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

Having a little trouble with my pedals and hoped someone might know what's going on and help me out a bit please.I have pedals and yoke which work fine apart from one small problem. The pedals won't center no matter how many time a calibrate them. They always pull left. I can set dead zones etc but although that stops the planes pulling left it just makes the left pedal very sensitive and the right has lots of travel before doing anything. There is no adjustment I can see to make to the pedals themselves unless I take them apart. That is the last resort if I can help it. Any help would be great Thanks.David G

I'm interested in purchasing a yoke and rudder pedals and the CH USB throttle quadrant, but I have a couple questions.....Is it really worth the extra money for the Advanced Flight Control System 3 or is the CH yoke the better yoke (for much less money)?How about the CH pedals vs. the GoFlight Flight Deck Series Rudder Controls? Is the GoFlight pedals worth the extra money over the CH pedals?Any recommendations on either of these? :)

Hi everyone,Just started using a USB headset for online flying. This works really well but I would like to have my speakers remain on when I plug in the headset so other people in my computer room can also hear whats going on. The trouble is when I plug in the headset they are switched off automatically. Is there a way to have headset and speakers delivering sound at the same time.Can anyone help ??Thanks

I think I may have lost my video card. When I started the computer today, nothing but black screen. Restarted in safe mode and have video. When I start in safe mode is the computer using on board video, and is this an indication that i need a new video card?

I am very impressed. Initial performance on my new XPS GEN2 Dothan Pentium M 2 GZ - 1 GIG ram - Geforce 6800 Ultra with 256 mg, proves what the "game" reviews have indicated. Superior performance beating out what I am used to on a desktop that is a P4 3.0GZ with Radeon 9800 PRO 128 meg and 1 GIG ram. And this is in high res mode 1920x I forget...the native res!! Very amazing! More to come!

Well....I picked up an eVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP8X at a goog price and installed it last night. The display looks OK, not an improvement over the FX5950 Ultra, but the frame rates are a wee bit higher. However, I'm still having the same problem as the 5950. After starting the sim and flying for a few minutes, when I switch views in 2d with the hat, I see a momentary flash of a previous view, mainly the front view. If I had it in spot mode previously and now main 2D panel, I'll see a momentary view of of the spot view when using the hat switch. Also, whenever the mouse hovers over a spot where a tool tip will display, the main panel flashes and shows a previous view. It …

Hi all - Well, after a nice run our Dell Dimension XPS T500 has gone south. My wife needs a new (relatively low-end) PC for work, and I can't justify a high-end machine.I'm looking at the eMachines T6212 Minitower, which has recieved good reviews and been recommended by her tech guy. I just wanted to ask if anyone has experience with this machine and FS, and whether it's upgradeable enough over time, and, I guess, if anyone can recommend any comparable alternatives.FWIW my old machine (which was upgraded to a 1.2 Celeron and only had 384 megs of RAM and a Diamond Viper Ultra 32 vid card) ran 2004 pretty well, even with USA Roads going. That machine was from 1998 and I als…

Doing some research and decided i want to upgrade my computer, mobo new cpu ect.I have limited funds.so farAMD Athlon 64 3500+ 939Whats the different b/w the normal 64 bit processers and XP 64 bit?According to the website it is only 2.2GHZ which seems slow. However looking at some other sites it is equavilent to what in the intel terms? 2.6?thanks

I have aan extra $150.00 to put into my PC MONSTER and want to spend it wisely.I presently have a Radeon 9600 Saphirre with a a AMD 2500CPU and 512 RAM....I am thinking of either going to a AMD 3000 or 1Gig Ram.What would be a better buy.....RAM or CPU?????Of course Im a MSFS 9.1 User.

Windows XP Home EditionDell Dimension 4300Intel P4 1.8 GHz256 MB RAMGeForce 3 Ti 200I was thinking of waiting for FS10, then buying a complete new system. But now that it seems it won't be out this year, I'm thinking of getting a new video card. So I basically have two questions.1. Will a new video card give me a noticeable increase in performance?2. Could someone suggest a video card that will give me noticeable improvement? Please though, not one that my system will not be able to take full advantage of. In other words, what card could I go up to that will give me noticeable improvement, yet won't cost me the proverbial farm?Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank …

Originally I gave x64 a 10Gb partition out of 120Gb just for testing with XP on the other partition. After things went so well with x64 I decided to expand the parition with Partition Magic running under WinXP on the original partition...since there is no Partition Manager for x64 that won't erase your data.I went back into WinXP and resized the partitions to give the x64 partition another 50Gb of space. After rebooting it did its thing and resized the partitions but the x64 kept coming up with the WinXP boot screen and then failed to load. It kind of did something like the movie "The Fly" and merged XP and x64 into an unholy single OS that was destined to die a grueso…

MSFS 2004 under Windows XP x64 ProfessionalMini ReviewThe itch for migrating my FX-55 over to a 64 bit operating system had been growing lately. Admittedly, I had been awaiting the Microsoft release of XP x64 and as soon as it was available for download I had it. The obvious next step was to find the time to set it up and begin migrating everything over. Most importantly, was MSFS 2004 since this was the ultimate litmus test, ergo, no FS 2004 no Windows x64!It too well over a week to test and migrate my AMD64 FX-55 from Windows XP Professional SP2 to Windows XP x64 SP1. x64 requires its own installation, preferably on its own hard drive partition, this way, if everyt…

