Building new FS Machine- A few questions

[Tomlin]

As stated above, Im building a new machine for FS.

* I have only 1 drive currently that's going in it (SATA 250GB).

1) Shouldnt I partition the drive and have XP on one and FS on the other, and
2) How big should I make the OS drive?
3) In the future I plan to buy another SATA drive and have FS on it if that's better peformance wise. Thoughts?

* Do I correctly understand that my 2.1v RAM should be just fine in this MB that has the capability of running 1.8v ? (It runs DDR2 1066 or DDR2 800 depending on CPU and a reviewer said his 2.1 RAM ran at 1.87 per the BIOS).

* Any special things I need to do before installing FS9 and then FSX after XP is running stable?

Thanks,

[mauriceb]

Hi Eric,
My thoughts below in red and I take full responsibility, but not the blame for any unexpected and unwanted results :-)

Maurice


As stated above, Im building a new machine for FS.

* I have only 1 drive currently that's going in it (SATA 250GB).

1) Shouldnt I partition the drive and have XP on one and FS on the other, and

Absolutely not. This will make things worse

2) How big should I make the OS drive?

Not relevant if you don't partition, but you should get the biggest drive you can afford. 250 GB sounds big until you start adding scenery and disk drives are much more efficient when nearly empty since all the data can reside in the much faster outer tracks, especially if you use a good defragmenter that can relocate most often used data to the outer tracks.

3) In the future I plan to buy another SATA drive and have FS on it if that's better peformance wise. Thoughts? Again, absolutely not

* Do I correctly understand that my 2.1v RAM should be just fine in this MB that has the capability of running 1.8v ? (It runs DDR2 1066 or DDR2 800 depending on CPU and a reviewer said his 2.1 RAM ran at 1.87 per the BIOS).
If your motherboard can use 1066, use 1066 and not 800. Anything you can do to speed memory is a good thing

* Any special things I need to do before installing FS9 and then FSX after XP is running stable? Say a few prayers perhaps :D. Also do install all MS updates and all versions of .Net with their own service packs

Thanks,

[Tomlin]

Hmm...I always have heard it's best to partition to speed it up...I will dig deeper now.

Re RAM, long story but it's DDR2 800 for now...

Thanks, any other input appreciated.

[mauriceb]

Hmm...I always have heard it's best to partition to speed it up...I will dig deeper now.
.


This is from my own experience and also from reading reports from very knowledgeable people. But do conduct you own research ;)

Maurice

[Kennair]

Eric,

I've recently built a system and loaded FS9 & FSX so might be of some help.

Maurice is correct, don't partition your drive, it does slow down access. Your better option is to keep one big drive and get yourself a good defragment program like Ultimate Defrag which can place any directories i.e. Windows and FS, on the outer (fastest) part of the drive and all others on the slower inner portion. I have a 500Gb drive in my setup using this scenario quite successfully.

I also agree that the faster RAM the better. Remember, FS relies on CPU first followed by RAM. GPU speed and memory comes a distant third!

Once windows is installed make sure all updates are done before installing FS. FS9 is no problem, just load and play. FSX however will benefit from a systematic approach. I highly recommend getting a good payware defrag program before proceeding.

1. Before starting the FSX install, defrag. If you get Ultimate defrag, select both Windows and your FS directory to be placed on the outer part of the disc.

2. Install FSX. Restart then defrag again.

3. Install SP1. Restart then defrag.

4. Install SP2. Restart then defrag.

5. Restart again and your done!

Setup a regular defrag as suggested by whatever program you purchase.

Good luck,

Ken.

[Matt Olieman]

Guys, really good information/advise and informative. I know setting up a new computer for FS is an art in itself :) :) :)

Thanks again :)

Matt Olieman

[Tomlin]

Guys, I appreciate it too. Because of my budget, I went with the 250GB SATA drive (that's a good bit faster than my current IDE drive!) and I purchased the DDR2 800 RAM over the DDR2 1066 because my new CPU, the AM2 Athlon X64 3.6 is a Dual Core. The Mother Bd will only allow speeds of 1066 IF the CPU is the AM2+ Phenom. So, instead of buying faster RAM that is going to run a bit slower due to my CPU, I bought the appropriate speed of RAM for the CPU/Board reccomendations.

