New System For Broke College Student

[AirbusA340300 0]

hello all. when i got into fs during high school my system was adequate for fs 2002 and to a certain degree fs 9. and i loved it fs, flying all night across the pond in a 767, short hops in a 727, flight sim is all i did. and then i went to college and began my flight training, and for a while flying in real life held me over. but now i am having serious flight sim withdrawl, however my system wouldnt be able to handle fsx. and i havnt really kept up with the new hardware and stuff. and i was just wondering, does anyone know where i could get a good system to run fsx for cheap, or what kind of hardware i would need. any help with this would be greatly appreciated. thanksadam

[Sharrow 0]

Hi AdamRunning FSX on the cheap is going to be a problem, however, running FS9 (with addons) on the cheap is very attainable and if I were you I would stick with FS9 until you can afford a decent rig. Yes, FSX is prettier and a lot of addons make it look really fantastic but all this requires a powerful rig if you do not want to end up watching a slideshow or having to turn down the sliders so much that it looks like FS9 anyway.A couple of hundred bucks will buy you a mid range dual core, a 8600GT (for example), 4GB of DDR2 RAM and a mid range motherboard. This will run FS9 like an absolute dream and it will allow you to play some of the latest AAA games at medium to high settings (depending on your screen resolution).I am sure that folks here can give you more specific hardware suggestions if you do decide to stay with FS9.There are a lot of buyers guides out there at the moment. Guru3D has a good one here http://www.guru3d.com/article/pc-buyer-guide-december-2008/My only suggestion would be to rather stick with Nvidia cards for Flight Simulator.Konrad

[Guest steve31000]

Hi,I would advise that you buy a system for FSX. This is possible to buy for a relatively cheap price and can give good results. The problem on asking for this type of advice is one of opinion and expectations. Those that want autogen to be set to dense will tell you that you need an expensive rig, this is true. However if you run autogen on sparse, which is what I do, you will get more autogen than FS9 and nicer too look at , even on a midrange rig. :( I am running FSX on a laptop with 256mb 8600GT card, Core Duo T7200 clocked at 2ghz and 2gb RAM with Vista. This is adequate and you can get excellent results. I use HiFi sims Graphics X, GEX enhanced, and Ultimate Terrain and the results are breathtaking whilst running at anything from 25 - 40 frames a second. Even using PMDG's 747 I get at least 24 fps. Only a couple of cities like New York bring FSX to its kness but thats on all rigs. A bit of patience and tweaking is all thats required. And whilst I loved FS9, the results I get with FSX are far superior especially with GEX (Ground Environment X). Also free programs like Tileproxy offer higher resolution scenery that is literally jawdropping. Again all this achieved on a laptop (would be even better on a desktop).With AI traffic I have installed the free and superior WOAI (world of AI) and selected about 15 major airlines to install thus populating my airports whilst not bogging it down with unnecessary airtraffic that you quite often never see.It's great - trust me. With the specs the last person posted you'd be away! Add a now quite cheap quad-core 6600 to it and bingo - you'll have no problem. Besides even to get a system with an excellent 8800GT card nowadays won't be much more than a 8600GT. Give it a try and you'll be surprised. Ignore the scaremongers who demand 60fps and sliders set to max. :( As an example of what my system can produce - check out my video on youtube - just look up Steve31000Hope that helps! Any more queries, let me know!Steve

[bobbyjack 61]

AdamWhat system do you have now? Might be possible to upgrade it and learn a little about computers at the same time. Might not be worth it, but you never know. Even better, almost any budget desktop($400-$500) will run fs9. You could upgrade that, in time.Bob

[AirbusA340300 0]

thanks for the replies. my system now is nothing special, it could hardly run fs9, and with addons such as the pmdg 747, i would only get like 10-12 frames tops on the ground. its a pentium 4 2.8, 512 mb, and a geforce 6600. i was also considering possibly upgrading it and sticking with fs9. once again, thanks for the repliesadam

[ryanbatc 12,857]

If you could fork out 500-600 bucks you could get an E8400, 2gb ram (10 bucks after MIR on newegg), mid-range mobo, geforce 9800GT, and 100 buck power supplyhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115037http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820145034http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813128359http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814130384http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817703009Of course that won't include monitor, KB, mouse, speakers etc etc but those components (listed above) run about 500 bucksThis system could run FSX decent, med autogen sliders, med traffic. You could always spend another 30-50 bucks and get a nice aftermarket cooler to overclock it

[bobbyjack 61]

AdamYou would have to decide if it's worth it, but if you could put another 512 mb of ram and a better video card in there...who knows.Bob

[AirbusA340300 0]

thanks for the help. im relieved to hear that i can get a good enough rig for under 1000. after going to sites like alienware i assumed it would be at least 2000. i just never considered building myself as i dont know enough about computers for that. say, u had a budget of 1000 for a new computer, and i already have a nice monitor and keyboard, so all i would need is the hardware, what would u get?adam

[ryanbatc 12,857]

I'd get a E8500 or E8600A p45 mobohttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E168131283584GB ramGTX260And a good power supply, like:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817812006http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817703009And a good cooler, such as:http://www.crazypc.com/products/ultra-120_extreme-50983.htmlWith Vista x64 or XP x64 bitYou could also get a quad CPU, like the Q9550:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115041OR, I spose if you bargain shopped, you may be able to get a Core i7 system, but it would be tough since the good CPU is about 500 bucks at the moment (Core i7 940). And the X58 motherboards are like 300 bucks. So that would put you up near your limit, plus you still need the video card, ram, PSU, cooler etc