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

Hi All.I have the Hercules 9800 Pro but just wondered if I should be using their drivers or the ATI ones who,aparantly, make the chip on my vid card,many thanks,Steve.PS, any direct link to ATI for drivers would be welcome, I seem to be able to find everything but what I want,and if anyone knows of an impending release date for the NEW version of drivers to up-grade from the cat 3.6's this too would be welcome news,thank you againSteve,

Howdy All,Okay I'm a novice so be gentle....I am converting my HD's on my system from FAT32 to NTFS and have successfully converted my main drive ©. However, when I try and convert my second slaved HD (D) it asks me for the volume label or drive name. I never named it, just left it blank. Now, I right clicked, went to properties and found and wrote down what I "thought" were the drive names (WDA 308AAC et al), but when I enter those values it says it's an invalid volume label name. Any ideas on how I can determine what the volume label on my D: drive is? Thanks in advance.

These days I was thinking about possibly getting a new hard drive by the end of the year, and since I would not want to go through another reformat and reinstall orgy I would prefer to use Norton Ghost to clone the content of my present HD onto the new drive, and then repartition any space that might still be left. However - and please don't laugh at me if this should be a dumb question :-shy - , I was wondering whether any data about the actual model of my current hard drive was possibly stored anywhere in the NTFS system volume information, and if so, whether this might cause any problems when trying to Ghost the content of my current HD. I'm currently running on a West…

I read in AVSIM news this morning that the new Catalyst 3.7 drivers were available for the Radeon 9700/9800 series cards. I even downloaded the file. But now I notice that it is not there now (I wanted to print the directions/tutorial thing). Does anyone know why this article was removed from the Avsim News page? Is there something wrong with the driver? ThanksPeachAir

I am currently running FS9 though a TI4200 128 8X card with the latest 45.23 drivers, 4XAA, 2XAF and -.05 LOD. Since I installed FS9 I have noticed vertical dark shadow lines over reflective water textures that seem to follow the aircraft over the underlying scenery and sometimes oscilate in waving patterns. Disabling water reflections fixes the problem but I really miss the reflections. Could this be related to FS9 or video display settings? Has anybody else seen this?ThanksMauricio

I have two monitors coming out of the primary and secondary monitor ports on my Radeon 9700 Pro. My problem is that whenever I shut down the computer, the next time I boot up, only one monitor comes up (ususally my secondary) and the card does not seem to recognize that the second monitor is plugged in. Both monitors work fine. But I seem to have to switch the monitor plugs and re-boot to get both displays to show up on the Radeon Display Tab in the advanced settings.What am I not doing to save the configuration of my monitor set up. This takes fifteen minutes to rectify every time I start up the computer and it is really pissing me off.Thanks!Colin

I've recently updated windows via the automatic updates, but for some reason my display, when running FS has horizontal lines appearing/streaking across the screen. When I exit to the desktop it returns to normal, no lines. I've tried to update my video card drivers, adjusting some of the settings, but still nothing happens. Can anyone else relate to this/shed any light.O/S - XPVideo Card - 256MB Radeon 9200AK

While sitting here looking at my old FS box, I got to thinking about how a lot of people are saying the "Old" 533 Mhz FSB P4's are slow. This machine was currently pulling duty surfing the web and doing word proc. chores for my wife. She was just given a new laptop from the school where she works so I got my box back.I spent about 3 hours cleaning it up, reinstalling XPPro, 3DMark2001 / 2003 and FS9. The only tweaks I applied were to disable services not needed, defrag the HD and set the bios back to Version 1009C, make sure I was running all the latest drivers and patches for my hardware and OS EXCEPT for SP1.The machine I speak of is a:3.06 P4 533Mhz FSB at 150Mhz FSB f…

Have the 45.23 drivers solved the missing 2d panel issue? I'm beginning to shop for an FX video card, probably a non-Ultra 5900, but will wait if there are still issues with the FX drivers.Thanks