However, my real concern is that the board's stated 'Standard Memory' is DDR2 1066 (a bit misleading if you dont read the fine print of only if it's a Phenom CPU) and of course, this is all because I paid a little bit for future proof by purchasing an AM2/AM2+ MB which will allow me to upgrade to a quad core in the future once the raw CPU power has increased past my new 3.6 Ghz CPU. On to the concern: the MB website says 1.8 volt RAM if DDR2 800 is used, but I bought 2.1. Another purchaser of the same MB and CPU wrote in a review that his purchased 2.1 volt RAM was seen by the MB as 1.87 and was confused until he later realized that his error was in the selection of the non AM2+ CPU. As a result, the MB downgraded the RAM to 1.87 volts and so basically I was just hoping someone here could verify that this is a non-issue.

Regarding the partitioning, I will go for the non partitioned deal, thanks guys!

Regardless, Im going from currently a:

AMD single core 2.1 / 1 Gig PC2700 RAM / 256 MB Geforce 7600GT 8xAGP / IDE HD

to a...

AMD dual core 3.2 / 2 Gig PC2 6000 RAM dual channel / 512 MB 9800 GT 16x PCIe / SATA Hd

...Not to mention a huge difference in the Front Side Bus on the MB!

I think that I will see MASSIVE difference in FS9! Who knows, FSX might be a treat too.

[Michael Carter]

Guys, I appreciate it too. Because of my budget, I went with the 250GB SATA drive (that's a good bit faster than my current IDE drive!) and I purchased the DDR2 800 RAM over the DDR2 1066 because my new CPU, the AM2 Athlon X64 3.6 is a Dual Core. The Mother Bd will only allow speeds of 1066 IF the CPU is the AM2+ Phenom. So, instead of buying faster RAM that is going to run a bit slower due to my CPU, I bought the appropriate speed of RAM for the CPU/Board reccomendations.

However, my real concern is that the board's stated 'Standard Memory' is DDR2 1066 (a bit misleading if you dont read the fine print of only if it's a Phenom CPU) and of course, this is all because I paid a little bit for future proof by purchasing an AM2/AM2+ MB which will allow me to upgrade to a quad core in the future once the raw CPU power has increased past my new 3.6 Ghz CPU. On to the concern: the MB website says 1.8 volt RAM if DDR2 800 is used, but I bought 2.1. Another purchaser of the same MB and CPU wrote in a review that his purchased 2.1 volt RAM was seen by the MB as 1.87 and was confused until he later realized that his error was in the selection of the non AM2+ CPU. As a result, the MB downgraded the RAM to 1.87 volts and so basically I was just hoping someone here could verify that this is a non-issue.

Regarding the partitioning, I will go for the non partitioned deal, thanks guys!

Regardless, Im going from currently a:

AMD single core 2.1 / 1 Gig PC2700 RAM / 256 MB Geforce 7600GT 8xAGP / IDE HD

to a...

AMD dual core 3.6 / 2 Gig PC2 6000 RAM dual channel / 512 MB 9800 GT 16x PCIe / SATA Hd

...Not to mention a huge difference in the Front Side Bus on the MB!

I think that I will see MASSIVE difference in FS9! Who knows, FSX might be a treat too.


You will see a massive difference in FS9. You should be able to max all of your sliders with those specs. My processor is not quite that fast, but it doesn't have to be for FS9, and it's the best I've ever seen FS9.

[Tomlin]

Mike,

The other night I took a look at my FS9 settings and the marjority of them are at 75% or greater to the right, so Im thinking that although the sim may not look a tremendous amount better it will definately fly silky smooth, right?

I have the following addons:

FlyTampa Midway
FT Seattle
FT TNCM
Imagine Sim Nassau, Bahammas
IS San Juan PR
IS New Orleans
Flight Zone Rhode Island and Portland
MegaScenery Washington DC
...several freeware sceneries that are good like FreeFlow Florida, etc.

PLUS Ground Environment and the most awesome Ultimate Terrain.

Im thinking that I can now fly into all of these with 100% AI and start using my Active Sky again and maybe even go back to Radar Contact possibly all without much hit.

