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

I cant make head or tail of what can be clean installed, whether XP has to be installed before a full upgrade, whether OEM's can have any hardware changes or whether downloaded upgrades (e.g. Premium to Ultimate) adopt the same licence as the original install.Take a look at this blog here, particularly the last few posts:http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsv...ents-today.aspxNot sure that MS know either!

I am intregued by the using of 37" LCD ( or larger), TV's for use with FS, I am told that the "p" 1080 is the way to go, they are all somewhat high priced, but the Westinghouse just went down again..........but others are $+600 more.........anybody know why?? Also am told, you can hook up a tuner card and play HDTV on this setup?? Is this a big deal?? What is the parts list for this setup??? Many thanks for the input B42L8

I just upgraded my system, well basically built a new one (all but the case and PS), and now I'm having a strange driver problem (or so it seems). I'm using Vista RC1 (build 5600) on a system with the specs in my sig below. Also using Catalyst 8.31.100.3.2.1 (Beta Vista 32-bit)drivers and NVidia BIOS P24The problem: Through the device manager, I can do a soft uninstall of the X1950XT video card and let Vista do the reinstall without a problem. I start (FSX) and the program starts fine. I continue to setup a flight and then FSX goes into full screen mode and I continue the flight with no problems whatsoever. I can restart the game any number of times and still have no prob…

I still use FS2004. I am using a Nvidia 7900GS (256Mb) videocard, along with an overclocked Athlon FS57 (3.0 Ghz). I am getting a significant difference, of up to about 8 to 10 fps, with 2D over full screen 3D views. Why is that? I use 16X AF and 8X AA. When I turn off those features, it does not seem to make a difference in fps. Again, why the 2/D -- 3/D full screen difference?Thanks in advanceRH

I am looking to upgrade my system to a Pentium D 3.4 processor. The price of The Dual core 2 is a little to high right now. How well would the pentium d perform using FS2004 with Level D and PMDG 747 and 737NG. ThanksRuss Talley

I did a search for Vista at TigerDirect. Can you believe the selection of Vista versions?Two pages worth and this may not be complete.http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...t=Weight%20descSD

My ATI 9800XT started dying, so I bought A Saphire X1950pro AGP.Uninstalled all ATI software and drivers according the ATI instructions and installed the new card. I fist loaded the drivers that came with the card's CD and everything seem to work OK. I then went into the catalyst control center to set my preferences and when I tried to set for 3D, the moniter screen went black and I got a no signal message.I had to shut down the computer and restart everything seemed normal, so I ran dxdiag and the card passed all the tests, both the direct draw, and the direct 3D. I again tried the 3D settings in CCC and againe the black screen and no signal message.I uninstalled the dri…

I found today that my X52 got a weird problem! The rudder (twist) gets locked into one position (auto rudder is off, yaw damper is off too).I can center the rudder with NP 5 but a couple of seconds later I get the same - rudder goes totally to the left side (never to the right!). In slew mode the aircraft (any) turns widly around itself and in the FSIUPC joystick calibration window I can see in the rudder box that the numbers change continously!Any ideas how can I fix this nasty behavior??Many thanksRegardsEdmundo

Hi guys and gals :)Would you please recommend a decent motherboard for E6600 chip with PCIx. Price range, a ball park of $200-300. Thanks in advance. ;)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6299147.stm

BFG 8800GTXIntel Core 2 Duo E6600MSI K9N NEO-FOCZ 2GB PC2-6400 DC Plat Rev 2WD 74 GB SATA Raptor - just for FSXWD 160 GB Sata 2 - for Windows XPAntec 650W TruePower Trio PSULG GSA DVD/RWCreative SB X-Fi ExtremeAlso considering the HD install/partitioning stagedy post for operating system and partition.Thanks,

So I finally got this new system and something doesn't seem right. Please help? This is the memory I have running at 800MHZ : http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memo..._2_dual_channeland this is the Motherboard they supplied me with: http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2...311&modelmenu=1 Which doesn't seem to support that speed of Memory. It appears I need to get the right Motherboard to support the 800mhz ram I have.Thanks,Ken

Greetings All, just installed new nvidia 7800 and wasn't sure how the settings should be.I am waiting for my 3headtogo to arrive.I have never owned an nvidia card but so far the colors alone are quite different from my 850XT Pe. I do get some screen flashing when launching FS9. Any suggestions would be great! Best regardsAndrew

Wish I'd found this before I ordered all my hardware. I bought an AMD64FX-60. Looks like the E6600 walks all over it. The Intel chip was actually cheaper.I don't know how definitive this is but the complete article is here if anyone is interested in the details behind the benchmark:http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2014654,00.asphttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/165789.jpg

Hi guys!is it possible to use dual monitors and display in one cockpit view and in the other spot plane view? How can I do that?Tanks!

