System Hardware: PC | MOBO | RAM | CPU | HDD | SSD | PSU etc

Funny thing just happened to me, when listing the AVSIM library for Nick Needham's "Nick's AI Jet Exhaust affects", to make sure there wasn't a more recent version in the library, when I came across "Nick's Sun Affects" and all his other affects files uploaded over the years, many of which I am very familair with and have used over the past couple of versions of FS.And, as I was looking at the sun affects jpg, I recalled NickN (of hardware fame in this forum, simviation, and GEX-forum) talking about his god-rays sun in a few other threads.Then someone must have hit me over the head, becuase it finally dawned on me that Nick Needham of the affects-files fame is NickN of ou…

Here are the specs:* eVGA 132-CK-NF78 780i SLI Motherboard (Supports three-way SLI and 45nm Intel Processors)* Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 STEPPING Processor Overclocked at 3.6Ghz(with the best vertical pipe aftermarket cooling)* GeForce 8800ULTRA 768MB Graphic card(SLI Ready)* 4GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2 1000 SLI ready Memory made with Micron D9 chip* Western Digital Caviar 500GB HDD* Western Digital Raptor 150GB HDD* CoolerMaster Real Power 850W Power Supply The pc is not online and at present FSX sits on the 500GB Caviar drive all by itself.The OS and little else is on the Raptor. At present FSX plays pretty well.The concensus seemed to have been that FSX runs bet…

I found this on another forum. Does it work as advertised in FS9?"I've read this from a free download this morning, so I thought I'd post it on here for those that dont know. Dual core processors: FS9 allegedly doesn

I have a PALIT NVIDIA 6600GT AGP 256M DDR3 videocard. I use the 84.21 drivers for it. Reason for this is that when I tried the 94.XX driver I got problem in FS9. I had no planes in preview windows in fullscreen mode and the 84.21 solved that. Also I was told that the newer drivers was only good for later cards 7 8 9 series.But lately I have experienced occasional crashes were the video drivers are reported as faulty. In addition to that I see it stated explicitely that 6600GT is supported by the latest driver and that these improves performence in DX9.Does anybody use the latest drivers on a 6600GT?When I got to NVIDIAS website and try outAutomatically find drivers for my…

Hi everyone,My fsx p.c. for no good reason decided it wouldn't connect to the internet at all, and after many hours of futile attempts at a solution I went for broke and did a reinstall of WinXP Home.That solved the connection problem as it now connects properly, but of course I'm now faced with the curse of the reinstalls!I installed fsx on a separate sata hdd, but that won't make any difference as registry settings and anything else which would have had any reference on the old C: drive have been lost in the new installation.I've had enough and once everything is back on and virginal once more I want to find some solution which will effectively "ghost" my entire p.c. (I…

Can someone recommend a CPU cooler for a Q9450 that will fit an ASUS P5E3 Premium MB. I purchased a Zalman 9500A but could not get it installed as the clamp hits the cooling fins on the motherboard. Are there any coolers that will fit this MB?Any recommendations much appreciated.Ken

I'm thinking of replacing a wired LAN with a wireless one using a router, but have noted while looking around that there are 2 types of 'wireless". -N and -G. The "N" version appears to cost more so I assume it's maybe faster?. Can anyone tell me what the difference and if there is any backwards/forwards compatibility between the two?Thanks- Bruce.

I have FSX with accelleration pack, and Generation X add on scenery for uk, running on an AMD 3700+, ATI 1650 (512MB).When I try to switch to Full screen mode, it takes ages to load up, eventually you get graphics of the cockpit which is displayed ok, but the scenery outside the window is not right (Looks like a wall grey rocks!!!), the display also flashes on and off at a rate of about 1 second. If I return to the windowed display (ALT+Enter), it is slow to respond but eventually goes back ok and everything is displayed ok.When I first loaded it on it worked ok (Well most of the time), but now I cant get it to load up in full screen mode at all. Even areas with no add on…

