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

Do any of you use the "Sim Cockpit Systems" setup with flight simulator? http://www.simcockpitsystem.com/I'm contemplating this configuration http://www.simcockpitsystem.com/Detail.bok?no=15 ...however I'm curious as to how well it plays into standard pc use, i.e., web browsing, word processing, etc. I have to share this setup with the wife! :( Thanks.Ed Lin, D.O.S.

I am looking to get a bit more speed and fluidity out of my computer. I am considering either getting more RAM or a newer processor. What would be the best. I am currently running an Athlon 1.85 ghz processor and 1 GB of RAM. I think the video card is okay as it. It is a ATI 9500 128MB card. Anyway, looking for suggestions on this or maybe you might have other ideas to look into.I am currently running windows XP so I don't know if another gig of ram will help smooth things out a bit.Thank you for the assistance...Kevin

Hello all...I just wanted to word my opinion here. I really thought I would be doing an upgrade when I went from x800Pro to 7800GT... But man, I was wrong....With my ATI I ran at 4xAA at full settings and got no less than 25FPS everywhere, with 100% 3D Clouds, lots of traffic, the works, at any given airport...When I installed my 7800GT with the same specs, I was seeing 14-17FPS in the same places that I before saw at 25+fps.. Plus, 4xAA in the ATI can only be compared to Nvidia's 8xs, so it would be even less fps if I turned it up to 8xs.Noow, I have installed Nvidia's 81.85 and 77.77 drivers. I am keeping 77.77 because I think there's a little more performance in the…

I finally picked up the quadrant to compliment my CH Yoke and Pedals. I was using the CH Throttle Pro (which I still like). Boy, it sure feels strange. Being a non real-world pilot, it feels the the levers are really small. Are they or is this about normal?Especially if I go with a two engine set up they seem hard to grasp. Could be just getting used to them after using the big ol' CH Throttle Pro for so long (and now I have to switch from my left and to my right! ;) )Thinking of making my own custom knobs so that one big knob covers across two control axis. Anybody tried that?Also couple of other questions (I could search the forums but since I got your attention..…

After running fs for about 20 minutes with my new ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128mb version), textures start blurring and than don't reload at all! This is true for the aircraft textures (a/c stays blank after loading), vc textures (blank parts too) and terrain textures (very blurred). I'm using the omega drivers version 5.6 and the card is overclocked to 430/750.I understand many people have a radeon 9800 pro using fs, is this a known issue? I'm thankfull for any advice!thanks-CG

Hi all.I was wondering whether someone might be able to recommend a reliable joy stick.I've just about had a gut full of purchasing crap hardware. I've gone through four joy sticks, one of which was only out of warrenty by a few months. Top Gun Fox 2 Pro USB: throttle and rudder stopped working;Top Gun Fox 2 Pro Shock: can't remember, but eventually unusable;Logitech something or other: rudder stopped working;Saitek Cyborg Evo Force: throttle stopped working.Now, I'm not 16 so I don't give these things a hard time. They mostly are used to 'slew' around in FS for the purpose of designing scenery.The tech guy at the shop where I purchsed the last stick claims the Saitek Cyb…

I am looking for some good speakers. Does anyone have familiarity/using the Logitech Z-5500 Digital package or something comparable?Thanks!

Hi everyone, Im gonna be purchasing CH's yoke and pedals someday but right now money is a little tight(More importatnt things to take care of).I currently own a Logitech wingman extreme but it shut down on me. So im wondering what joystick you would recommend at a cheap price(Around 40$ or so) just for now.ThanksP.S Im currently on hold for FS because of my joystick, I cant resort to the keyboard, It just doesnt work for me LOL :)

My second hard drive was dog slow. I was considering using it for some FS9 scenery, so did some performance checks. This drive is a standard Maxtor ATA133 drive. I ran HD Tach on it, and only got a 7 MB/s sustained and CPU usage > 99%. But all the checks I ran (looked at the BIOS on my MSI K8N Neo2) SiSoft, and Maxtor Max Blast all said it was running UDMA6 (I remember in the past, you had to run a drive utility to get the drive to run at UDMA speed, but this drive was set for that out of the box). So I started some web searching, and came across a link to MS KB 256086, applies to WinXP and Win 2000. What this KB covers, is that it turns out XP can reset your dri…

I made that mistake up until a month ago or so. Two eVGA 6600GT's on a Athlon64 3500+ OC'd ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe 1Gb XMS3500C2PT with SATA Raid0. I saw a definite improvement as soon as I pulled the second GPU with increased FPS and less stutters. I've traded in the pair for an eVGA 6800GT and I couldn't be happier.My theory is, on one PCIx card you are running full 16 pipelines throught the first GPU. When you insert the second card, enable SLI in the driver or not, you split the pipelines in half, 8 for each PCIx slot. This game will not utilize the second GPU/PCIx slot to any great extent and you lose half your GPU bandwidth through the first PCIx slot where most of the …

I've just purchased the CH Yoke, pedals and the throttle quad, and finding it difficult to set up, yes I can use the default settings, but I would like to make it so if I press one switch up it puts the wheels up, push it down, the wheels go down etc.Apparently the only way I can do this is using a map function in the control software.Fine and dandy, but wouldn't I be reinventing the wheel? Surely someone is able to share one they've made?I have narrowed my flying to four planes - 737, bae146, b1900d and a single prop.Would anyone be interested in sharing their map files, etc?ThanksLaurence