Hi all,I have an PCI-E Asus GE6800 with two monitors connected to it. When using dual view mode in the video driver, I can open a second FS window, in 3D mode. But here are really bad artifacts on both screens, sometimes covering more than half of the screen area.Any ideas where that might come from? I use latest drivers.Also, I could not figgure out how to change the angle of view on the second monitor. Just "view left" or "front left" doesn't do it for me, it is not precise enough...Any comments appreciated!Hans

Hi oh great gurus of hardware, I've got two things going on with my system that I'm hoping somebody can help me figure out...1. Video card troubles. I have a new BFG Geforce 6600GT, which replaced a Geforce FX5700LE. The performance difference is staggering, it's almost a whole new sim. But I'm having one very annoying driver issue with the 71.89 drivers. Every time one of the following things happen in FS2004:- Switch to or from regular cockpit or VC view- Pop up a window- Pop up or change a tooltipMy system will flash an image of a previous screen up for a split second. The screen image is typically something that was on the screen a few seconds to a few minutes e…

If I wan't to get a new harddrive deducated mainly for FS9 shouldI then choose a SATA or a IDE drive?I now have two HD one three year old Maxtor U133 60 Gb where I haveWin XP and FS9 and all other stuff. I also have a six year old 10 Gb IDE drive where I have the swap file. I think both are 5400 rpm. If I now get a new drive will I have a siginicant gain in speed simply because the current drives are faster and better than a three year old drive?

Like, connect "somehow" 3-4 PCs, with decent hardware, something like mine, and basically have 3-4 times more computing power and use it to run FS9?

Hello everyone,New poster and new to msfs2004 and i am looking for a good setup for this stick. I have used it lomac for a while and a friend of mine suggested that i get 2004 and so far i love it, but i get confused on how i should set it up and was hoping i could find a setup for at least a good starting point. i've tried to google a setup but can not find any . Does anybody know where i can get some helpThanks,Ghost

I wonder if anyone can give me a little help with the choice of rudder pedals for FS9. I have recently bought the excellent Ch Products USB version and it has transformed the whole business of simulator flying. Yet in the course of lessons in real world flying (microlight Thruster Sprint) it became apparent that the CH pedals offer rather too little resistance to movement - seem to need rather heavier damping. In all other respects, notably the amount of full travel, they really seem to be on the ball. My question therefore is this: since I have a replica setup in my second home in Denmark and not yet kitted it out with pedals, I have an opportunity to try an alterna…

Hello all,after almost 2 years running the same system I think it's time to upgrade it. The reason for this is that I get heavy stutters almost everywhere in the sim and especially on the ground during taxi.It's so bad like watching a quick slideshow.My current specs are:P4 2.4Ghz, 1x512Mb DDR2700, Gigabyte MB with Intel 845PE chipset, ATI Radeon 9600XT 128Mb, SB Audigy player, ATA133 Maxtor 200GB HDD (But operating DMA5/ATA100 due to the lack of support of ATA133 from the chipset).I'm thinking to upgrade to the following:AMD 64 3200+ (939) (Venice core), MSI Neo2 Platinum or Gigabyte K8NS Pro939 or K8NS Ultra939, 2GB 4x512 DDR3200 CL2.5 RAM.That means that I will be kee…

There have been lots of threads about video cards.. and now it is my turn to make a decision.New system parts arrived today. Gigabyte nForce4SLI PCI-E mobo, AMD 4000 939 socket, 1GB DDR2700 RAM, 2 SATA 120GB drives. Now I need to add a video card for using FS2004. I run FS9 at 1280x1024x32.My past 3 systems have used nVidia cards, most recently the 5700LE w/256RAM. The performance tests posted here show some difference in top end speed between the 6800 Ultra and the ATI 9800XT, but it does not appear to be a large spread, though my understanding is the core clock speeds give an edge to the ATI card.I would appreciate some advice about several things:1. Should I attempt to…

I just bought this thing. It was supposed to be a nice upgrade from my 128mg Nvidia 5600 FX Ultra. But...I took a %30 performance hit! Not an improvement. I'm really frustrated.I clean installed the drivers and made sure to manually purge the old entries from the registry.I got the new 5.5's then I got the 5.4 omegas. Still everything shows an average fps hit of 15 fps in the exact same settings I was using before. I had previously heard that ATI cards did a better job with the clouds than nvidia's so I switched. I have to tell you, I'm not impressed at all.Does anyone have an idea why this newer card would perform worse than my previous card?Dell4550, 3.06ghz, 102…

lo, in temper the other day i picked up the joystick and in temper slammed it down on the desk. Its got all stuff now, when i more it to the right it clicks, and the calibration is WAY out. Do you reckon this joysticks dead or can it be salvaged? and what wud be a good replacement?

Check this outhttp://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4915

Greetings all,I was just wondering out there, If anyone has one of the above cards, then what settings are you using for flightsim.This PC is about 6 weeks old and I am still getting used to it.Also if you could advise what temp your Graphic Card runs at.Regards,Ralf.Adelaide, Australia

Turned on the PC this morning and had an immediate exception dialog box pop up saying Windows Automatic Update function had a failure and had to shut down. This box repeatedly popped up when closed and could not beshut off. Looking highly "virus like". I went to task manager and shut it down since I could not do it from the Start Menu control panel. I then ran a full virus scan using Avast! which is my Anti-virus program. No bugs found.Two questions.1. Has anybody else experienced this? Is the Automatic Update server at MS down? 2. Is there a new virus out that does this (highly irritating) action?ThanksEric