What chip for FS?

[Loose rivets]

Hi, I'm building a reasonably hi end pc, and although i have never veered away from intel in the past, a pal who is at the cutting edge - building for his development of games - seems to always work with AMD.

I will be using low demand soft, except for Flight sim and perhaps AutoCAD, do you have any advice on the chip manufacturer?

Also, he suggests ATI graphics, where i had assumed it would be g - force -- budget around $200

All advice would be appreciated. LR

[Koyo]

There are only 2 graphic chip makers: ATI and Nvidia. The latest video card from ATI is the X800 and Nvidia got 6800. The last time I checked, the X800 was selling for about 800 Canadian, so divide that by 2.5 and you should have pound sterlin. However, video card a generation back should be cheaper and should be able to handle the job (something like an ATI Radeon 9800 or a Nvidia GeForce 5).

As for CPU, AMD and Intel are both good but I find AMD more economical. Any CPU around 2.8 GHZ should be good but avoid cut down verison like Intel Celeron or AMD Duron if you can. They both got less L2 memory. I recommand at least 1 gig in RAM since Windows XP use a lot of memory to run. Also, get well known brand of RAM (like Kingston) if you can afford it. Sometime generic stuff aren't the best.

What flight sim you plan on playing? I got a AMD 3000, 1 gig of RAM, but an old GeForce 4. I only get like 30 FPS while playing Lock-On Modern Aircombat and I got the graphics set to low or med. SimHQ got forums on just about every flight sims out there.

www.simhq.com

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Loose rivets,

It all comes down to how much you want to spend.

The AthlonXP 2500+ is a great CPU that overclocks like crazy (I keep a 500Mhz overclock on mine with some serious cooling). Pair it with an nForce2 Ultra 400 Mobo like the:

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe



and the MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum



If you are looking at getting an Athlon64, then look at the Socket 939's since they are changing from the Socket 754 Athlon64's to the Socket 939 Athlon64's. A couple of good nForce3 Ultra mobos to look at are the:

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum



and the Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP-939



When it comes to Vid Cards, two "Best Bang for the Buck" options are the:

ATI Radeon 9800Pro 128Mb



and the MSI GeForce FX 5900XT 128Mb



Take Care,

Richard

[Loose rivets]

Koyo and Richard Hi again,

Thanks for the work you put in on my question. I feel kind of odd having to cry for help on computer issues. My wife and i started the first Prompt Computing Ltd., as far a we could find out at that time, the first use of that name in the world. The play on words was of course to do with the DOS promt. We quickly became a cad specialist company, with close ties to Roland . It was a great time, with huge profit margins ---- the upgrade to a full height hard disk was £1,000 ! 150 Mb though, serious stuff.

I even used to turn up in uniform after a night flight, with those customers that knew me well.

Nowadays i'm totally lost. The kit that my friend demonstrated to me yesterday was beyond belief, 1600 res with images that looked as though they had been lacquered by a craftsman. I come from an era when i took my clients out to lunch while St Paul's had it's hidden lines removed. 1:23 mins on a file of 23k

I'm in Texas at the moment, and trying to live in two countries means that I must be cautious about cost, so coming back from the cutting edge is a must.

I intend to buy the latest FS with the intention of flying jet transport aircraft for the most part, though i got my mits on a pals Cessna Aerobat a while back, and it wasn't long before i showed him how badly behaved the British can be when let off the leash, so it would be fun to practice some of the maneuvers in the comfort of home.

As it happens, my computer pal looked at monarchcomputer.com and recommended the Abit NF 7 nForce 2 v.2 with XP 2800+ (with Barton core what ever that is ) 333FSB The vendor suggests a Gig of Corsair, and i agree with you about the maker...i used to be so careful when i was ordering my one meg of dil chips.

This is a pre tested combination and is priced at $442
He has suggested a MSI ATI RX 9800 Pro 128 Mb DDR $ 194

The strange thing here is that if its ordered out of state you don't pay state tax. :-) Bewildering.

Do you approve of Corsair ? And the manufacturer of the HD's is an issue ... he suggests two 80's ghosted config. Any strong opinions.

Anyway, thanks for your help, because it does seem to tally with the suggestions here ----- this gives me confidence that i wont buy a pile of kit that would have the experts in hysterics. RB

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Loose rivets,

Do not worry about it. With computers, if you do not read the tech websites every night, you fall behind the technology.

