Upgrade

[tg13]

Good evening all,i'm looking at upgrading my current system from ;
Processor
1.10 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Drives
41.16 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
12.84 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

Circuit Board
Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. A7N8X-X REV 2.xx
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A7N8X-X ACPI BIOS Rev 1006 08/19/2003

Memory Ram
512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DDR1' has 256 MB
Slot 'DDR2' has 256 MB
Slot 'DDR3' is Empty

Graphics Card
RADEON 9600 SERIES [Display adapter]
RADEON 9600 SERIES - Secondary [Display adapter]

I have about £400 to spend,could you please tell me what the best set up would be including graphics card.I like to add alot of AI packages which on my current system are not working too well.Also will Windows 7 be ok,or shll i stick with XP?Many thank's in advance.

[DaveB]

Hi TG13 and welcome to the forum

I've moved your question here as it's more appropriate. Not sure what you can get for £400 these days but you should be able to find something a little faster than your current setup. One of our many members who know about such things will be along at some point to offer advice

BTW.. I hope your email address isn't an indication of your true intent as under normal circumstances, you'd have been bounced

ATB

DaveB

[Chris Sykes]

Hi and Welcome! Firstly, are you planning on "upgrading" or buying a new system altogether? With what you have now, id surgest you start from new!

£400 on Dabs.com will get you a basic Pentium/AMD Duel Cores, to very low i3 Core... With about 1-3GB of RAM and 320GB HHD. Most will come with onboard Graphics and Sound. They all mostly come with Windows 7.
To go down the DIY build route, at £400 you may struggle to get a good enough PC, however there are some great bundles that you can get for cheap prices! Plus you would need to buy an Opperating System which XP is a no brainer for a number of reasons, one being its not a supported opperating system anymore! Windows 7 is the way forward, just have more than 2GB of RAM for a start!

So in summery, £400 will get you a prebuilt Win 7 Dual core/i3 PC but you most will need to spend more on extra Graphics card and RAM in the near future to get what you need...

[tg13]

Hi Dave,i'm the real deal so to speak.Thank's for the help Chris,still unsure as to which way to go though.

[DaveB]

Rgr that

You didn't say which sim you intend to run? FS9 is less demanding than FSX but you still need a reasonably hefty system to run it with a shedload of AI. FSX is a different ball game and requires yet more power. I'm not sure how either will run on an i3 system but as Chris pointed out.. onboard graphics will undoubtedly hold you back unless you have loads of RAM. Regardless.. I can't see either sim running any worse than they do on your current rig

ATB

DaveB

[austerdriver]

What OS (operating system) are you planning on running? Wil it be Windows XP or the latest Windows 7?

[tg13]

Dave,it's gonna be FS9 i've not been tempted enough to go onto fsx.Hi Austerdriver...sounds daft but could you enlighten me exactly as to what you mean by "operating system?"

[DaveB]

RGr that tg I think AD missed the bit when you asked 'will Windows7 be alright or shall I stick with XP' He'll catch it next time around

FS9 will run on Windows7 ok as quite a few here do. If you've seen any of Peter McLelands screenshots.. all of those are FS9 and Win7 That said.. Peter runs a rather expensive i7 cpu system which he had put together specifically to run FS. He tried FSX but didn't like what he saw

ATB

DaveB

[tg13]

Thank's for that Dave,i'm a bit lost without a spray gun in my hand...i'm a painter and finisher at Waddington during the day...and a virtual flyer by night.It's good to be able to fly some of the aircraft i have painted,and over 22years there's been a few !!! I've seen Petes stuff and think it's amazing,any idea as to what his set up cost??

[DaveB]

..and over 22years there's been a few !!!

EeGads.. I'll bet!

No.. no idea what his system cost but the i7 was quite new when he got it so it won't have been cheap! A quick check online shows you can pay from £700-£3000 (yes.. no typo!) for a pre-built i7 system so stick a pin somewhere in there

ATB

DaveB