Hey guys, i am currently running a 2 and a half year old system with flight sim 2k2. PIII 700mHz 100mHz front side bus, 28 MB RAM, 17GB hard drive, nVida TnT 8MB graphics card, Windows 98. It gets reasonable frame rates when u are in the middle of the desert with no scenery or traffic wat so ever but thats not wat im looking for. I luv to have a highly detailsed quality aircraft, with heaps of scenery, especially at my hometown of DFW airport (simflyers)Im looking to upgrade my system soon. Wat would be the ultimate system to run flight sim 2k2 and prolly 2k4 on with super frame rates...eg wats the best processor, hard drive, graphics card, sound card, RAM memory???Your help would be much appreciated,regards,Mark.

Here's my system, not the absoulute best, but I like it :DPentium 4 1.3GHz80GB Hard Drive512MB RDRAMGeForce 4 128MB Ti4600Windows XP Home Edition FYI, I have the Simlfyers DFW scenery with both east and west static sceneries installed and get about 7-10 FPS on the ground, but very smooth even with those FPS. Hope this helps.Ryan-Flightpro08 :-coolTaxiwaysigns.com

Mark, one can't really say for sure which CPU is the best for FS2K2, as there is no standardized benchmark available for it like there was for the last 2 versions of MSFS (fsbench). So, until there is a benchmark for FS2K2, everything is just hearsay and conjecture. However, I (and others) can make recommendations based on how much money you want to spend and what your upgrade timeframe is (how soon do you want to upgrade?). If price is a consideration and you're not looking to overclock your CPU/FSB by a tremendous amount, I would recommend you look at purchasing an Athlon XP-based system (either current Palomino core, or wait for the Thoroughbreds coming out in another week or so). However, if price isn't as much of a factor and/or you want to overclock your system quite a bit, you may want to consider one of the newer P4 Northwood CPUs (the 1.6A and 1.8A seem to be overclocking very well at the moment). If you can provide a little more insight as to what your budget is, specific goals/uses for your new system, timeframe to build, etc. I can provide more specific feedback that may be of more use to you.Max Cowgill

>Here's my system, not the absoulute best, but I like it :D >>Pentium 4 1.3GHz >80GB Hard Drive >512MB RDRAM >GeForce 4 128MB Ti4600 >Windows XP Home Edition >> FYI, I have the Simlfyers DFW scenery with both east >and west static sceneries installed and get about 7-10 FPS >on the ground, but very smooth even with those FPS. Hope >this helps. No offense or anything but I hope you're not actually recommending that anyone purchase a Willamette P4 at this point... To do so would be downright silly.Max Cowgill

Pentium 2.2GHZ2gigs RDRAMGFORCE4 Ti4600WinXPPhilips AE sound cardWith this system I average about 70FPS in places like KSFO with all the traffic turned on and all the sliders in max. At any other place I get around 100-120FPS.

>Pentium 2.2GHZ >2gigs RDRAM >GFORCE4 Ti4600 >WinXP >Philips AE sound card >>>With this system I average about 70FPS in places like KSFO >with all the traffic turned on and all the sliders in max. >At any other place I get around 100-120FPS. so let me get this straight... you average 70fps in dense scenery areas with all sliders @ max and 100-120fps everywhere else? Guess, I need to do some tweaking (and get a new video card).Max Cowgill

The ultimate would probably be a quad Xeon with 2GB RAM per CPU, GF4 with 128MB, Yamaha soundcard, etc. etc.Expect to pay $10K or more for it :-)More realistic is a P4-2GHz with 512MB RAM, GF4 with 128MB, Terratec or Creative soundcard, Asus mobo (the onboard sound on them is not too bad, so you might even use that) and a 19" or 21" Iiyama screen. Costs only about $1500-2000...

Mark,eg wats the best processor, hard drive, graphics card, sound card, RAM memory???Athlon XP2100 processor (don't even think about buying a Pentium!), UDMA-100 hard drive (I'm using IBM Deskstar 120GXP), Creative GeForce4 Ti4600 (or Ti4400), SB Audigy, 512Mb PC2100 DDR RAM.Now the other important item... the monitor. Having a Ti4600 with 128Mb of memory means high resolutions and it's a waste to use anything less than a 19" monitor. 21" would be ideal. This would allow you to run at 1600*1200 and at that resolution Anti Aliasing isn't really necessary. But, the Ti4600 is so powerful it can be switched on with no negative effects anyway.Oh, and get Windows XP Home. Huge improvement over Win 9x! Hope that helps :)Cheers,

The Dell Dimension 8200 is quite a machine. It carries a P4 up to 2.5 ghz, includes the GF4 Ti4600 128mb graphics card, can have lots of RDRAM, etc etc etc. I priced one out for myself loaded to the gills at $2600 which is not bad for a packed machine. That included a 21" monitor too! If that machine doesn't give you good framerates - I say give up. haha.

The Most powerful system that you could buy right now at a decent price is a P4-northwood 2.53 w/533FSB and 512mb of PC1066 hooked up with a nice GF4TI4400, and if you want to talk overclocking, these will do 3gigs without breaking a sweat. All the P4 nay sayers should think twice as these sytems are already breaking performance rocords and are ready for upgrading beyond the new P4B-3.0 CPU,s.If you want bang for the buck, Go with a KT333 or KT266a chipset MB running the latest XP2000 AGOIA stepping (as these O/C very nicely) use 512mb XMS3000-3200 paired up with a GF4TI4200 and you have decent power. The T-bred XP2200 will be arriving very soon as well as the rest of the new from AMD, but for now this is it.For more info try: NVnews.com Anandtech.com and Tomsharware.com to get you started.Paul

I guess I do too, as I think my system is pretty up to date, and I only get 10-14 FPS average while sitting at SFO with most sliders half maxed, and AI traffic at 100%. Is there a tweak program I should look for?Regards,BobberAlienware P4 2.01 gig RAMGForce 3, Ti 500etc.

>Pentium 2.2GHZ >2gigs RDRAM >GFORCE4 Ti4600 >WinXP >Philips AE sound card >>>With this system I average about 70FPS in places like KSFO >with all the traffic turned on and all the sliders in max. >At any other place I get around 100-120FPS. Total :-eek and absolute :-eek BS!!! :-lolIf you had a 3.5 gig cpu and you don

My specs:Athlon XP 1900+512 MB DDR RAM40 GB 7200 RPM hard driveGeForce 3 Ti200I built this system myself for about 800/900 bucks. Not bad considering the equivalent by a PC manufacturer would go for at least $3000. Anyway, FS runs beautifully on this system.Tim