It's that time.........

[Barrington]

Getting closer to buying a new system dedicated to FSX/FS9 and wanted to get some feedback on the following setup that i am seriously contemplating. As it will cost quite a few dollars, really wanted to get some thoughts as to positive vibes or negative (but reasons why would help) before I sign on the dotted line........so to speak.
System is.............
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (3 GHz)
Ultra Durable2, Lower Temperature, Longer Life
Onboard LAN ((broadband ready)
Integrated 3D Digital Audio
2 USB front
4 USB back
1333FSB
Case with 500W Quiet Power Supply
5000Gb fast 16Mb Cache Hard Drive
22" LCD Wide Monitor 1650, x 1400!
Nvidia 8800GST 320mb Video card
4GB (4 x 1024mb) dula channel CL4 (4-4-3-8)
Up market case with 4 x plus colling fans
18X DVD Writer with lightscribe
etc etc

Would this do the job or what changes would you make.
Please bear in mind this will be a 'gaming only' system.
Appreciate any feedback/assistance etc.

[gokanru]

I would be looking at a video card with more memory,even if it means spending a little more,and also a bigger power supply

[toprob]

QUOTE(gokanru @ Aug 16 2007, 11:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I would be looking at a video card with more memory,even if it means spending a little more,and also a bigger power supply

Yeah, I'd be more inclined to drop back to 3GB ram if necessary, but a lot more video memory.
I'm always running out of USB ports -- mouse, keyboard, webcam, TrackIR, digital camera/video cam, MP3 player, card reader -- only having six leaves no room for the rocket launcher...

[creator2003]

I brought the 8600gts 256 and it screems along with high clock speeds and overclocking to 740x2200mhz with after market cooling etc.. the 8800gts320 is going move out if setup right
yeah you could go with a ultra 8800 card but that would really blow the budget ,id also go with 3gig ram as the other 1gig reads only half or something and is not worth the money putting it in ,power pack well yes if you are getting 8800gts it has a 6pin split power plug off the card and sux abit of power ,
what we know is the fsx & fs9 like ram cpu and graphic cards ,
good luck its a big buy and you want to reaserch every part with reviews on sim sites and overclockers and other resource sites

[Charl]

I'd echo the sentiments about more video RAM (640MB), and up the power supply to 600W.
VISTA can handle lots of RAM but XP has issues above 2 GB if I remember - check it out.
Lightscribe sounds cool on paper but takes an age to burn a 2-tone label, and disks are hard to find.
I have integrated sound but if I did it again I'd have a Sound Blaster.

Have a look at a monitor with additional USB ports for the rocket launcher.
(But be careful - Geeks Inc have hacked that software so when you pull the trigger, it whips round and shoots you in the head)

[Zöltuger]

that looks good, almost identical to the system I'm planning to get later this year. Except I agree about the 640MB GTS, a definite advantage.

[ZK-Brock]

Interesting that everyone is really into memory on the video card, from my few nerdy discussions it seems that video memory has very little to do with performance of the card, but instead it's things like clock speeds and number of pipelines for textures etc. IMO, video RAM isn't as important as everyone makes it out to be.

[Zöltuger]

QUOTE(ZK-Brock @ Aug 17 2007, 04:06 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Interesting that everyone is really into memory on the video card, from my few nerdy discussions it seems that video memory has very little to do with performance of the card, but instead it's things like clock speeds and number of pipelines for textures etc. IMO, video RAM isn't as important as everyone makes it out to be.

That is partially true, a 8800GTS is always going to be faster than a 8600GTS regardless of how much memory it has. And a 8800GTS with 320MB could be faster than the 640MB version if it has faster memory. The idea of getting the 640MB version is that FS tends to be texture heavy (compared with other games), so having more VRAM takes strain off the hard disk and CPU having to load new textures all the time. (Well that's my understanding anyway)

[Barrington]

Hi guys,
thanks very much for all the input and it appears very obvious that i should be upgrading the VRam.
I will take all this on board and actually show the PC builder the comments.
Great to have so much feedback and interest in an excellent forum
Barrington