy as real as it gets... Still loving fsx for bush, but I need my skies to be occupied and busy and i need my airports to be complex and busy..

Received this replay from ASROCK:This model had been replace by 4Cordual-SATA2 http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-4CORES2Jim

Hi NEALOC187>one thing to be aware of, MANY reviews stated that the people>who purchased the board had to reinstall windows, which often>means that you'd lose your FS installation. However I>PERSONALLY did not have to reinstall windows when I got>mine... my previous windows install worked perfectly and still>is. i seem to be in the minority in that respect though.I suspect that you may have a problem that you are not even aware of - ie your computer may actually be running only one core. I had the same situation as you - I built this new dual core machine and expected that I would have to reinstall WindowsXP and everything else. However it booted up into Windows quite nicely from my old harddrive - and I thought , like you, that I was saved from having to reinstall. However I discovered that one core was not running. Go into your TASK MANAGER (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and see if you have TWO "CPU USAGE HISTORY" windows showing. Also go into your Control Panel/Device Manager and see if it shows an an "ACPI Multiprocessor" in the COMPUTER section and also shows TWO Intel Cores under PROCESSORS. If you do not have all these things, then WindowsXP (your old installation on your harddrive)is not recognising your second core and you will have to reinstall!!Regards Barry

>Hi NEALOC187>>>one thing to be aware of, MANY reviews stated that the>people>>who purchased the board had to reinstall windows, which>often>>means that you'd lose your FS installation. However I>>PERSONALLY did not have to reinstall windows when I got>>mine... my previous windows install worked perfectly and>still>>is. i seem to be in the minority in that respect though.>>I suspect that you may have a problem that you are not even>aware of - ie your computer may actually be running only one>core. I had the same situation as you - I built this new dual>core machine and expected that I would have to reinstall>WindowsXP and everything else. However it booted up into>Windows quite nicely from my old harddrive - and I thought ,>like you, that I was saved from having to reinstall. However I>discovered that one core was not running. >>Go into your TASK MANAGER (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and see if you have>TWO "CPU USAGE HISTORY" windows showing. Also go into your>Control Panel/Device Manager and see if it shows an an "ACPI>Multiprocessor" in the COMPUTER section and also shows TWO>Intel Cores under PROCESSORS. If you do not have all these>things, then WindowsXP (your old installation on your>harddrive)is not recognising your second core and you will>have to reinstall!!>>Regards >>Barry it's running on both cores, I read that exactly what you said is sometimes an issue for those who didn't reinstall XP, but mine's running both. they both show up in device manager, I've stress tested both cores monitoring the temps of each individually, checked CPU usage, i'm able to specify the affinity if i want to, etc. it appears i was one of the lucky ones perhaps.

>i'm able to specify the affinity if i want toWhat does this mean?Barry

Setting the affinity means forcing a computer with a multi core processor (dual core or quad core) to use a certain core for certain programs. I've read some threads that people get better performance in games (FS2004 and others) which are not optimized for multi-core processors when they set it to run on only one processor, rather than splitting the load between multiple processors.I read a big thread by a few guys who said that it drastically increased their FS9 performance. They say to set FS9 to run on one core, and all your add ons and other background programs to run on the other core. So I run FS9 on Core 0 (for whatever reason, windows calls them core 0 and core 1 instead of core 1 and core 2) and I set activesky, radar contact, etc to run on core 1. you do this by opening up Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del) and then going to the processes tab, and then right clicking on the process you want to set the affinity for and unclicking whichever core you DON'T want the program to run on, meaning it will only run on the box which is checked. I also set FS9 to run in realtime priority, which is the highest priority you can se. meaning that your computer will allocate it's resources to FS9 before anything else (again right click the program in task manager/processes tab, and then choose 'set priority'). I also kill most of the more taxing processes that aren't needed, though this was a much bigger deal when I had my slow old Athlon XP 2500 processor than it is now. but every little bit helps i suppose.