Need your advice. Am about to buy new computer for FSXPremium. Also run Photoshop 7 & videos & photo files.I'm planning Vista Home Premium 32 bit OEM.Intel Core 2 Duo E6600(2.40Ghz-4MB)2GB DDR2 ramGF 8600GTS 256m Card.320GB H/Drive.Gigabite 965P-S3(s775) Motherboard (EOL)Flying heavy, VFR Sth Eng, use few addons. Eventually PSS 777.Does that sound OK.Appreciate your advice,Peter Sydney Australia

I'd suggest more RAM for running Vista... as I understand Vista is a resource hog.Also, from what I hear the E6600 should be OC'd to I think 3GHz (at least) to get better FPS in FSX. That'll require better than stock cooling, liquid if you want to go all out :)

Thanks for your kind advice, Redvan.I'll look into that.Peter Sydney Australia

at least an 8800GTX

Thanks McCrash.Pete

I'd boost the memory to 4Gbs if you can with as fast as a disk drive your budget will allow (highly recommend a 10K RPM drive such as a raptor from Western Digital). The reason I say this is that both Vista and FSX are memory hungry (Vista will like to use about 1Gb, and FSX likes to use about 1.5 Gb reasonably loaded), and FSX is also very intensive on file IO. Outside of the CPU, the speed of file transfers heavily impacts FSX's ability to load new sceneries and textures and can impact FPS on a very high end system. It is also highly recommended out there that you wait (tragic word) until the next generation DX10 cards that will "fix" various bugs in the gen 1 now available on market. The 8x series NVidia are good, but the next gen will be better and increase their support of DX10.Cheers,Etienne

I agree with Etienne on the DX10 cards, and, besides, there's no real point in getting a DX10 card now as hardly anything worthwhile is optimized for DX10 yet.Trouble is, you can wait forever as there is always something new just lurking over the horizon.I would, however, wait a couple weeks minimum as Intel I recall is supposed to slashing the prices on several of their chips shortly.Bryan

Intel is also gearing up to release their new "Faster" processing line any time now. If you wait until the fall time you will know more about Intel's new processors (they should be available for purchase by then), and you will know more about the next DX10 cards. There really is no point in having a DX10 card right now.If you can't wait, maybe you should just buy a cheap video card that you don't mind replacing when the new DX10 cards do come out. This fall should be a very nice time to start planning on PC upgrades, and you should be able to finish the upgrade by the end of November or early December with new DX10 Nivdia cards.

Thanks all! I now have had the bestadvice that is available in the world.Cheers,Peter Sydney Australia

Well, while I agree that there will be better DX10 cards in the future (Christmas perhaps, likely later), the 8800 series is really quite a bit faster than anything else on the market.The GTX is good, but I've been running a GTS 640 MB, and it seems to be fine to me. But I do agree that you should spend the extra $100US or so and get at least a 512 MB video card.It works great on my system, but I am running XP as I don't feel Vista is yet ready for prime time. But I do understand there are users out there with 8800's running well on Vista.I've got my E6600 Overclocked to 3.3 GHz using a Zalman 9700 fan, and CPU temps running FSX are in the high 40's C. I am using a DFI Infinity 975G/Z MB, and I had to put a small fan on the Northbridge chip as well, which brought temps on the Northbridge down by about 10C when running FSX. I did a bang up job with a little fan I had lying around, but there are a couple of dedicated solutions available for about $20 that would probably do a better job.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

For Vista and FSX, I suggest 3GB RAM as a minimum, 4GB would be ideal.The 8600GTS is a good card and will at least get you started when the DX10 patch for FSX comes out. An 8800 card would be even better, but don't bother going for the GTX over the GTS as shown in this benchmark link http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_200...2=707&chart=293 - a whopping 0.2 FPS difference for US$150+ extra! The rest looks good.Gary