Hello,I already posted this in the MSFS forum but I am pretty new to this site and flight-simming in general, and I suspected I posted this in the wrong area. If you've already read this, I apologize for the cross-post faux pas.I recently acquired MSFS COF and am totally hooked. Right now I am just simming with 1 monitor, but I would like to build a multi-monitor setup -albeit in stages. I only have a GF3 Ti200 graphics card right now, but I'll likely be purchasing a 9800 Pro in the near future. Here's what I would like to do; is it possible?Stage 1 (apparently pretty easy with a dual-head card)- 1, 19" monitor for external scenery (full-screen)- 1, 15" monitor for a/c pa…

Probably a daft question. Will 32 bit applications run with the 64bit XP operating system or do you stick with 32 bit XP Pro until the next generation of FS?RegardsHoward

Hello all,I have an Intel D875PBZ 800 FSB motherboard with a P4 3.2 ghz processor. My question is what should the temperature be reading? After booting in to BIOS from a night off and leaving it sit for 10 minutes or so, it's up to 53 centigrade or 127F. Is this normal? Where do most people see their temps sitting? This is the hardware monitoring screen in the BIOS and, again, it starts from a quiet system just booting in to the BIOS.Thanks much,sj

Hello, I'm running a xp1600 with an ATI radeon 8500le. I am getting annoying stutters mainly in turns in fs9 at 1024by768 with sparse autogen and all settings fairly low! Do you think an xp2400 processor or a newer video card would help this? I remember I had stutters in CfS2 and when I upgraded they went away. By the way, I have tried all of the tweaks, reformat, reinstall---ect ect. I've been hearing that ATI cards are more stutter prone that Nvidia cards. Thank you,Todd

Just put together a new system for simming/games using the Asus P4P800 mobo. It has 6 channel on board audio and now I'm looking for some good speakers. I have a price range of somewhere between $100-$150. What does everyone else use? 6 channel. Does that mean:Right frontcenterLeft frontsubRight rearLeft rear?Thanks for any suggestions.Dondo

I am having a WEIRD driver issue right now. This is kinda long, but I tried to be as detailed as I could.I installed XP yesterday and everything been running extremely smooth till now (going from a 40GB 5400rpm HD to a 80GB 7200rpm HD has a big impact LOL). I just got the new ATI Catalyst 3.7 drivers for my Radeon 7200. I install them like I normally do and reboot, works perfect as far as I can tell. I had to go somewhere so I shut my computer off for a few hours. When I booted the comp afterwards, XP fails to boot (It gets the splash screen, but the progress bar stops completely, no errors). Since I knew I installed the Cat drivers last, I boot into safe mode (safe mode …

You folks who have the 5900 or the 5600 series video cards (especially if it's from MSI), how do you like your cards with FS9?I'm in a bit of a quandry here. I started out with the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256, but I've had stutter problems from Day 1 big time. Frame rates are spectacular under most conditions, but around airports the stutters get so bad (even when showing my locked 35 fps, which believe me, is conservative for what I can get out of this rig running unlocked) that the aircraft is all but unflyable on approach. This rig is:P4 3.0 GHz 800 FSB H/T1 Gig DDR Kingston RAM (matched)80 Gig Western Digital HD, only about 20 gigs max usedATI Radeon 9800 Pro video 25…

Ok, I can not thank anyone with info/opinion enough...My pc:- Intel D875PBZ motherboard (800FSB, HT)- Intel Pentium4 3.2 Ghz processor- 1 gigabyte PC3200 (400 MHz) DDR SDRAM memory (2 512k chips)- Seagate Alpine 120GB 8MB Cache SATA Hard Drive- ATI Radeon 9800Pro 256MB Video card- CreativeLabs Soundblaster Audigy2 sound card- 300W power supply- (no other PCI cards installed)- 6 USB ports in use (printer, joystick, external hard drive, mouse, palm sync cradle, Sandisk 6-1 card reader)- MS Forcefeedback 2 Joystick- Logitech dual-optical wired mouse- MSWeird (internet) wired keyboard- Mitsubishi DiamondPro 2020u 21" monitor (CRT)BIOS- AGP aperture size set to 64- lastest BIO…