It's all the $$$ spent on these products along with the lingering issues that make me scared to move to FSX, although when I do fly it on the desktop, it looks fantastic even when the FPS' are low.

[mauriceb]

I keep forgetting you are still staying with FS9. I do agree that FS9 is much less of an issue and you should be able to get all the performance you need without using Michael services. But, if you do end up with blurries or shimmering or whatever seems to afflict FS9 even with a fast machine and you can't find a solution that works, then Michael can fix that for you.
There are tons of posts in various forums about people with very fast machines who still complain about poor graphics, so fast machine not always the cure for that.

But you can try FS9 by yourself and if you are happy with it, no point calling Michael. You can do the same with FSX and see where you end up and you can always uninstall everything if need be . Nothing is un-doable :)

Mau

[RalphW]

If you are brave enough then take a look here

http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

I found the XP guide very useful but this is not for the faint hearted and it helps if you know a bit about what you are doing.

Hope this is of use

Ralph

[Gsey]

I follow the guides written by NickN. This guy is a software guru having worked for NASA and the like and I have never seen fs run so nice until I followed his tutorials. definately worth a read so look for the green gecko.
:-)
System Setup
http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1208959973

FSX Setup
http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1197380641

FS9 Config Tweaks
http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1211055375/0#7

FSX Fine Tuning
http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1205673302#14

Gary

[Michael Carter]

I'm running FS9 on a 2.0 Ghz D.C. machine and I've never seen it so smooth. Mine is only an 800Mhz FSB, but it's doing a tremendous job for me. No stutters or pauses and I'm using Fly Tampa Vienna, Mega Frankfurt, GA1, a freeware de Gaulle system crusher, and the taxing DF727.

2GB of memory, and all the FS9 configuration stuff I could find as well as XP configuration for best performance.

You'll be very happy with your new system.

Seems that MS always brings out an FS version that's two or three generations ahead of the latest computer at the time of release. Well, I've finally caught up and actually have exceeded FS9 requirements by a wide margin. I'd never be able to run FSX on this system, that's a few systems down the road. Probably about the time the next FS is released. That doesn't bother me though, I'm quite satisfied with FS9.




Mike,

The other night I took a look at my FS9 settings and the marjority of them are at 75% or greater to the right, so Im thinking that although the sim may not look a tremendous amount better it will definately fly silky smooth, right?

I have the following addons:

FlyTampa Midway
FT Seattle
FT TNCM
Imagine Sim Nassau, Bahammas
IS San Juan PR
IS New Orleans
Flight Zone Rhode Island and Portland
MegaScenery Washington DC
...several freeware sceneries that are good like FreeFlow Florida, etc.

PLUS Ground Environment and the most awesome Ultimate Terrain.

Im thinking that I can now fly into all of these with 100% AI and start using my Active Sky again and maybe even go back to Radar Contact possibly all without much hit.

It's all the $$$ spent on these products along with the lingering issues that make me scared to move to FSX, although when I do fly it on the desktop, it looks fantastic even when the FPS' are low.

[Tomlin]

Well, it's ALIVE!

Last night I got started good about 9PM and I went to bed at 4 this morning (only about 5 hours ago from this posting time) after playing around with all it's features and checking and re-checking settings. I am very glad to say that I couldnt be happier with how well everything went from the build process and no glitches what-so-ever on Windows install and getting it all up to speed. I was too tired to walk back outside to get FS9 so I installed Call of Duty 4 that came with the MONSTER 9800 GTX card and man, it looks like a console game's performance!

So, tonight with any luck, I will be installing FS9 and the 9.1 update and then slowly start getting it online for use with the LJ45 sim.

Thanks for your inputs and I look forward to reporting silky smooth flights into some major traffic areas hopefully.

Oh Yeah, thanks for the links to those helpful tweaks by NicN. too.

