The INCREDIBLE 120.00 expierment!
A little history,
For the past several months, i have been flying FSX on my laptop hooked to a 20" CRT. It was getting a respectable 20FPS with most sliders at low to med and autogen off.
Well last night my HDD took a crap and left me w/o a computer. I had some spare desktop parts and a 120.00 of hidden sim money. :)
Went to FRY's electronics here in Indy and bought these,
ECS mobo, 69.99 on sale for 29.90!
Corsair Mem, 2G DDR2 667 79.90 on sale for 39.95
CPU fan and heatsink for 24.99
A cheap case w/ps for 24.99
I had these parts laying around that i got from 'bad' pc's.
Pentium4 3.2G processor
ATI 1950XT Crossfire PCI-e
80G Sata hdd
450W PS (i'm using this for the card only!)
KB and Mouse
Assembled it all and installed winxp home SP2. Updated all drivers
Clean install of FSX, ALL sliders maxed except autogen (normal) and light bloom off!!!
Max FPS set to 31
Cessna 172 at KMQJ daytime in fair weather.
11-13fps straight, 6-9fps turning
Installed FSX SP-1 same flight,
24-28fps straight, 17-19fps turning
Installed FSX Acceleration w/SP-2
pegged at 31 straight, 25-28fps turning.
This is on cheap PC that hasn't been optimized yet. I'm stoked!!!! I have NEVER seen my flightsims look so real and crisp in the graphics and also be silky smooth flying.
I took the F-18 over the rockies at 550kts at 16,000 ft. Gorgeous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
24-26fps at low altitude and fast flying.
I thought you all would like the FPS comparison between all the updates.
Nice job Microsoft!! :)