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

Was there ever any resolution to the problem of SP2 and NVidia Graphic card "issues"?I am using an 8500GT in a Vista 32 bit system and am happy with the card, but if I install FSX SP2 some of my colors go haywire. In two non-default airplanes, the propeller arcs in the VC either break up or turn solid black.Actually I have found no advantage in installing the SP2 update anyhow. Performance is fine without for my activities. However, I notice that some of the add-ons specify SP2 and state they will not work without it.I am using the latest recommended NVidia drivers as listed for the 8500GT yesterday, and yes, SP1 is installed.Thrakete

Would be very grateful if anybody could measure the width of the base of CH pedals (either cms or inches, please say which!)and let me know. It may seem a strange question but I need to know to see if they will fit in a new flight deck area I am creating. It could be an expensive mistake if I buy and have got it wrong!!ThanksYorkshire

I invite you to have a look at that post for Nick's Tune-Up results upon a Dell XPS V3 P4.3.4Ghz . The tune-up is a software-side system tune-up that if followed (his explicit instructions to the letter!) has yielded some pretty amazing performance gains as regards my FSX usage. It will, perhaps for yourselves as well. :)Mitch

Greetings all! I'm upgrading my video card from a 7600GS to the 8800GT. In an attempt to get my ducks in a row before the card arrives, I was wondering which drivers seem to work best with that card. I'm running FS9 SP1 in WinXP. I have so far downloaded the lastest drivers (that I know of anyway) 169.31 and also an older set, 163.76. I have Nhancer installed, but I have also downloaded the newer version of that also.Speaking of Nhancer, I am currently running v32.3.1, and will be installing v32.3.2. Will the new version overwrite my profiles?Regards,Scott KJMS (or thereabouts)

Did any of you think of or even tried it out, running FS9 on two physical drives. Scenery.cfg easily allows for configuring Scenery to be read on another drive, so would it be faster for loading and performance inflight to have two drives share the work, say between scenery loading (for example airports and mesh scenery) and rest (aircraft...). Simply offloading work to another drive.

My old P4 @ 3.0Ghz and PCI-only slots couldn't run FSX with more than 7-12 fps. I had post-SP2 blurries, I had stutters, and all kinds of problems preventing me to switch from FS9.Well, my MoBo just died. I was set to buy a new Mac Pro 8-core system, but not at this time. So, for a modest upgrade, I got a new MoBo with dual core processor, and loaned a good PCIe GPU from a friend (see my sig). NOW, it's flyable! I finally got to enjoy FSX, with smooth frames, nice colors, crisp textures! Weather, traffic, everything seems to be getting just right. So, I will finally be able to fly the sim, instead of desperately tweaking it.I'm very happy now with my FSX, and I'll probabl…

I've noticed a few times now that my machine freezes and the hard drive "grunts" alot. It has been my observation that this means the drive is having problems and retrying operations.Is there a way in XP Home to look for drive errors? Something like "dmesg" in Linux?I've tested it from Linux and it looks ok, but I want Window's perspective.I just ran a backup too. :)I'd like to catch it before it blows so I can "dd" it to another drive.

Having some real problems and getting really frustrated. Was hoping someone here with some proven credability could assist.Have a HP Q6600 Quad core cpu with 3gb ram and a sub-par G8400GS video card. Platform is Vista 32. Video display is an LG 42" Hi-Def LCD television.The problem I have is anti-aliasing. I have used both the NVidia applet as well as NHancer in an attempt to anti-alias without success. Have installed a host of various drivers all with same or similar results. The anti-aliasing simply will not work. However, oddly enough, selecting anti-aliasing within FS9 does provide beautiful results. Unfortuntely, at a huge cost. The FPS, which is set to 30, will drop…

Yesterday, I replaced my RAM with 2 sticks (from one package) of Kingston DDR2-667 RAM. My motherboard has a 1066 FSB - but the manual says that it can take either 533 RAM or 667 RAM.I started to have strange crashes to desktop- in FS9 - but also in things like Firefox and Google Earth. Another BAD thing that was also happening was that all of a sudden , the machine was running CHECKDISK on every bootup - and finding weird things. I think that I have read somewhere that faulty RAM causes this.When booting into BIOS, the first (main screen) shows what RAM is installed, including it's speed. When you go to the BIOS screen in which you select the RAM speed for the installed…

Guys, those of you, who have used that switch enabling the use of 4GB RAM under WinXP, do you think it is good for running FSX? Can you share your experience and impressions you have accumulated by now?Thanks.