[PDT 200]

Hey I just got through building a new machine after the HD died in a major way. It would have cost $500-1000 to have the data recovered or drive fixed so I figured it was time to build something that would run FSX. So I got an ASUS MB with 2 PCIE X16 slots and 3 PCI slots, 2GB DDR2 800 ram from COSAIR. It will overclock to 1066, an Intel Quad core cpu, 8800 PCIE and 8600 PCIE video cards. I will put one of my 6200 PCI cards in so I can have the 5 outputs I need. I'm now waiting for XP to install on a 650GB SATA HD. It's going to take forever for it to format. I'v had to order a new copy of FS9 from Microsoft because my disk 4 has damage on it that won't allow it to install. I tried with a different HD in the old machine and it just wouldn't load. Had to buy a new copy of the Wilco/Feelthere ERJ-145, I can't find the record of when I bought it. Oh well this time I got it on disk too. Broke down and bought the FSX version of FSUIPC so I can map everything in FSX on the ERJ. The only thing I really hate about the HD crash is the loss of the custom scenery files I had made for some of my favorite airports. Looks like I'll be spending time with EZ-Scenery again.
Here's a pic of the inside of the new machine. Cost about $560.00 Ordered it on the 21st and got everything today, 24th.
Regards,
Brian

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-3/1159387/NewComp.jpg

[warvet]

All I can say guys is Ultimate Defrag is the best money you can ever spend, it is really really good at getting high performance for FS at least for me. JMO Eric I play COD4 on my sim comp all the time , hopefully we can meet online, um guess my online name .... REVEREND :) See ya in the sand Sir OORAH!

Tim
A340
Canada

[PDT 200]

I've got it, so it will be one of the first things I install after XP finishes (70% formated now) and I get the moboard and video drivers installed.
Regards,
Brian

[Michael Carter]

O&O Defrag is right up there too.

[Tomlin]

Well, Im halfway there now.

I have installed FlyTampa Midway and several other intense scenery packages and I have the FPS' locked at 36 FPS, and guess what? It's running a solid 35-36 FPS!

Now I have to get Ultimate Traffic installed on this new machine and that will be a good test to see where I am with it all. I do have a feeling it will be just fine though.

[Kennair]

O&O Defrag is right up there too.

True O&O is a good one and many swear by it, however I believe that Ultimate Defrag is the only one that allows you to selectively place directories onto the outer (fastest) portion of the disc and keep other activity on the inner (slower) portion. This is really important for FS whether 9 or X and can give you an extra 10-15 FPS!

Also agree with Gary, if you want to get the most out of your system and learn what's going on read any or all of NicN's posts and others over at Avsim.

JM2c,

Ken.

[brynjames]

Gary, some very useful links to the NickN config settings threads which I hadn't seen before - many thanks.

The FS9 config tweaks url points to the same thread as the System Setup url - was this intentional?

--
Bryn

[Gsey]

No that was my mistake. Sorry about that. Fixed now.

Gary

[mlscotti]

Brian, reference to your new system that sounds like a good price, where did you get it... I'm looking a new quad core system from tiger direct but i think it's gonna set me back double your costs... Mike

[PDT 200]

Ordered everything from Newegg.com
ASUS MB P5FK-E with wifi (not used) P35 775 13-131-196 $149.99
Case CM/RC 330 11-119-115 $39.95
CPU INTEL C2Q Q6600 2.40G 775 8M RT 19-115-017 $199.99
HD 640GB WD 7K 16M WD6400AAKS 22-136-218 $89.99
MEM 1Gx2 Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4 20-145-034 $58.00
Subtotal was $537.96 with $19.69 for shipping for a total of $557.65
No sales tax paid.
The numbers xx-xxx-xxx are the stock numbers from Newegg. The system is pretty extensive with "from the internet" BIOS update available. no more bootable floppy to update the BIOS. BIOS date right now on the board is 3/2008 so it's pretty current. I haven't tried to update it yet.
I had a floppy drive and a DVD/CD/burner already so I didn't have to order them. Got all the monitors up and running (not the Matrox yet because I still have to setup the other projectors and mount them) so all the video cards are working well. I bought the video cards from Circuit City. ( I forgot to include them in my order)
EVGA EGEFORCE 8800GT-512 $189.99 (there is a $30.00 rebate)
EVGA EGEFORCE 8600GTS-256 $129.99
Sales Tax 21.59 for a total of $341.57 So I've got $899.22 tied up in this system. Probably get a better price from Newegg on the video cards.
Regards,
Brian