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

Hi Guys, The Inquirer website says unless you are prepared to over-clock your core 2 duo CPU, you can forget about substantial performance increases with the new G80 DX10 card.: "G80, Geforce 8800 GTX is very CPU dependent. Unless you overclock your CPU, you won't get the right performance delta. If you test 3Dmark06 with a 1000MHz overclocked Core 2 Quad or Duo you get 11300 marks. When you test an 8800GTX on a non-overclocked CPU at 2.66GHz you score about 8000+ with 3Dmark06, almost identical to our score with 7950 GX2, the two GPU card. We are sure that this is just the case for 3Dmark and that games will benefit more. Don't say that we haven't warned you - you …

Ok.I currently own a Gateway PC which is a year old. For now, I am thinking of getting a new video card and when time permits, purchasing a new DELL PC once Vista and Directx10 cards are stable.My question here is this: Why not get a new video card now that isn't Direct X10 and later get a second. Anything wrong having 2 video cards on the same PC even if they are different?Tim

Hi everyone,I just got FSX and I am very impressed with the graphics but my computer just isnt giving me any decent frame rates. My computer is a Sony Vaio VGC-RB53 with a 3ghz Pentium 4 procceser and 500mb of ram and the graphics card is still stock. My question is, will upgrading to a better graphics card significantly help my frame rates and overall FSX expierience? I assume the answer is yes but how expensive of a graphics card will I need to purchase to get decent frame rates above 20 fps in high detail settings and can you guys recomend any to me? Is there also any good cards that I can get fairly cheap?Thanks.

Gentlemen,Does anyone have any experience, or have read any reviews dealing with the new Saitek "Aviator AV8R" joystick?I know their latest Cyborg model had a drift problem requiring constant recalibration. In fact, there is an entire write up on the Saitek web site dealing with the Cyborg drifting problem, as well as new drivers to correct this.I do not need this type of problem with a new joystick.Thanks.Stanner

Would anyone know how to get rid of this issue? When attempting to change the Virtual Memory on drive F back to windows managed,I get the runtime error Program:C:WINDOWSsystem32mmc.exe ,and am unable to make the change. Thanks for any help!:-) http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/159932.jpg

I am about to get an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, and had planned to get a fancy Zalman cooler to use instead of the fan provided by Intel. Indeed, I was looking for the OEM version so I wouldn't even have to buy the stock fan. A sales person told me that the Core 2 Duo chips do not run hot and that an after market cooling solution wasn't needed. I was wondering if others who are using the E6700 chip could tell me what their experience has been and what they've done about this. I don't intend to overclock the chip and will only use it in a machine dedicated to FSX.Thanks, Robert

Hi all,I looked in the FAQ but didn't see anything discussing posting items for sale, so thought I'd better ask before doing so.I'd rather post here first rather than going straight to ebay.Thanks,Andrew

Hi all, just want to know how many folks have used NVIDIA nTune 5.0 with their setup and noticed better performance on their machines. Could there be a chance that using automatic setup configuration could ruin your machine? I really nervous about tweaks and overclocking.http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.00.06.06.htmlThanks,Bill

Anyone know if there's a way to feed just the canned ATC to headphone and have the other sounds coming out the speakers??I use Wide FS, anyway to do to with WideFS?Thanks,James

Hi AllYesterday I installed new ATI Catalyst 6.9 drivers, and installed more RAM on my PC.After installing I saw in the Task Manager that my system was running more services than it normally does.I went to Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Services.There I was deactivating something that causes the Computer to prevent Defragmentation !!When I go to The Disk Defragmenter Dialog box and hit 'Defragment' nothing happens - just nothing - no messages or anything. I can hit the button several times with no luck. :( :-hmmm Anyone know anything about what Services can cause this to happen?RegardsHenrik KorningBGGH

I posted on this forum a week ago with symptoms of graphics (and sometimes sound) freezes. This appears mainly (and reliably) with FSX, and did occur occasionally with this new system of mine in FS9.I had expected that it could be the PSU, and so today installed a 500W PSU to replace my previous 350W unit. The problem still occurs, however I'm glad to have the potential of a PSU issue now resolved for the future.While the case was off and when I was testing to ensure that all fans were operating, I noted that one of my RAM sticks was much hotter than the other, in fact it was too hot to touch for any more than a few seconds. The other could be touched continously, and …

I have my AA and AF settings on my ATI control panel and not in the sim. I have an ATI Radeon x800 pro card. When you first boot into the sim everything is fine. If you exit and come back the AA and AF settings are gone and everything is jagged. Why do the settings go away? I have to reboot the computer and then go into the sim to get my settings back. I don't get it. Can anyone enlighten me on what I'm doing wrong? I'd appreciate any help.Lee

Hi folks,I'm beginning to order new hardware for my new pc and I've decided on the following pieces of hardware:XFX GeForce 7950 GT Xtreme 512MB PCIe w/Dual DVI graphics card.AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 San Diego 2.8GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor.CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory.DFI NF4 Ultra Infinity Audio/GB-LAN/IEEE-1394/PCI-E/SATA3G/DDR/ATX 64 939 motherboard.2 WD Caviar SE16 250GB SATA 300MB/s 16MB cache 7200RPM hard drives.How do think this will run FS9 and/or FSX?Thanks in advance.