This problem is not sim related but computer in general.My computer is on the verge of crashing. I am starting to get the blue screen error when my computer boots up. When I try to boot up in safe mode, it hangs just after loading up the "agp440.sys" file.Is that an indication of vy video card going bad?P4 1.8768M SDRAMWindows XP HomeGeforce 2 Ultra 64M NVIDIA 44.03Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Sound CardMSI 845 Pro ATX MotherboardBrent Hebert

Maybe this is a bit off topic but I could use some help. My Viruscan has detected two files (Win32info.exe and Win32info-unninstall.exe)infected with the "Downloader-DC" virus. The program says it cannot clean the files and that I should delete them and get a new copy...I assume I will find these files in my XP CD? If so, where? Is it safe to delete the files?Any help welcome. I have not noticed anything weird with my computer except the anti-virus pop-up window telling me every 5 minutes it has found a virus...Thank you.Hugo

I was wondering whether any of you might have a few suggestions for some easy ways of quieting down a computer. Since my budget for larger hardware purchases is not very large at this time, one method which would, in my view be applicable pretty easily and at a modest price would be fitting some of those acoustic insulation plates consisting of foam and bituminous cardboard to the inside of the computer case. Is this approach recommendable in your view, or are there any other inexpensive methods I might try? I already took care to buy a silent power supply when I upgraded my computer, and the AMD CPU fan I am using is, to my ears, also rather quiet, but since I am running…

card.I have HP AMD1300 with an TNT2 pro 32MB sdram 4X AGP. Will i see a good improvment when if upgrade to another card. I'm looking at an ATI 9600 Pro 128 MB AGP,at CompUSA for $99. Or an GeForce 5600 256 MB DDR AGP at Best Buy for $149.These cards are both 8X.My old card is 4X,will that matter? Or any other suggestions. I don't want to put more than $150 into a card. My pc is 3 years old and will replace within the year.Thanks for any info Bob

I recently upgraded my computer. Athlon XP 1.333 to XP 2700+ and everything is working great. :-)Now here is my problem. :-(After several months I decided to gather up all the old hardware. The ASUS A7V133, 1.333 cpu, 1g ram, GF3 video card, 8 G HD, SB Live sound and put it all together in a 300w case. I have put many systems together which all worked fine but this time the power supply does fire up but I am not getting a boot screen. Or should I say it's not booting, no bios testing, getting nothing. Heck I've had hard disk failures before but never this.All this hardware worked fine just prior to the upgrade.What could be the problem ?Your advise would be appreciated.…

I am in the process of upgrading to an AMD 3200 / Intel P4 (800 FSB) from my AMD 21000 XP. 1. I was jsut wondering what is the better route for FS2K2/FS2K4, in terms of speed and the all important FPS? 2. Also if I upgrade to an AMD or Intel Processor, will I need to re-install everything again which is a real pain !as I am already using Windows XP (Home).3. I have a Geforce 4 Ti 4600 with 128 MB video card so I am hoping for some improvements in FPS and quality. I only fly FS2K2 because I fly the superb PIC B767 / PSS B744. Will it any difference to FPS / Quality if I upgrade my Video Card to a Geforce 5900 FX?4. I am amazed that an AMD 3200 (running at 2.2 GHZ wi…

I would like to use one gaming device (CH Yoke and Elite rudder pedals) for use on 2 PC's. They will not be used concurrently on the 2 PC's, but I don't want to have to crawl behind my desk every time I wish to use the other PC, to change the physical connection.Is it possible to either connect them in parallel to each PC via an adapting connector/cable, or switch between the 2 computers with some kind of change-over switch?Thanks, any answers most appreciated.Bruce.

I recently started using the CH USB Pedals and Yoke and I'm looking for recommendations on tweaking this setup to be as close to the real thing as you can considering its a PC flight sim.Right now as is, I am not entirely sure the RUDDER PEDALS are doing what they really should? Seems when I use them I'm really yanking the plane in a drastic twist. If I had a reference point as to how it should be I might have a better chance at making it a better tweak. If there is a thread already in place here on this forum with this topic please let me know. Suggestions are otherwise welcome!Thanks!!