New Computer!!

[Nigel H-J]

Switched on my computer a few weeks ago and nothing....nowt...not even a blip!! It finally died!! Babs took pity on me in that I would no longer be able to fly FS any more and more importantly realised that I would be under her feet a lot more so, for a peaceful life, she took me into town to look for another one though we could not afford to spend much.

As we are no longer on internet or landline we went to....ummm PC World sorry, did not want to really advertise that place!! Came across a Hewlitt Packard dual core Pavilllion (may even be a quad core but can't remember) i3 3.2Ghz (I think it is) with on board graphic card and 4 Gb RAM reduced from £550 to £400, could just about afford that but my question is, when flying on FS9 even with 4Gb RAM the frame rates are still around 10 - 15 FPS at Heathrow and Manchester with full settings, Babs has said that in a few months I can buy a graphics card and am thinking of purchasing a NVidia Card (always had them), can anyone advise which would be the best one to have (looking around the £100 - £120 mark) Running Windows 7.

Will get the full details on Monday when next in the library.

Manythanks in advance.

Kind regards
Nigel.

[simondix]

See my post earlier about graphics card. Got a couple of good replies.

[Nigel H-J]

Thanks Simon, though the £200-£250 price range is a bit out of reach for me, will have a look at what NVidia Cards are on the market.

Again, many thanks.

Regards Nigel.

[Europa88]

Just a quick heads up. Whilst it's a good idea to have a decent graphics card, it may not increase your framerates much. Fs9 and FSX are Processor hogs, as the sims are coded that way.

[SkippyBing]

Just a quick heads up. Whilst it's a good idea to have a decent graphics card, it may not increase your framerates much. Fs9 and FSX are Processor hogs, as the sims are coded that way.

To be fair anything is going to be better than an onboard graphics chip,certainly an i3 should have no problems with FS9 unless you've added the world's supply of add-ons.

[Buggyman]

With cash being tighter than ever these days has anyone had a look at refurbished PCs? I have purchased refurbished laptops for the grandchildren twice over the last four years and they come with guarantees and in 'as new' condition and we have not had a single problem with them. I know that PC World (sorry) and Comet (same company?) offer professionally reconditioned units so it must be worth having a quick look - just in case something worthwhile crops up.

What started me on this was that tonight I got one the regular newsy emails from dabs.com and they are offering refurbished HP Pavilion P6790 PCs for £459. Details of the units are:

◦Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64
◦Intel® Core™ i5-2300 2.8 GHz
◦6 GB DDR3 (3 x 2 GB) Memory
◦1.5 TB SATA 3G (5400 rpm)
◦Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner with LightScribe Technology
◦NVIDIA GeForce G405 (1 GB) with PureVideo® HD technology
◦TV (analog and DVB-T) tuner card (DVB-T service not available in Ireland), MPEG 4
◦2 external optical drive bays; 2 internal HDD bays
◦3 PCI-Express x1; 1 PCI-Express x16; 1 MiniCard
◦8 USB 2.0
◦2 audio
◦6 analog audio
◦1 digital audio
◦1 FireWire IEEE 1394

Just 16 in stock at the time of writing.

Just a thought.................

Allan

[DaveB]

I noticed PC World (spit) are doing the same with laptops.. you can pay anything from £199 up

ATB
DaveB

[Chris Sykes]

Been there, done that with PC world, brick wall and head spring to mind in terms of customer support and repairs! HP Laptop was ok though, just broke with the same issue and they even replaced all of the parts in the laptop at a total worth of more than the laptop... Went to Sony shop after refund...

[GHD]

Overclockers UK are a reliable supplier.

For a budget system, see:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... 40&subcat=

[DaveB]

Been there, done that with PC world

I'd certainly not recommend PCW as the defacto place to go for PC's or bits but.. it's an option if a rather dark one George pointed out Overclockers.. a company I've never had a problem with but some here would rather eat worms than buy from them again. Horses for courses mate

ATB
DaveB