Hi all,I seem to be having lots of shimmering textures. I am using the ATI 9800 Pro 128mb video card with the ATI 5.10 drivers. I installed these drivers fresh with no previous drivers installed. The problem is this, when I go to FS2004 and set the mip map quality to 8x from 4x, I get more shimmering. When I go to 3x the shimmering is less, I was thinking that with 8x I should have less shimmering but maybe I got it mixed up. I am using a resolution of 1152 by 864 by 32. My taxi way signs are dancing all over as well as the mountains when I fly to British Columbia when I use 4x.thanks a bunch,

Nvidia released a new set of beta drivers in both 32 & 64 bit flavors last night. Nothing specific to FS9 in the release notes but maybe fixing something else will improve the 81.85 issues in FS9. Now who's gonna be the first to try 'em and give us a a report? :) I intend on trying the 64 bit versions after work today...The drives can be downloaded from Nvidia's website, here...http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_download...betadriver.htmlAl

Wrong forum, by accident. Moderator please delete. Sorry.Look in the "MS Flight Simulator General Discussion Forum"

Donny AKA ShalomarFly 2 ROCKS!!!It all started when I was on the IBM websie and accepted an offer to scan my computer for upgrades. I've been flomoxed ever since. My specs changed after the problem started so I have two lists....Windows XP SP1 CURRENT LISTPentium III 550 MGHAmibios 1.03(k) 1999Trigem Napoli-2 motherboard 62-314B00299-00101111-071595-446BX-NAPOLI--H Integrated soundRadeon 7500 64 meg DDR vid card EDIT: I get a PCI IRQ routing error on CMOS read.Crystal Sound Fusion Audio device registering conflict, code 15 under ME but 12 under XP (resourses not available) Legacy Audio drivers (Crystal was always there and worked fine, don't know where Legacy came from,…

I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with a Pentium 4 3.4G HT , and 1GB of 530 Mhz Ram and a Nvidia 6800 GTO graphics card. . Would I gain anything, expanding the Ram to 2 GB?

I just want to share this with you. Please do not start the Intel vs AMD discussion again.I haven't read the complete text yet, so I do not know which hardware and FS2004 settings were used. But please feel free to read it here:http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1876715,00.asp

Moderator feel free to remove this post from this forum. I just wanted my fellow simmers to read this interesting (hardware related) thread:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=11049&page=

Hey all... I wanted to get your feedback on my planned system. I'm still playing around with some things here and there but I'm relatively settled on this:Case - http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?...N82E16811119023Monitor - http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?...N82E16889107001Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?...N82E16813131540CPU - http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?...N82E16819103546Video Card - http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?...N82E16814143036Memory - http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?...N82E16820145575Hard Drive - http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?...N82E16822144160DVD-RW - http://www.newegg.com/pr…

Hi all, I have a packard bell imedia 3054 PC. The motherboard only supports AGP 4x, and i currently only have onboard graphics. So as you can imagine I need a new card! What would be the best card to put in this system i have a budget of 70

Hi,I haven't upgraded for a while and feel soon it will be time to do so again.I don;t have much knowledge on what's hot and what's not at the moment.Current specs:Athlon XP32009800 Pro1GB PC3200 DDR400I am a bit confused as to what memory to get at the moment. There seems an awful lot about, all different types. What works best for you and for FS especially?I'm looking at getting an AMD 64 4000 with Geforce 6800ULTIMATE or something and a PCI Express mobo.I don't know where to go for reviews, to see benchmarks, or what works best with what component. So I'm asking for a lil help if that's ok.Thanks a lot.Regards,Alexander Martin.

Just in case this is of use to anyone:I noticed, trying to solve a sound problem via dxdiag.exe, that under the "Display" tab my "AGP Texture Acceleration" was disabled with no way to enable. I followed the steps in this link: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/m...essage.id=22233 and now my FPS has increased!Maybe worth a check!

Well, looks like my Radeon 9800Pro has bit the dust.I am looking for the best board to get for my AMD64 3400+ system. 8x AGP is all that is available on the mother board.I don't want to over-buy for this system, since cpu plays such an important role, but I do want to get something with enough power to be appropriate.Did I make mayself clear, or just confuse things with that statement. LOLAnyway, any suggestions?Thanks,Wilson

Please help ... I have just encountered a strange problem --- all the while my PC has been able to play both my FS2002/2004 and Falcon Allied Force. But just a while ago, when trying to load up my FS2002, a message popped up saying "Safe mode enabled because your system is currently unable to use hardware acceleration."Also, my Windows boot up is suddenly taking a very long time.I have never had this problem before. What could be wrong? My graphic card is ATI Radeon 9700 Pro.Would appreciate if someone could help.Thanks.Lep

I would like to use a wide rectangular 32" monitor to run FS9: Acer or Samsung. But, having tried one, I find that the panel gauges are distorted so that instead of being round they appear eliptical. My question is whether it is possible to display FS9 on these relatively new monitors without distortion. Is there a fix now and, if not, is there any indication that Microsoft intends to release one or to make the next edition of the simulator compatible with wide monitors?Peter Lowry.