New PC?

[SAS884]

HI

I have been saving a couple of month to buy me a new pc.
And before I order it I would appreciate to hear any suggestion on the system.
Am planning to use it for FS9 and to run Project Magenta MCP/Upper EICAS along with MSFS.

Will it be sufficient?
Any suggestion on changing some part?



Cooler Master Stacker 831 Silver, 2x12cm fan, aluminum,

Hiper Nätaggregat ATX 580W Svart, 18dB,120mm Fan,4xSATA,2XPCI-E,20/24pin,

Asus P5K, P35, Socket-775, DDR2, ATX, GbLAN, PCI-Ex16,

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz Socket LGA775, 4MB, BOXED w/fan,

Kingston ValueR. DDR2 PC5300 4096MB CL5,

Kingston ValueR. DDR2 PC5300 4096MB CL5,

XFX GeForce 8800GTX 600M 768MB XT GDDR3 ,PCI-Express,2xDVI/HDTV/HDCP,600/1900Mhz,

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA2,

Windows Vista Ultimate,


Regards
Martin

[Rodney]

2 comments. Go ahead an get Vista, but use XP instead. Go to a local computer reseller and purchase a P III with a video card capable of open gl, I wouldn't pay over 100 USD for it, and run your PM on that. Don't bottle neck that super machine by running any PM on it. Don't get me wrong, PM is great, but you don't need a super computer to run it.

[Bob Reed]

I agree with Rodney on this one... PM needs very little by todays standards for power... That thing I would use to run FS!!

[SAS884]

Ok, thank you for your advise, but what do you guys think about running interfacing(phidgets for the TQ from simparts and FDS sys3 for the MIP) on that computer, or should I use the other computer`s in the network for that as well, and leave this PC only for MSFS?

[Rodney]

Go ahead and use the Phidgits, but put everything else on another computer.

[sas550]

Hello Martin!

Looks like nice a rig.

One thing though, You won't benefit from 8GB ram unless you run Vista x64 and that is begging for trouble today. I guess there will be drivers that are ok eventually. The only reason for going to Vista is if You plan to run FSX and a DX10 Graphic card whenever the DX10 patch will arrive for FSX.

x32 systems can't use more that 4GB ram and a some of that memory adress are reserved for the hardware you have connected. So in my case (not my sim rig, wich runs XP) Vista 32 is showing 3.2GB of installed 4, the rest is used for the HW. In the bios setup you will see all 8 GB if the MB can handle it. Wich most can theese days. But 4GB to no use.

Another thing to consider is that if you'll use a 32 bit os with those sticks I'm not sure you'll benefit from dual channel mem handling since it's 4GB each. Maybee someone else can fill me in here.

I'll suggest that, if You're going to use the pc as a dedicatet FS machine for your sim, stick with XP wich is a very well working and complete os that has many many years left to live. The sim won't run better on Vista, at least not today. Also buy 2GB sticks instead of 4GB unless you're absolutely sure of going x64.

If money isn't an issue don't buy valueram since this high performace stuff and FS tends to put heavy pressure on both the cpu and memory. This is clearly an issue with AMD based high end setups. I bought an AMDx64 3500+ and corsair value ram two years ago (obviously not high end today) and suffered from lockups in fs when the pressure was to high. So I changed to faster memory and that solved the prob. Whether this is relevant or not for your stuff I can't say.

[SAS884]

Thanx for all the help, have changed the order to this:

Hiper Nätaggregat ATX 580W Svart,
18dB,120mm Fan,4xSATA,2XPCI-E,20/24pin

Asus P5K, P35, Socket-775, DDR2,
ATX, GbLAN, PCI-Ex16

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz Socket LGA775, 4MB, BOXED w/fan

Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 2048MB CL5
Kit w/two matched CM2X1024A-6400 Dimm's

Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 2048MB CL5
Kit w/two matched CM2X1024A-6400 Dimm's

XFX GeForce 8800GTX 600M 768MB XT GDDR3
,PCI-Express,2xDVI/HDTV/HDCP,600/1900Mhz

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA2
16MB 7200RPM

MS Win XP Pro SP2 Swe.

Think this will be fine for FS9...