Hardware component upgrade

[ajb]

My poor old PC is just not cutting it nowadays with FS2004! Frame rates are dropping - they were never that good anyway! - and the whole flightsim experience is becoming rather miserable. So, time for an upgrade of the insides of my PC. Could one of you more knowledgeable types please advise on the best budget (yes, I'm strapped for cash at present :-( ) components to speed things up to give a real FS2004 experience (and maybe a reasonable one in FSX if I ever try the Dark Side)? I need:

mainboard
CPU
cooling fan
memory
graphics card

I already have SATA hard drives and other components which are fairly new. I also intend to run this under Windows XP as my Vista systems seem to run noticably slower than XP.

Hope someone can help.

Andy

[Tako_Kichi]

It might help if you could provide specific info on your current system as in:

mainboard - make - model number
CPU - type - speed
memory - type - speed
graphics card - type - RAM available
PSU - wattage

At least then we would know what you have as a basis to build on, or if what you have is not suitable for upgrading.

I have been through the upgrade process several times in the past 4-5 years and sometimes you can get away with just upgrading a GFX card or CPU and other times it needs an almost complete rebuild. For instance a faster CPU may require a new MOBO as the old one may not support the new chips, that leads to new RAM as the new MOBO may not support the older RAM you currently have or the old RAM will be too slow for the new CPU/MOBO combination. Then the GFX card may be the bottle neck which means a new one of those. Finally, having got a new CPU, MOBO, RAM and GFX card you then realise that your PSU doesn't have the guts to drive it all so you have to upgrade that too!

One more thing springs to mind too. You say it's not running as good as it did so presumably it used to run well and something has changed. Slowing down can be caused by a number of factors but things to look for are items like a HD getting filled to capacity, a HD being badly fragmented and in need of a de-frag, an internet cache that has never been emptied (I have had friends who have had hundreds of Mb in their temporary internet cache because they never knew how to empty it and then they wonder why their computer is so slow!) You may just need to do some 'housekeeping' rather than rebuilding.

[ajb]

Hi Larry,

It was never the fastest of PCs but with numerous updates on XP and addons, flightsim and others, things are not as good as they were and in any case never good enough, hence the decision to upgrade. The current setup has an ASUS P4P800S-X mobo, Pentium 4 3Ghz O/C to 3.3Ghz, 2GB DDR400 RAM, Nvidia 7600GT AGP 256Mb video card and the PSU is OCZ Technology 600w. There are 2 hard drives each partitioned into 2 and all four partitions have around 80% spare. I defrag regularly and keep nothing in temporary storage. I spent 30 years in IT as a software developer working on hardware that had bugger all disk space (and even less RAM) so I am accutely aware of good computer housekeeping. Believe me, the old gal needs rebuilding ( the PC not the Missus ;-) ) but the hard drives and sound card are very new.

Andy

[ianhind]

I think you are in about the same position as Tony M was with his thread "CPU thoughts". So you want to see the subsequent comments in that thread.

Looks like the obvious way forward is a new CPU but that means a new motherboard, graphics card and memory.

Ian

[Tako_Kichi]

It looks like your system is pretty much how mine was before the last rebuild although I had a P4 running at 3.4 Ghz stock and I was running a factory OC'd 6800GS PCI-E GFX card and DDR2 RAM. I could run FS2004 very well on that and FSX was smooth even if all sliders were not full right.

The biggest bottlenecks on your current system are the RAM and the GFX card. The 7000 series cards were not the best and that is compounded by the fact that it is AGP.

If it were me I would consider moving up to at least a dual core CPU on a MOBO with a 1333 FSB (min) running DDR2 or DDR3 RAM. Virtually all current MOBOs are on PCI-E so that would entail a new GFX card and I would suggest a minimum of 512 Mb of VRAM. The good news is that your PSU should be able to power a rig like that.

If you are interested these are my current details:

MOBO - MSI P7N SLI Platinum
CPU - E8400 (dual core) @ 3 Ghz per core (no OC)
RAM - 4Gb DDR2 OCZ
GFX Card - 8800GT with 512Mb RAM
PSU - 650W

[ajb]

Larry, Ian,

Thanks for your help so far. The "CPU thoughts" thread probably confused me more the more I read through it although the comments on how much RAM is usable is interesting! In any case the hardware components were starting to get way beyond my budget. I think that due to financial constraints AMD is going to be the chosen route this time. I'm looking at the following components from Overclockers:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7850+ Black Edition 2.8Ghz processor
ASUS M4A78 AMD 770 DDR2 mobo
Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR2 PC2-8500CS TwinX Dual Channel memory
Zotac Nvidia 9800GT Eco 512MB GDDR3 graphics

What's your opinion on this lot (costs around £270)? I'm not sure about the graphics card but can't see any 8800s listed.

Andy

[DaveB]

Hi Andy..

8800's appear to have all but disappeared off radar mate. I tried tracking one down (last week as it happens) and the few examples I found were STILL retailing for £200 or more! :o I thought they'd be cheap as they're an old model but that's not happened :-( A bit too steep for my purse I'm afraid

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[ajb]

Hi Dave,

You're right. The prices being given for 8800s are somewhere in the stratosphere :o . It appears, from reviews and comparisons that I've read, that the 9800s are updates to the 8800s to make them a little faster, although some overclocked 8800s are still quicker. That's my reading of it anyway but I probably missed a vital point. The 9800GT I'm looking at is £80. Cheaper than most of the crappy boards I've put in my present rig over the years :-( .

Andy

[DaveB]

Hi Andy..

Tks for that. £80 is a steal in the grand scale of things and worth a look should my AGP 6800 die the death of a thousand cuts

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Tako_Kichi]

The 8800s were/are a great card and in some ways better than the newer 9800s. That is possibly why the price has stayed high on them, they are much sought after and retailers know they will get the asking price for them.