what to do next

well folks i just got my first com built and loaded with xp 32.

i just finished up loading all of the up dates.

i have the e8500 with a gigabyte board with 4 gig of mem and 320 hard drive.

i can over clock but i will do that later.

the MB is a gigabye GA-EP45T-DS3R.

one other note there are four ram slots and i have two moduales 2 gig each, and i have them in slot 1 and 3 do to them being the same color.

not for sure if that is correct or do i need to put them in 1 and 2 . one color is green and the other pink.

in the bios it shows 4 gig , but in the system properties it shows only 2.5 gig.
hhhhmmmm
i need to know what else i will need to load .

i have FSX in a new box ready to load, and i will be just loading FSX and other software that goes with it only.

any ideas what i will need to go with it.

and additional pointers to get the full max out of my com.

Thanks...........Robert

im ready to load FSX and get to flying again.













i need to know what else i will need to load .

i have FSX in a new box ready to load, and i will be just loading FSX and other software that goes with it only.

any ideas what i will need to go with it.

and additional pointers to get the full max out of my com.

Thanks...........Robert

the problem with 32bit OS is it can address max 4GB.
XP uses about 1GB on pointers to devices and drivers from the top of the 4GB and below, then it uses address space for the video card, in your case probably 512MB.
this means, XP can only use 2,5GB from your memory, and the rest is unused.
maybe you can try a 64bit OS, but there are different result in combination with FSX.

thanks for the reply, so what would be the best option as far as operating systems to run FSX .

should i upgrade to 64 bit or use my 32 bit vista.

i have vista but it to is 32 bit.

thanks .................... Robert

Hi,

It depends from the hardware. In the past I had a lot of PC's with XP 32bit and all of them showed different mem size (all of them had 4gb installed) Some showed max 3gb, 3,25gb, but 2,5gb only with sli enabled. Of cource it depents from MB and mem vendor. Maybe with bios update you see more but maybe the same.

Change to a 64 bit OS.

I should go for 64bit OS if there are 64bit drivers available for youre hardware