Ah.. I see It depends on your mobo I suppose and what format your drives are.. eg, IDE, SATA or SCSI. If they're IDE.. as long as the new drive is no slower than the one you have fitted, then everything will run as normal. IDE channels chop down to the speed of the slowest drive which is why you should never have a HD as Primary and a CDRom as secondary on a given channel That is.. IDE mobo's generally have 2 IDE ports and each port has two channels which equates to the two connectors on your ribbon cable allowing 4 drives to be used. If they're SATA, you simply plug the new drive into an available port and off you go. SCSI is similar to IDE though many many times faster hence their OTT price ;-)
Its advisable you buy a second HDD and have FSX running on that drive away from the O/S drive...
My set up runs like this... Drive are spread across 2x Veloci Raptors and one Rpator...
C:/ Vista O/S
D:/ DATA Drive - FSX and other Games installed here
H:/ My Docs drive
P:/ Page file drive
F:/ Just a random storage drive for my Microsoft product downloads and other general stuff
Oh i had FSX running last night, trialing SLI, and i noticed that i had 6.1gb of RAM utalised! And also SLI actually gave me better FPS but didnt look as good as no SLI...
I've always pondered about SLI and wondered if anyone has done any comprehensive tests about performance compared to single card systems. Everyone seems to opt for a two mid range card SLI or crossfire setup when to my mind a single high end card would cost the same (sometimes less) and offer similar levels of performance, without the hassle of messing with SLI and the bugs that occasionally come with it, and also in some circumstances future proofing you more.
I'm horribly cynical but it just seems like a savvy exercise in marketing to shift more cards.
That's because you went from one card to two cards, which I assume were very similar. I'm talking about testing a top of the range card against two mid-level cards... I'm wondering what the performance differences would be.
Good point Chris, i went from 1x PNY 8800 GTS 640mb to 2x XFX 8800 GTS 640mb! I looked at Tomshardware and it shows the 8800 GTS 640mb's as being top for SLI but that was 1st Qtr of 2008...
Well, I looked at all of the advice and made a choice about what I wanted. Then I looked at my bank account and changed it all. I have upgraded to :...
Operating System: 64 bit, Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.090302-1506)
System Manufacturer: MSI
System Model: MS-7374 K9N2 SLI Platinum
Processor: AMD Processor model Phenom 2 940 (4 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 8190MB RAM 2X Kingston HyperX 2GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Kit
Graphics Cards: 2X Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX +
PSU: 750 Watts.
FS9 / 2004 Is reborne. All sliders , all the way, all the time. And REALLY smooth (Took 6 years to get there). FSX is a delight, Sliders most of the way over, and average about 20 FPS most of the time. Very usable,
If you bump into my Missus, please don't tell her , She will kill me. I told her the money was for presents for my girlfriend, and she seemed happy with that.
It depends on your mobo I suppose and what format your drives are.. eg, IDE, SATA or SCSI. If they're IDE.. as long as the new drive is no slower than the one you have fitted, then everything will run as normal. IDE channels chop down to the speed of the slowest drive which is why you should never have a HD as Primary and a CDRom as secondary on a given channel 
That is.. IDE mobo's generally have 2 IDE ports and each port has two channels which equates to the two connectors on your ribbon cable allowing 4 drives to be used. If they're SATA, you simply plug the new drive into an available port and off you go. SCSI is similar to IDE though many many times faster hence their OTT price ;-) 
