The Finals...

[tonymadge]

My advice...go with Ricks answer he is fully FSX and looking at his Hawk video it runs great for him. If your FS9 only then maybe a dual core but I guess if you can clock the quad to 3GHz you might as well go with that

[Techy111]

Rick any ideas if an E6750 dual core can safely be overclocked...?

Tony

[TSR2]

PC1 anyday. A PC of any spec is an investment and needs to be as future proof as possible. PC 1 gives you a much greater set of options (aside from it being better than FSX) NVIDIA kick the pants of ATI over the last few years and is definately the better option. 4 cores are better than 2, thats a fact for anyone running a system / applications which are current. Whats more important is that with Windows 7 and FS next a year away, this machine SHOULD (there are no Guarantees) run the next generation of stuff pretty well.

Only thing I would say is way 2 drives on PC1? Almost every PC you get now will do DVD read & write (which includes CD read and write) in the same drive. Fancy pants ones will also do blueray.

Also (if you can go the extra) worth getting it with 4GB RAM. I don't know for sure, but I can imagine the difference between 3GB and 4GB should be any more than £50, and when you consider that this should las about 3years + its worth the extra cash.

I notice there is no mention of Monitor. What are your plans on that front?

Either way PC1 is definately the best option.

[TSR2]

Rick any ideas if an E6750 dual core can safely be overclocked...?

Tony

Yes it can, But Dual core is old hat, and anyone buying a PC at this stage of the FSX and Opperating system life cycle should be looking to a quad or better. ;-)

[05pricej]

ok thanks for all the replies guys

Someone mentioned a moniter... Atm im running a 17" at 1280X1024... I am planning to update this but with a £700 budget if i bought a moniter now id have a pc with the computing power of a supermarket till.....

Looks like im going to be going with pc 1 then . Oh and the reason for 2 drives is that its only a £10 upgrade lol , Ill also raid the piggybank for 4gb of ram

[05pricej]

ooh thats a point!

What kind of res do you guys recommend for a moniter?

I was thinking of either getting a widescreen 23" @ 1980X1080 or a 19" at 1280X1024

any rule of thumb when buying moniters? oh and i probably wouldnt bother paying for more than 5ms refresh.

[TSR2]

Monitor Res's depends if its widescreen or not. If its not, 1280 x 1024 is the usual standard (i.e. native resolution) and with LCD's you need to run at the native res of the monitor as up or down from that, and the picture looks rubbish. I doubt they are the best, but noticed a lovely looking 22" widescreen HP in Comet on Sunday past for £149. I guess these things are much less expensive now than when I last looked.

[Garry Russell]

Ben

I have one of those HP screens....it's the best I've ever had

Garry

[SkippyBing]

If I was buying now the 23" @ 1980X1080 sounds ideal as that's full HD resolution which would certainly help future proof the setup.

[Sl4yer]

One thing rings a bell with me regarding PC1, and the 3GB of RAM.

My motherboard can only take a maximum of about 3GB (which I knew when I got it, but that's another story). The reason is that it uses a crappy VIA chipset. Before you buy either, find out which chipset is used on the motherboard. It makes a MASSIVE difference to performance, perhaps more than the extra memory or the extra CPU MHz would.

James