PC Specs

[victor_alpha_charlie]

My computer's starting to get a bit annoying for FS9 now. At the end of ANY flight, on approach I always get no more than 12-13FPS, normally about 8-10. This is with No Ai installed, and settings on about medium. I have about $1200 to spend on a new FS PC. I want to have one where I can play FS9 with my favourite addon planes, have lots of AI Traffic and be able to fly somewhere like Aerosoft's Mega Airport Frankfurt with AES running at no less than 20FPS.

I'm fine with the way FS looks, so I don't think I need a new Graphics card (unless I have some money left over) but the FPS really annoys me.

My mate has offered me his comp for about $1200, the rough specs of which are
a 512mb Nvidia card (with space to easily put in another one)
2gb Ram
Dual Core AMD Processor (I think)
Big hard drive on it (About 500gb I think).

My Specs Are:
AMD Opteron Dual Core 170 2.01GHz
2GB Ram
Nvidia 7600GT 256mb
A pretty crappy motherboard- perhaps this is the problem?

The guy who offered me his PC also has a bit of a parts box, with more ram, another 256mb card (can you link two together?) and other bits and pieces.


So am I better off getting a new PC, buying his, using his parts, or buying new bits (If so, what needs replacing first?)

Better FPS is what I'm looking for ATM, then better graphics (but not a priority).

[Anthony]

You can link two graphics cards together, but it only works on certain series of graphics cards (newer ones) and on certain motherboards (probably not yours).
This is called SLI (Nvidia) or CrossFire (ATI/DAAMIT).

$1200 should get you a pretty good computer new - this forum has a good suggestion for a $1000 and a $1500 (plus lots of other price ranges too) brand new build. This may be easier than cherry picking components that work together well and work with your existing setup.

The one from your friend doesn't sound too bad but for $1200, but I would want the price to be quite a bit lower.

I think that the CPU will be first up for FPS issues, or maybe the RAM (although 2 GB should be more than enough) or maybe the motherboard.
Buying a new CPU or motherboard will probably go hand in hand with each other, as the sockets will likely be different, so they won't be compatible.

Maybe a faster hard drive would help, but I doubt it, because I think that FS loads textures and stuff into RAM, so once it's done that the HDD speed shouldn't count for much.

[creator2003]

Hey if i had that money again 1200 id be buying dual core nothing less than 3.0ghz each side "this is most important dude "
8800 8600gts card with 256mb or higher ddr3
2gb to 4gb of ram running XP
600watt psu or more to run the parts
ASUS hardware where possible ...motherboard etc

it is actually cheaper to build your own pc or buy the parts at lest and get the shop to put it together "recomended "
this pc with the explained would run FS9 FSX no problems with any addons that you can put at it

my specs
P4 3.0ghz ht single core
2gb ram
asus mother board
450watt psu needing a upgrade but does the job
8600GTS ddr3 256mb
sata2 HDrives
kicks butt with FSX with more addons than you can think of out FS9 with the same results, cost 1200$ but have upgrade only Graphic card and 1gb ram since having it ,but those parts are now cheaper than when i brought the old ones in it ..
dont waste your time with someones elses cr@p box build your own ,,that pc box of your mates 700$ full stop even i wouldnt pay that for second had trash box

[Ian Warren]

Little heads up , 3gb of ram running XP MAX .. anymore waste of money

[Anthony]

QUOTE (Ian Warren @ Jun 16 2008, 07:01 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Little heads up , 3gb of ram running XP MAX .. anymore waste of money

Yes!
32 Bit Windows, which is XP Home and Pro and most versions of Vista (although there are special versions of both that can do more than this) can not address more than around 3.2 (maybe a bit more) gigabytes of RAM.
This means they can't use any more than around that, so getting more is a waste of money.
It's an annoying, stupid technical limitation, but that's what we get.

[creator2003]

Ah ok im sure ive read HCP say it was around 3.5 out of the four gig being used on XP ? oh well 2-3 is more than enough for FS9 anyways

[Alfashark]

I'd say 2Gb of RAM is about all you'd need.

Old Faithful (my first PC) is almost four years old now, and it is still capable of out-pacing this new one... She was bought straight off the shelf (Harvey Norman) for two reasons:
1. I'm an unashamed consumer-whore
2. I knew bugger all about computers at the time

Probably a similar setup to yours Mike,

P4 3.0
Asus motherboard
1.5Gb RAM (originally 512mb, then 2Gb, since swapped RAM for beer)
500Gb HDD
7600GT 256mb GPU

Normally sits at about 30-35fps with all settings on high...
My screenshot in the comp this month (the Avro) was taken on that machine

Current rig is as follows:

Q6600 2.4 Quad
Asus motherboard
2Gb RAM
7600GT 256 GPU
1.7Tb HDD

Still a notch below my old machine in terms of fps though (both run only FS9)

[HardCorePawn]

The limit is actually 4Gigs of memory address space...

However, as things like Video Cards, Optical Drives, Hard Drives etc. are all run in Direct Memory Addressing (DMA) mode, they take up memory address space... so if you have a 512Meg video card, you're instantly down to 3.5Gigs left for RAM... then throw in a DVD drive and a hard drive or two and you will quickly find you are down to around 3.2 or 3.3Gigs of RAM...

I have seen reports that newer versions of Windows actually report total physical RAM... rather than RAM that can be addressed... so you might get different results showing... but if you are using a 32bit version of XP or Vista, you will not be able to use much more than around 3.5Gigs RAM...

If you do not want to have this issue, go 64Bit and hope the manufacturers have put out drivers for your hardware!