Techy Heaven...

[timholyoake]

The time is dawning when I must start to plan my next upgrade...
THIS time I would like to do it properly, Instead of the usual "Oooh ! that looks good, I'll have one of them".

So, My questions are...

Nvidia or Radion...?

Intel or AMD.

I will be putting all the money I can into this one as it will have to last me several years, so it will be pretty "top End" can I go Too far , or is it a case of get the most expensive, fastest & Biggest?

In short, How do I design the best FSX kit in the world, from the ground up.....?

Please feel free to spout as much MCIBTYC (My computer is better than your computer) as you wish...

[Techy111]

Ohhhhh....got excited then....thought it was a thread all about me.....

Ah well....

Tony

[TSR2]

Intel, Nvidia, ASUS (Motherboard), WD Velociraptor hard disks (unless you can afford Solid State Disks)

[Chris Sykes]

I second Bens, but if you have SSD you'd want Windows 7!

[op2]

i bit the bullet a year ago and had a go at building my own pc , asus motherboard , amd prossessor. ati radion graphics card 256mb,runnin xp pro , fsds gmax blender fs2002pro fs2004 fsx deluxe cfs3. and it runnin champion hinny.wont even let me wife and daughter look at it. its the first ive built and me over the moon with it . hope you build a fantastic rig mate

[DaveB]

Eee lad.. I like a bloke who types with an accent

I read FS2002Pro and thought OMG Then.. realised it was 2002 and not 2000

There's a certain amount of satisfaction in building your own rig and having it work isn't there.. especially when you don't really know what you're doing

ATB

DaveB

[tonymadge]

Intel V AMD:
I have the Phenom 550 dual core 3.1Ghz with a total of 7mb cache This chip is brilliant I have unlocked the other 2 cores so it is a quad clocked to run at 3.6Ghz which makes it a damn quick chip and with an aftermarket CPU cooler it runs at less than 40c all for less than £80!!! Oh plus its DDR3 RAM compatible..

Dave B has just purchased the Intel 8400 dual core chip which runs at 3Ghz and will go upto 4Ghz on air cooling and costs about £100 great chip but is dual core only and uses DDR2 ram only. They can run a bit hotter as well.

Two excellent chips at a very good price. You can go for the latest Intel chips ie i920 etc but they cost a lot more and for performance the above two are hard to beat in the value for money market.

ATI V nVidia:
This was a no brainer with the GTX 260/275/285/295 leading the way, in fact the GTX 260 with 216 pipes and standard overclocking makes it almost up to the GTX 285 mark for around £130 an ideal card. However with the new ATI 5800 models coming along nicely even I would have to say that the high end GTX cards are outplayed by the 5870 in most departments. But they as the high end GTX cards, come at a whacking price!!
The new ATI 5770 is a different kettle of fish, this card competes pretty well with the GTX 260 in performance and price, but is a bit smaller in size which is good if your short of space, also it has the ability to run 3 monitors... So thats a winner in my book.

HDD/SSD

Well I was looking at SSD but after reading a lot on the subject I am not going to bother, it appears that once a SSD has had data written to it then that data is overwritten the performance decays and it is quite common for these drives to suffer from stutter...we all recall FS2000 and the stutter!!! They are expensive as well, so until A: the price reduces and B: the firmware improves I will be giving these a wide berth.
I would consider a 10,000 rpm hard drive as these are a lot quicker than the 7,200 drives that are common. Prices are lower than SSD as well.

Motherboard, well if you want a great Intel board ASUS range is brilliant, however if your going down the AMD route then get a DDR3 motherboard Gigabyte are very good value for money.

I have said it before in many posts but my spec is really good and goes like sh1t of a shovel, the deal I got from overclockers.co.uk was superb, 4gb DDR3 ram CPU already overclocked, motherboard and better CPU cooler all for £270
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... 39&subcat=

On top of this I have added a cracking 700w OCZ powersupply that is modular and stunningly quiet again I got it for £70
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.a ... tid=frooct

I added a Samsung t220 monitor that for £130 is brilliant
So in total I spent around £450 as the prices were a little cheaper when I got it all, now I have a machine that will run everything , even that crappy FSX if I was daft enough to...well I was twice...

[DaveB]

Hi Tony..

A quick addendum to that last post. I don't think there is any relationship between the 3ghz E8400 Wolfdale and DDR3 ram. The type of ram that can be addressed is directly related to (though not exclusively to) the motherboard chipset.. that is, if I haven't misunderstood something along the way (likely in this day and age) A number of the Asus boards available in LGA775 are either DDR2, DDR3 or in some cases, both though not at the same time.

So.. don't buy an E84/8600 thinking you're restricted to DDR2 ram.. that aint so I went for the best Asus board I could afford which took DDR2 ram as I didn't want the additional outlay of buying DDR3 ram. Many (the majority) of DDR3 boards do not support DDR2 and those that do are rather pricey

ATB

DaveB

[tonymadge]

I miay be wrong..normally am But DDR3 motherboards will not accept the E8400 chip They only start with the i7 chips and later... I think fitting one in a Intel DDR3 motherboard would be a no go?? AMD DDR3 CPU's will retro fit into suitable DDR2 boards though I know that as Andy has a similar set up to mine but using DDR2 ram

********* Just done a search and I am wrong it seems you can do the DDR3 thing... I will get my coat

[DaveB]

I'm cheap mate.. you should know that hence, the DDR2 board (though it has to be said, I could have paid considerably less for a different DDR2 board or in fact, an alternative DDR3 board). To maintain the best possible upgrade path, I should really have gone for either a DDR3 board and forked out for new ram (there'd be no upgrade then would there!) or a DDR2/DDR3 mobo (expensive option) and at the end of the day.. where do you go. While there's still plenty of life in the older DualCore/QuadCore CPU's.. they're already slipping into history with i5/i7/i9 P6 chips being readily available

Anyway.. an easy cockup to make because the manufacturers make it that way. If God had wanted us to know everything, she wouldn't have invented Google

ATB

DaveB