Think I need an upgrade

Post by **Rick Piper** » 29 Aug 2006, 23:51

Hi Chris

I was only leg pulling

Regards
Rick

Charlie Bravo · Post by **Charlie Bravo** » 29 Aug 2006, 23:54

Even ATI haven't got anything decent for under Â£100 so I had to go with Nvidia.

I'm gonna go and think about my actions

jonesey2k · Post by **jonesey2k** » 30 Aug 2006, 09:04

Ill be sticking with my X2-4400 clocked at 2.5ghz

Intel... Pah!

I must admit, those Conroes do look rather good.

delticbob · Post by **delticbob** » 30 Aug 2006, 09:49

Hi Toby & others. This is all Irish to me (sorry to the Irish).

A bit more info.

RAM is 1024Mb. (Was 512 till about 4 weeks ago, but doubled it to see if that would cure any of my problems - it didn't)

Plug & Play Monitor on RADEON 9550
Chip type: RADEON 9550 AGP (0x4153)
DAC Type: Internal DAC (400MHz)
Memory Size 128Mb
Adaptor Type: RADEON 9550
Bios Information: BK - ATI VER 008.017D.016.000

Vista - Yes I'd forgotten to mention that I was contemplating Vista too.

Any thoughts gratfully digested, but its like trying to understand algibra

Ta.

Bob

Charlie Bravo · Post by **Charlie Bravo** » 30 Aug 2006, 22:42

The Radeon 9550 is quite a slow card and still leaves you in the same position. It would be a waste of money to buy another AGP card.

Therefore your options are to go down the Intel route as above or use your existing RAM and get a socket 939 AMD setup. Socket 939 is also at the end of it's life though.

Over to you....

delticbob · Post by **delticbob** » 31 Aug 2006, 10:53

Thanks for all your replies folks I shall give it more thought.

Bob

cstorey · Post by **cstorey** » 31 Aug 2006, 18:07

Deltic bob - i am still not sure what CPU you have got, but it sounds, if it's socket A, as though it is very slow. I did a lot of research into the effect of graphics cards on FPS about 2 years ago, and found that really FS9 ( and its predecessors were the same) is not heavily graphics card dependent for framerates, although a better card will produce a nicer looking display. What does affect framerates critically is the CPU . (It is this you should be looking to upgrade - the problem being that you will probably need to change your motherboard as processors for socket A are getting rare). To give you an idea, I found FS9 was very slow with an Athlon 1300 which otherwise gave good results. Another thing which now seems to be acknowledged is that AMD processors, aothough all round they probably produce a better result than Pentiums, are less suitable than P3 or P4 for Flightsim

There is a very good site called Tom's hardware which has run every comparison you can think of, which will probably give you a lot of help

Chris

delticbob · Post by **delticbob** » 31 Aug 2006, 18:33

Thanks for that post Chris

Bob

Charlie Bravo · Post by **Charlie Bravo** » 31 Aug 2006, 19:09

cstorey wrote:Deltic bob - i am still not sure what CPU you have got, but it sounds, if it's socket A, as though it is very slow. I did a lot of research into the effect of graphics cards on FPS about 2 years ago, and found that really FS9 ( and its predecessors were the same) is not heavily graphics card dependent for framerates, although a better card will produce a nicer looking display. What does affect framerates critically is the CPU . (It is this you should be looking to upgrade - the problem being that you will probably need to change your motherboard as processors for socket A are getting rare). To give you an idea, I found FS9 was very slow with an Athlon 1300 which otherwise gave good results. Another thing which now seems to be acknowledged is that AMD processors, aothough all round they probably produce a better result than Pentiums, are less suitable than P3 or P4 for Flightsim

There is a very good site called Tom's hardware which has run every comparison you can think of, which will probably give you a lot of help

Chris

It is Socket A, thats what Socket 462 is.

A modern Athlon would whoop both a P3 and a P4 which is why Intel have been behind for so long. The new Core 2 Duo has changed that though.

Toms Hardware is a bit hit and miss with performance results. I think Jonesey will back me on that.

jonesey2k · Post by **jonesey2k** » 31 Aug 2006, 19:17

Aye, Best look at all of the reviews from like Anandtech, ZDnet and Techreport ect so as to get a proper picture of somethings performance.

There may be no more new CPU's comming to S939, but they arent quite dead yet in terms of performace. Ive nearly got my 4400 hitting 2.6ghz.