I have a 9800pro 128MB card. While I can get a satisfying performance fps wise by careful sliders settings, I wonder if I could improve this by making a small investment in a card with more ram? In particular I have serious problems panning left and right (the fsx.cfg bufferpool tweek does help with this but causes other side effects) and regularly in general flight my fps drops from around 20fps to below 5 for a few seconds. There are also some stutters. Last night for the first time I was just flying around and all my scenary went blurry at once. No idea what happened there.Memstatus reports that I can run below 256MB for the most part, however I've been turning on…

After applying a few of the "tweaks" my old P4 3.4, 2 Gig Ram system is running FS quite nicely now. Good FPS in the High teens and 20's. But using Seattle as my test bed I still see textures not quite keeping up. Probably because I have a 256MB ATI X800XT All-In-One.Has anyone bumped up their 256 card to a 512 card and notice any significant texture improvement? I would be willing to drop a few bills for a top 512 AGP card to hold me over until DX10's come out.

A nice informative write-up about DirectX 10 has been posted over at FiringSquad.com. Follow the link.http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/direct...iew/default.aspOne of the points I found interesting from the Tim Sweeney interview in the article."FiringSquad: A lot has been made about the speed boost DirectX 10 will bring over DX9. In part due to the new driver model and in part due to other efficiencies. In your position you get to work with the latest hardware

Could someone give me the short course for setting the AGP Aperture in the BIOS?I've already done it but I want to know why I see a graphic performance increase.When I got my Dell 8300 it already came set-up. I had a 9800 pro 128MB video card, when I screwed it up. I went out and got the first AGP card I could find. It was a ATI 9550 256MB. I've had it for awhile and was following a thread about setting the memory in the BIOS to 256 for the AGP aperture setting because FSX needed it.My BIOS has 32,64,128 and 256 for the AGP Aperture settings. Mine was set to 128. I don't have FSX yet but I saw a boost in performance in FS9 to the point I've increased the quality settings…

I just read where both Samsung and Dell, as companies, have advised that any system running the future VISTA operating system will need TWO GIGS OF SYSTEM RAM or more for the benefits of VISTA over XP to be seen. That's just for the SYSTEM, let alone what FSX seems to want to use!http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/10/27/dell_2gb_vista/I just ordered two more GIGS from MICRON to add to my one for a total of three. One of the white papers said that VISTA will be very good at CACHING session and program files...and will greatly speed up the input/output to the screen The more RAM you will have available for VISTA to use, will be what will maximize its performance over XP.Between V…

Hi all!I have just bought an FSX Deluxe. Until now I had an FS9 with tons of payware and freeware addons. I run on a Radeon X850XT Pro on a 3.0Ghz P4HT with 512 DDR-2 RAM. I have enough power for my FS9. For example, I can fly into, say, FlyTampa Dubai in a VC of a Level-D 767, with max AI traffic, max detail AS6 weather and all other settings set at max and won't have significant frame rate lags. If I overclock my card a tiny bit it becomes even better. Now, with FSX, at max setting, but no addons and no significant weather, I get the worst frame rate lags ever!! Switching between views takes ages! Is the FSX really that much of a graphic advance over the FS9 so that eve…

Hi everybody;I have a ATI RADEON 9250 Video card (256MB) but i can

Hi allFirst off I,m not posting to show off far too old for that:),My old PC went to silicone heaven yesterday,I normally like to buy compenents and build my own, but today I bought a prebuilt HP PC at a price that was less that the parts would have cost me.Intel 6600 2.4gig2 gig ramATI X1600SE(weak link I think)My old PC was a Northwood [email protected] 256mb1 gig ram.I was hoping for a nice increase in performance and I got it:)Same settings in demo at TNCM in my old computer gave around 20FPS at best.Here;s what I got with the new system.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/159672.jpgThis is using an un-tweaked demo install, dropping 900 mhz from the p4 and the fr…

I'm going to build a new system for FSX, and I've never built a PC before. I'm looking for some advice, and have questions as well. I'd love for the system to come in around or under $1,750 (including monitor. I'd appreciate any comments on the components I've tentatively IDd, and if you see an opportunity to shift dollars from one component to another to better the result, I'd like to hear that, as well. (My current system is a P4 1.6 Ghz with a GE Force 5200, so anything should be a big improvement.) Also, having not built before, I'm paranoid I'll forget to order appropriate cables or other accessories, particularly around the OEM components, so call those out, as …

I probably should have waited until the bugs got worked out, but all my controls worked really well in the demo so I went ahead and purchased FSX Deluxe(so when the SDK comes out I can work with it).From the get go I noticed uncontrolled turning to the left despite trim adjustments and recalibrations with my CH yoke and pedals. I also note that I have tried to reassign some of the keys in the sim, but they never change even if I delete the assignment completely.I seem to recall a similar problem when FS5 came out, and MS had to develop a patch to fix it. I have not found anyone else in the forums experiencing these particular problems. Oh yes I almost forgot the mixture l…

Hi All,I was looking to try out some different display drivers for my Nvidia card to see if I could squeeze out a few more fps in FSX.I looked on the Guru 3d website and reviewed the description of forceware driver version 92.91. It says it supports my card, so I decided to download it and try it out. Upon beginning installation, I get this scary looking warning dialog box from Microsoft saying that this is an unsigned driver and that Microsoft STRONGLY advises not to install it. Well I installed it anyway and indeed I do see some performance improvement now in FSX.But then I got to thinking about that warning, and I'm having second thoughts. Can using an unsigned driver …

I just went from a GF6800 128 meg card to a GF6800X 256 meg card.Are there any suggested settings changes that I should consider in my bios AGP?thanks