Does anyone know if there would be an increase in performance if I bought a 512Mb video card compared to the 256Mb video card that I have? Currently, I have a geForce 7900 GS and was thinking about upgrading to an 8 series card. Would the investment be worth it, or would the framerate increase be neglible compared to the investment? Any insight provided is appreciated. ThanksShafter

Although it won't help us who use FSX, the DX10.1 compliant cards are starting to show up in retail outlets: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/8973/index.html. No, it's not NVIDIA or ATI...Jim

...tweaking my display that is. I have come to the conclusion that I am limited by my video card and that's all there is to it. This is after my friend brought over his eVGA 8800GTX and drivers and we installed it in my Dell Q6600 over some beers last night. The performance of his $450 video card is significantly better than my 8600GTS. That's about 10fps faster than mine, instant scenery changes and no stutters whatsoever. And his card was running in some sort of protected mode because I don't have enough power connectors for his fans. Jeez that thing is huge!So since I don't have $450 to burn (Oh and I need to upgrade my 425W power supply to 475W to run it properly) I a…

PROCESSOR Intel

Is anyone here using Microsoft Flight Sim X under boot camp on, specifically, a recent Mac Pro?If so would you please be kind enough to share your recommendations, experiences, add-ons, flight sim equipment and your system specs? I am looking at the GEFORCE 8800 GT as the graphics option as this seems the most appropriate.I am seriously thinking of a mac pro rather than a high-end iMac as a longer term (and upgradeable) work/play option.Many thanks.

so this is the story with my internet connection...I have Charter cable....it used to be good, but now I can't enjoy online games. For instance, Battlefield 2 says "Losing key packets," and the internet is just plain slow. sometimes sites even time out...I have already called my ISP, and someone is coming out to look at it in a few days. What could be the problem?I connect to a Netgear WGR614v8 wireless router to the modem, to the cable in the wall. My wife also has her PC connected to the router. Both PC internet browsing capabilities are very slow, especially during the day, 10am - 9pmI've tried connecting directly to the modem and it is the exact same speed. I've…

:-cool Now; is this the ideal motherboard for FSX that we all need?:-badteeth http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/02/05/re...tel_skulltrail/:-hahPS. The Damien Hirst comment refers to this thing:-http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=...l%3Den%26sa%3DN

I know RAM overclocking isn't really necessary. Anyways, I got my RAM running at DDR2-961 MHz. How do I know I've reached the RAM limit, and what is the most efficient/effective DDR2 speed for me?Thanks,BoeingGuy

I used to use PowerStrip for this, but alas it is not compatible with my system. So, I'm using nV control panel with latest WHQL + nTune. I am able to change the clock and memory settings, but when I reboot, it's back to default. What's the method for this? Many thanks in advance,NoelQX9650 @ 4.0GHz/1.285 vCore / 8GB PC-800 Mushkin (cheap!) / evga 8800GT @ 660Mhz / 2xSATA 2 drives /

I'm getting no hits for advice and comments regarding the following system, I am thinking of building myself. After you read from below, what FPS (median) do you think I will achieve on this new machine?Thanks. I just want a comparison to my P4 3.4Ghz used as a baseline.---------------------------------------------My proposed new FSX machine:PROCESSOR Intel

I flew north out of Seattle with the sliders for mesh and texture nearly maxed until the program crashed, and I made notes of readings as follows:Total available system memory = 3.582GB (out of 4GB installed)Total Memory usage at crash = 72% of above (27% without FSX)FSX memory usage at crash = 1.556GBRemaining available memory at crash = 0.995GBThere were the customary scenery spikes into the sky and floating autogen prior to crashing and then the message displayed that my computer was out of memory. Why doesn't more of the installed memory get used, or is this actally a video card memory issue?This type of crash often happens with long flights and with less memory usag…

im not getting one but i found them at amazon.com and a few others.

With just adding UTX-USA, UTX-Canada, and GEXnhanced to my FSX portfolio, I thought it was a very good time to do a complete back-up of my hard drive. So, (whew...) it just completed with a full verify, and my system is safe against software loss.I thought to ask when was the last time YOU did a full back-up of your hard drive and protect yourself against software loss, and the tens-of-hours to try and find it all, CD's and floppy,source it upon the Net, and then once again load it onto your system?I had a hard-drive failure once, as well as a loss (couldn't find a piece of software again upon the Net)of a valued software...and now make sure that I back-up my system every…

I am about to purchase hardware and need some advice. After Mikes glorious posts on the 3870x2 I have purchased one. I have decided to go with an Asus Maximus Formula running 1066 DDR2 ram. My quandry is what cpu. I had planned to get the Q66oo and o/c it to 3GHz. My local hardware and geek shop has the new E8400 which they will warranty and o/c to 4.2. Which way to go? More cores or raw speed?Thanks for the help.Kevin

I have six PC's each running a separate simulator in our museum. Each is using three 19" monitors with Matrox TripleHead2Go. (That's 18 monitors I have to get up and running). I can get them all up and running and they're fine. The Matrox light is "green" and I get all three monitors working great with FS. When I reboot a PC, however, the Matrox box may or may not give me the green light. Then I have to chase around switching cables, monitors, what have you, trying to get the Matrox box tricked into thinking it likes what it's talking to. Does anyone else have inconsistencies in getting the TripleHead2Go to initialize consistently after a normal shutdown? Do …