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PC Upgrade advice needed from the PRO's..


ptgar1

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G'day all, I'm currently in a complete upgrade to build a computer to smash (well, at least run fluently) FSX, with, of course FTX.. (no point flying in a bland orange desert called "australia"...

I have alread bought a Quad Core Q9300

and am tossing up between a 8800GTS OR a 9800GTX

..My first question is, which of these two cards should I buy, as both are within my price range, and are close in price?

next I am completely up the creek when it comes to choosing between motherboards...

My question is how important are they to running FSX?

Heres a list of some of the makes I am currently considering..

EP35-DS4 - $177

X38-DS4  - $199

EX38-DS4 - $219

or.. if need be

X38-DQ6  - $299

if anyone could recommend a better one in this price range, it would be moochas appreciated..

And finally we come to RAM..

How much and what of?

currently I am tossing up between 4Gb at 1066 for $180 OR 4Gb at 700 for $120 (both are 2x2Gb of DDR2 RAM)

What should I be gunning for here?

hopefully what I have just said makes SOME sense, because this is all a new learning experience for me..

Thank in advance for your advice!

Piran

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here a listing of on what I've just spend my money on ......... lol :)

mobo~Gigabite S775 X48-DS4 ATX FSB 1600 4x DDR2 8x SataII DES

CPU~Intel Core2 Quad Q9300 s775

RAM~4Gig Team eXtreem DARK RAM DDR2 1066MHz PC8500

HD's~2x WD Raptor 150G SATAII 10.000rpm + 3x Seagate Barracuda 500G SATAII 7.200rpm

VCA~ZOTAC 9800GTX AMP 512Mb

PSU~BeQuiet 700W ATX V2.2 PSU Straight Power, 24/20pins, active pfc, 2xpci-e, 8xsata, 4x12V Rails

SC~Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series

DVDR~2x Samsung DVD RW+/-DL SH230P black

OS~Windows XPproSP3

case~Antec Nine Hundred

8)

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Hello from Germany,

you may want to have a look at the following site

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/

as this site provides professional FSX-Performance benchmarks for almost any (modern) card you can think of - using different settings (simply try a. choose benchmark and then b. add a product). There are three diffferent charts available * desktop, * dual & quad VGA as well as * professional workstation cards ....

To make a long story short  - once you´ve tried you´ll see, that you do not have to use the most fanciest card - as this only results in a very subtle increase in frame rates. It´s still the processor that counts - and - you´ll find benchmarks for almost all current processors at this site as well.

However the benchmarks are not using FSX. Not being an expert at all, I usually use the unreal tournament benchmark ... but I´m open for other suggestions.

With regard to mainboard options - I personally would go for those having at least two PCI-E 16 X - and run/use two cards .. i.e allowing you to use up to four monitors without triple head to go. Again - I´m open for different sugesstions as I´m not an expert at all !!

Good luck

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