I have an ASUS mother board that will only accept the AGP 1.5 volt cards. They (AGP 1.5 volt) are the cards with two notches cut into the gold card connetors as I understand it.My system configuration is as follows.1. Asus P4S8X-MX socket 478 motherboard (supports overclocking but I am having some trouble with that)2. ATI Radeon 9200 128 MB GPU AGP (not good for FS9 or FSX)3. 1MB DDR 3200 unbuffered memory non ecc4. 100 GB serial ATA hard drive (40 Gig unused).5. 60 GB IDE Ultra DMA hard drive (30 Gig unused).6. AGP 8X support (1.5 volts only)7. Pentium 4 2.48 GHz 512/533 processor NO Hyper Threading support (hyper threading does not show up in the Bios with this chip)8. …

Here is the deal in short... I have an older 1 yr old PC which was built by a friend. It has an Asus P4S8X-MX socket 478 mobo, 512MB ram, a 2.48Ghz celeron CPU (no hyper-threading support), a ATI-9200 128MB GPU (junk lol).The goal is to force this box to run FSX at a reasonable pace. I hope I can meet this goal but I am a bit concerned. I know I will not get close to maxing out the settings but somewhere around 1/2 would be nice (I hope). If a new GPU will only get me around 1/3 max speed then it is not worth the effort to upgrade.The questions for the group...1. Which AGP curently on the market seems to be the best performer for SFX and FS2004? Note: I checked with the m…

After a few posts on here asking for advice, I have finally ordered my new system.E6700 Core2Duo4GB 800mhz XMS2 ramAsus P5W Deluxe motherboard500GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7200rpm)150GB SERIAL ATA RAPTOR HDD WITH 16MB CACHE (10000rpm)8800GTX graphics cardCreative X-fi fatality sound card700W PSUSamsung 21" 215TW monitorVista upgradeHas anybody got a similar system to this? What FPS do you get? Are your sliders maxed?What about autogen settings?I'll be interested in peoples input on my system. I'll post here next week with a performance report.Cheers

Hi,I am surprised to find FSX working just fine and smoothly on a low end machine. Here's the specs. It is a technically outdated Dell Dimension 1100 Basic ($300 class PC) with the following upgrades:-Swapped out Celeron 2.53GHz against a Pentium IV 2.8 GHz (FSB 533 MHz)-Upgraded RAM from 256MB to 512MB (DDR 1)-Added SoundBlaster Live Gamer 1024 sound card-Added a PCI (*not* PCI Express!) Geforce 6200 with I believe 256 MB graphics RAM.So overall, this machine has cost about $500 in total and uses some spare parts that I had left over anyway.After an installation of FSX, I found some of the settings for graphics to be WAY too conservative, in particular texture details. I…

I'm trying to remap completely the fsx controls in my keyboard and Saitek X52.To do this I'd prefer to have a complete list of all the mappable commands in FSX but all the lists I've found around are just about the default assigned commands. Does anyone know where I could find the complete list?TIA

Hi all,Building new system with Abit AW9D MB, QX6700 CPU, 2 - 150G Raptor HD's, 8800GTX video card and haven't decided on memory. Any suggestions on memory? Have been considering amoung others Corsairs Dominator 8888 with 4-4-4-12. Comments?Wilbert

Usually, people in the flightsim community are very eager to flatten and reload their systems. Sometimes it's useful, and sometimes it's really not needed. The need to flatten and reload isn't needed now like it was when you upgraded from Win98 to WinXP. There are some big changes. I'll preface by saying that I've been using Vista in it's beta and RTM versions for months at work, and I've just finished upgrading my kid's Dell to Vista. Drivers will probably be your biggest issue right now, as will application compatibility. People often blame the OS, when in reality it's developers that don't follow the SDK that are the real cause of the issue. As many folks look…

Hi,I'm building system with a DFI Infinity 975X board with an E6600 or E6400 with Kingston 800MHz memory an nVidia 8800 (EVGA Superclock) (I built a previous system just like this and the components work well together).I have a choice between a Zalman 9500 92mm fan CPU Cooler or a Zalman 9700 110mm fan CPU Cooler. Will I notice any difference between them?Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

I have at normal Dell 8300/3GHz/2GB/800FSB + Radeon X800/256/AGP Pro that has served very well for my loaded (many add on) FS9 rig. When I added FSX I experienced the usual performance shortfalls that most users have raised, not surprises here. I had the good fortune of obtaining a free Radeon X1650/512 Pro AGP card and thought that this might perform somewhat better than the X800 for texture loading speed and AA and AI. The extra texture memory effect is noticeable in FS9, but not FSX. Also, I noticed that Ray Adam's ATI Tool reports a performance benchmark for the X1650 that is just barely above an older Radeon 9800 AGP and just half the value of my older X800 card. Is …

Hi, I wonder if someone could give me a few pointers on setting this thing up.C2D E66002Gig 800 ram8800GTX Running FS9 was very disappointing, could barely get rid of jaggies even at 16x AA and AF. Lots of flashing and textures swimming. Anyway, they sent me a new card, said it must be faulty. This one is much better, but, still get a flash every few seconds which, I think, is some of the clouds going to almost black, then back to white. Trouble is, there are so many settings in the control panel that I don't understand, so have'nt a clue whether it's set up correctly. To be honest, my old AMD3500/X800xtpe gave almost the same performance and equally good graphics with…