New Computer - lesson learned

[Guest JustanotherPilot]

After years of building my own computer systems for FSX I decided the buy a 'dedicated gaming machine' from a local supplier with unsatisfactory results.... a lesson learned.

 

Briefly, I have been playing FlightSim since it's innovation in the 80's, I now have  FSX and Prepard3D V1.4. In an ever increasing attempt to add realism I have continually upgraded computer components to match the scenery and aircraft complexity. My old system which suffered a motherboard failure had an i7-2600 chip 12 gig ram and the latest R9 270x GPU. This combination ran perfect until the failre a few week ago.

 

My email inbox alerted me to forthcoming gaming deals on computers from my local store. In particular, the latest AMD A10-6800K CPU and MSI A78M-E35 was offered at 30% off, with no operating system installed. Several reviews of this combo were read and benchmarking tests indicated that this would indeed increase performance over my old system. I ordered the system and was told un pick up that because I wanted to 'break the seal on the box' to add my own graphics card and hard-rives, my warranty would be reduced from 2 years to 12 months. No worries, I could live with that. I did offer my concern to the salesman that I didn't think that the 420W Thermaltake power supply would be suitable for gaming, with my intended GPU, of course,  I was reassured that this was the latest technology. It was until I spilt the box that I noticed that the power supply didn't come with a dedicated PCI plug, luckily I had extension leads to use this.

 

I added all of my components GPU, 12 gig of Ram and 4 hard-rives, one of which is dedicated only to FSX (2TB) fired up the system and installed my preferred gaming operating system - Windows 7. After some days of installing all of my old programs, FSX with my addon aircraft scenery and aircraft.

 

Finally to play FSX after a weeks absence, I couldn't wait to experience new levels of flight immersion with the new/improved system. I was grossly disappointed, the improvement was only marginal and now I experienced crashes, something not had in years. Not only was FSX crashing but my whole computer just stopped.

 

The fixes: - I replaced the 420W powersupply with a 750W (which had a dedicated PCI plug).

I noticed that when I ran the CPU-Z utility it was only reading 2 cores and 2 threads, the A10-6800K has 4 of each, this was fixed by referencing the MSI website that stated that my board had to be re-flashed with the latest BIOS update unleash the full specs of my CPU. This done I now have 4 cores and 4 threads. This should have been done pre-sale at the computer supplier.

 

Anyway after all the fixes I now have a machine that makes FSX so realistic I'm seeing ground detail never before available. I have the settings to the max.

 

I guess the reason I posted this experience was to make computer buyers aware that even though you might be buying a 'dedicated' computer unless the BIOS, power supply and components aren't setup correctly (as they should have been)  then your performance will suffer and your wasting your money.

 

Needless to say I've probably voided my warranty  because of all the necessary extra work I needed to carry out, but I will cross that bridge, should it ever arise.

 

Buyers beware.

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[Daveo 36]

Apologize for going a little off topic but just wanted to pass on a friendly reminder that we have changed our signature policy again and we are kindly asking everyone to please put their system specs and flight sim information in their respective "My Profile". More details can be found at the following link - http://forum.avsim.net/topic/436632-new-signature-rules or under the Forums tab above.

 

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[Glynn 405]

My email inbox alerted me to forthcoming gaming deals on computers from my local store. In particular, the latest AMD A10-6800K CPU and MSI A78M-E35 was offered at 30% off, with no operating system installed. Several reviews of this combo were read and benchmarking tests indicated that this would indeed increase performance over my old system.

 

Every benchmark I have seen puts the A10-6800K well behind your old 2600, in general AMD cpu's do much worse in FSX compared to Intel

 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A10-6800K+APU

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/56657-amd-a10-6800k-32nm-richland/?page=3

[Guest JustanotherPilot]

Every benchmark I have seen puts the A10-6800K well behind your old 2600, in general AMD cpu's do much worse in FSX compared to Intel

 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A10-6800K+APU

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/56657-amd-a10-6800k-32nm-richland/?page=3

Thanks for sharing that, I must have read different tests and am imagining my better performance.

 

steve s