First off, I just want to say that I've appreciated all the help I've received in this forum in past posts. I hope you can be as helpful again.I find myself in an interesting position. After bargaining with my wife, I have $1200 to build a new rig. Now I come to my dilemma: wait until Nehalem arrives (option 1) or build now (option 2)?1) Keep my Dell Dimension 8400 up and running (3.2 GHz Pentium 4 with 2 Gbytes RAM) until the Nehalem processors arrive with their new mobos? Pros: Nehalem promises to be a better micro-architecture with internal memory management plus GDDR3 memoery and PCIE 2.0 becoming standard on MOBOs. My Dell still runs Open Office, Firefox, Quick…

Folks,I just noticed a new nvidia driver for XP was released today.http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_175.16_whql.htmlI wonder how it will help (or not help) fps in FSX.I'll try it out tonight.Cheers,Teddie

Last summer I bought a used X45 HOTAS on Ebay for US$20. The joystick, as I suspected it would be, was badly off center, but I didn't care -- I wanted it for the throttle. That works quite well, except that the thumb wheel (which I like to use for elevator trim) is kind of spikey. Has anyone here ever repaired one of these, either by replacing a potentiometer (something I've never done with anything) or by cleaning contacts?

Hi FolksIn the last couple of weeks I have noticed that my new PC has developed a problem where when I start it up sometimes when it launches the desktop it then crashes and restarts itself for no reason. It does not happen all the time but when it does happen sometimes it will crash and restart a few times before it becomes stable again. The only thing that I have been able to see is that when it crashes I get a blue screen with lots of writing and the thing that stands out says DRIVER IRQL...... (that

Hello all my fellow flightsimmer. I hope you can help me with this one. I am a long time user of FS presently using FS9. I recently changed my graphics card from an Nvidia 7900GT to a 9600GT in the hopes of improving performance. This is not a problem with FPS. The problem is that for some odd reason image sharpness has been greatly reduced and FS9 seems to ignore all the changes in the graphic card settings. Whenever I set my antialiasing and anisotropic filtering options in my old card to 8x my images was crisp and very well defined. No matter what I do with my new card in terms of settings my images are full of jaggies and it is very annoying considering the fact…

Hey all,I have been tweaking, reading and pulling hair out for weeks trying to get my FS9 setup on my new rig up to par. The problem is with shimmering and flashing textures, you know, pretty common problems. I am using Nhancer 2.4.1 with the Nvidea 174.74 drivers on top of my 8800GTS 512 card. Here is the issue I have. I can get an awesome sharp and shimmer-free image using the 4X4 supersampling option in Nhancer. The trade off is huge though, I can barely get more than 12 FPS in Maxed out wx using 512*512 DXT AS6 textures. Scaling down to a whopping low 64*64 cloud texture doesnt help much either. Further tweaking has shown that using the combined option, 16XS, has giv…

Hi GuysSorry if this is a stupid question but i wonder if anyone could clarifya quick point.I'm looking to upgrade to a 8800GTX or 9800GTX graphics card and they require a x16 PCI Express connection:-http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130449According to the spec, my mobo, a Gigabyte GA965P-DS3, does indeed, have the x16 PCI express connection. However, i've seen PCI Express 2.0 mentioned regarding grahics cards and this has confused me slightly. http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mother...?ProductID=2456Are they one of the same or is my PCI Express x16 non-compatible ?Many thanksGary

Hi, does anybody have any useful tips for installing a new graphics card ?I am taking out a 7950GT and installing a BFG 8800 GT OC 512Mb.I believe I can continue to use the same driver which has worked well, 169.21 I believe.Is there anything I must do prior to changing cards or after, particularly regarding the FS config file ?Any help gratefully recieved as I am a complete novice when it comes to whats in the case !!Regards JohnCore2 Duo 66002048 MB DDR160GB HDDNVidia 7950 512mbCH Products Yoke & PedalsHead TrackerRC4AShttp://fs2crew.com/linepilot.jpg

well, i'm finally making the leap. my aging P4 has been struggling to keep up with the latest and greatest applications. so i ordered a bunch of parts, which should be here early next week. here are the specs...Q6600 Core 2 Quad CPUASUS P5N-E SLI Motherboard4GB DDR2800 RAM8800GT 512MB500GB SATA HDD (for Vista 32-bit)320GB SATA HDD (for XP 32-bit)i've failed to keep up with computer technology the past few years, so i've been doing a lot of catch-up reading. i'm also trying to prepare for all the OS/software installations i'm gonna have to do. but i just have a few questions...1) as you can see, i'm planning on doing a dual boot setup. i've read that you have to install XP…