I am going to give you a website that is one of the best E-Tailers in the U.S.:

New Egg

I order a lot of hardware from them since they have excellent customer service and they sell the hardware cheaper than I can get it from Tech Data, even as a reseller.

I would suggest in your case, ordering the hardware and building the computer yourself. You will find that building a computer is much easier than back in the day when you operated First Prompt.

Here are the links to a complete system for you:

AMD AthlonXP 2500+ Retail $90.00

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe $84.00 + $5.00 FedEx Shipping

MSI RX9800PRO-TD128 $194.00 + $1.95 FedEx Shipping

Mushkin 2x256Mb Blue PC-3200 Dual Pack $125.00 + $0.99 FedEx Shipping

Western Digital WD800JB 80Gb 7,200RPM 8Mb Cache $69.25 + $1.50 FedEx Shipping

NEC 16X Double Layer DVD±RW Drive $86.99 + $4.00 FedEx Shipping

Teac 1.44MB 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive $10.00 + $0.99 FedEx Shipping

ANTEC Performance Plus Case with 430W Power Supply $129.49

SAMSUNG 955DF-T/T 19" DynaFlat CRT Monitor $215.00 + $25.00 FedEx Shipping

Logitech Cordless MX Duo $69.00 + $6.99 FedEx Shipping

Logitech Z640 5.1 Speakers $43.00 + $8.99 FedEx Shipping

Total = $1,115.73 + $55.41 FedEx Shipping

If you want to upgrade above, I would look at:

Logitech THX Certified Z-680 5.1 500Watt Dolby Digital DTS Speakers $225.00 + 16.99 FedEx Shipping

2 X Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drives 2 X $113.00 + 2 X $1.99 FedEx Shipping

Mushkin 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 Level One Dual Pack $238.00 + $0.99 FedEx Shipping

The upgrades listed are for Digital Speakers, since nVidia's onboard Dolby Digital SoundStorm Audio is some of the best you will ever hear from a computer, especially when listening to music or watching movies in full Dolby Digital DTS with THX.

The Raptor Drives are fantastic at killing the Windows Disk Access Bottle Neck when on a SATA RAID with a 16k Stripe.

If you wanted the extra RAM, Mushkin has some of the best RAM in the business along with world class Customer Service.

Take Care,

Richard

[redsnail]

Hey Rich,
The big fella sprung me drooling over your tasty morsels and he upped for drooling over "porn". He then told me to get off the mac (which is working) and sort out FRED.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

redsnail,

I know, I have ruined many a person's keyboard with these types of posts. I think I need to put up a disclaimer at the top of the post:

*** Danger, do not proceed unless you have a waterproof keyboard. You are entering a full drool zone! ***



Take Care,

Richard

[goates]

Loose rivets,

I have alomost the exact configuration you listed:

AthlonXP 2800+ (Barton)
Abit NF7-S Rev.2
1GB OCZ RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
2 x 80GB Seagate SATA hard drives in a striped RAID array (sorry Richard, the Raptors are still too expensive up here )

It's worked very well for me so far. I use and Audigy2 ZS sound card as I don't have speakers that can use the SoundStorm audio (you need speakers with digital input) and the onboard analog output sucks. I might get the Creative DDTS-100 to solve this problem someday though.

I'm not sure about that Asus board Richard mentioned, but some of the new nForce 2 Ultra motherboards have native SATA, Gigabit Ethernet and a built in hardware firewall. You might want to check them out.

MS Flight Sim will probably be harder on your computer than AutoCAD will be. Unless you're into rendering huge photorealistic computer models.


goates

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

goates,

I am running several A7N8X-E Deluxe Mobos. I like it over the Abit board because the A7N8X-E Deluxe has SATA RAID, SoundStorm with SPDIF, Gigabit Ethernet, Dual LAN, TwinBank, USB 2.0, Firewire, Wi-Fi Access Point (if you drop in the Wi-Fi Card), etc.

A7N8X-E Chipset is the NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 + MCP-T (The -T is SoundStorm.)

Here is the mobo list from the nVidia Website where you can find SoundStorm Mobos:

Motherboard Solutions

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. The Logitech Z-680 with SoundStorm is really something else to hear. (They can hear it down the block too.)

[Loose rivets]

Buenos dias, from Texas

You'all really are talking a new language. But then, I can remember getting excited when the 80286 came out!

But thanks again for the links and tips. I'm going to newegg with a wish list, and will attempt not to make an omelet. :-)

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Hola Loose rivets,

No te preocupes. Yo hablo tu lenguaje.

Saludos,

Ricardo