A couple days ago, I installed a set of 5.1 speakers for my computer (Logitech X-540). So far so good. Can't say, though, that I've noticed a big difference in FSX. Two questions, then:1. What should I listen for?2. Is there something I need to do to enable 5.1 sound in FSX? In Win XP control panel, under Advanced Audio Properties, "speaker setup" is already set to "5.1 surround sound speakers." My onboard audio (Realtek HD) supports 5.1, and I have confirmed that each speaker is getting its proper surround sound output. (And before anyone says, "Get a dedicated audio card, I already have one on order, X-fi XtremeGamer.)

Hi Folks:I am a new user of Track IR (got it yesterday). I downloaded the optimized FS2004 profile from the natural point website and it seems to work OK. I do have some periodic shaking of the view; both the airplane and outside view shakes. Does anyone know how to fix this? I also had to invert the pitch and yaw axis because the original setup seemed to work just the opposite; i.e. my head up. sim head down!Thanks for any help and advice for a new user!Airbus

Anyone have any experience with these? Seems like a great idea -- but do they work?? Do they actually keep the heat down inside? How loud are they? And what's the power consumption like vis a vis your home energy bill?Most of the reviews I see are over 3 years old (2005!!) so any info would be appreciated.

Is there anything in the "rulebook" that says you must run a sim such as FSX on a PC tower to max performance as opposed to running it on a high powered laptop? I just looked at some DELL XPS laptops and they have some incredible spex and capabilities. But would an XPS laptop connected to a 30" LCD make FSX and heavy duty add-ons run as well as a maxed out XPS tower? Just curious about this.JS

I've had several discussions on this and other forums over the apparent poor performance of my ATI 3870X2 in heavy cloud compared to the nVidia 8800 cards.I'm in discussion with AMD support as to why the 3870X2 - their reference card - performas so poorly compared to the nVidias but as to whether the drivers can be improved is anyone's guess.So I've been looking at reviews on TomsHardware of the nVidia 9800GTX and 9800GX2 cards. The latter is a dual-GPU chip card with 1Gb of memory. Similar to my 3870X2. Their cheaper card is a revamped 8800 with 512Mb of memory.You'd think the 9800GX2 would be a clear winner but take a look at these two reviews and you might be surprised…

I hope someone can help with a problem I have with a newly acquired 8800GTX because it's driving me mad.I changed from a 3870X2 because of poor performance in cloud but since I put this new card in I keep getting lockups in FSX and it's just rebooted after a BSOD. Looking at the Error Log I'm having problems with nHancer via .NET Runtime 2.0 Error Reporting.The symptoms are this. Flying along in full forward view after a few minutes the sim locks solid. The view is still present but the screen keeps flickering every few seconds. I don't know whether it's a hardware or software problem but the error log suggests nHancer may be responsible.It's very difficult to get contro…

Hi ,I am going to buy a new processor but can't decide wich one.A quad 9455 or a dual 8500.It is for a watercooled system and i'm going to overclock it al least trying. :-)Wich one is the best .Thanks in advance.G

I'm super confused about the structure of this forum. So I am ever so sorry if I ask a question wich has already been answered. I did my best to understand the replies and topics.Right now I have an 8800GTS 320 MB gfx. I think the graphics look alrigt, and I have tried to be realistic about the settings -I know it is not the most impressive gfx. But eventhough I believe I keep it realistic, I still think the graphics are a little choppy.I have changed everything from bi-linear, tri-linear, and anisotrophic, and lots and lots of other settings. But whatever I do, I still think that the graphics are a little choppy.off course I have also changed the complexity setting, but …