Buying New "quad Core" Super System

[DENNIS ORSAG]

HELLO TO ALL,

I AM IN THE PROCESS OF PURCHASING A NEW "QUAD CORE" CPU WITH SLI; LIQUID COOLING 8 GIG DR CAPACITY ETC. ( I WANT TO ENSURE GREAT FPS AND HOPEFULLY STAY AHEAD OF THE "TECH. CURVE" FOR A WHILE.)
MY MAIN CONCERN IS, ALL OF THESE NEW SYSTEM"S SEEM TO RUN ON "VISTA". MY COCKPIT UTILIZES, GO FLIGHT MOD"S X 6 , TH2GO , NATURAL POINT "TRACK-IR CAMERA" , 3 X 20"LCD AND I X DLP PROJECTOR. I RUN FS9 AND FSX.

IS ANYONE OUT THERE RUNNIG ON "VISTA" CURRENTLY WITH A SIMILAR SET UP? IF SO, DID YOU HAVE ANY ISSUE'S USING YOUR CURRENT HARDWARE WITH VISTA. I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO SPEND HOUR'S , JUST GETTING THE INTEGRATION TO WORK!

KIND REGARDS

DENNIS

[BHawthorne]

One does not need to buy Vista to run any of that. Even the most current patched Vista optimized is not as fast as XP optimized. I run both Vista and XP and see no need for Vista at all. It's bloatware that brings very little new innovation to the table. In a sim I'd go for the stability of XP over Vista any day of the week.

A word about liquid cooling. I've run a Danger Den rig for awhile. Liquid cooling WILL leak no matter how careful you are. Both liquid cooling and air cooling only deal with ambient room temps. Neither will be be any better than your room temperature. It's just a matter of how it's designed, one might get there faster than the other. Many air cooling setups are on par with water cooling and are no maintenance vs. water cooling high maintenance.

8gig ram. Only use this on a 64-bit OS like Windows XP 64 or Vista 64. If you use the 32 bit version it simply won't see 3/4ths of that ram. With the 64 bit OS rquirement, make sure all your hardware has 64 bit versions of the drivers. Vista 64 bit has a signed drivers issue at the moment. I'd not recommend Vista 64 bit right now, doubly so because of drivers.

You'll never keep ahead of the tech curve. The tech curve changes every 6 months -- be it with a new top of the line video card or CPU. At most you're going to be bulletproof on the tech side for about a year or less. Having the top still doesn't mean that you'll always have great FPS either.

I thought I'd inject a bit of reality into the situation, so you are not let down or frustrated later when you encounter these things first hand. Given all the money in the world, there will never be the ideal performance computer.

My main gamer: 790FX mobo, 2x 8800GTX, 1x 7800GTXKO, Phenom 9600BE, 4GB ram, 2x iRam v2 4GB, 2x Raptor 37GB

[andarlite]

Dennis

This is from the readme of the latest Goflight Software Version 1.77 (latest version from what I can see):


Operating System Compatibility
------------------------------
This software is compatible with Microsoft Windows 98 and 98SE,
Windows Millennium Edition ("Me"), Windows 2000, and Windows XP
32-bit operating systems. Key mapping support is not compatible with
the 64-bit version of Windows XP at this time


That's not to say that your Goflight modules won't work with Vista, but if it were me I would stick with XP.

Regards,
Henry

[DENNIS ORSAG]

Dennis

This is from the readme of the latest Goflight Software Version 1.77 (latest version from what I can see):


Operating System Compatibility
------------------------------
This software is compatible with Microsoft Windows 98 and 98SE,
Windows Millennium Edition ("Me"), Windows 2000, and Windows XP
32-bit operating systems. Key mapping support is not compatible with
the 64-bit version of Windows XP at this time


That's not to say that your Goflight modules won't work with Vista, but if it were me I would stick with XP.

Regards,
Henry

HENRY,

THANK'S FOR YOUR TIME AND THE INFO.

REGARDS
DENNIS

[Tim]

I'm running Vista64 with FSX and only SP1. SP2 causes too many crashes.

MB is Asus P5E, CPU is Intel Q6600 w/ 4gb ram, two hard drives (one for Vista64 and one for FSX).

GFConfig works with Vista64 but FSX is always asking to run the program at FSX launch. I also always get a data bridge error when closing FSX. Have reported this to GF many times. No idea when it will be fixed.

Hope this helps.

[Gsey]

Hi Dennis,

If you havent already, take a look at the hardware forum over at avsim.com

It is a very good and up to date forum concerning hardware and is the very first place I look when it comes to new computer purchases. Most posts now are from guys wanting to build the best system for fsx with the latest and greatest parts and there is alot of expert computer guys answering. I think most of us here are still using fs9 and havent really crossed that bridge yet to the same extent as the guys over there so you will be able to obtain more info to your new system build.

Gary

[DENNIS ORSAG]

One does not need to buy Vista to run any of that. Even the most current patched Vista optimized is not as fast as PX optimized. I run both Vista and PX and see no need for Vista at all. It's bloatware that brings very little new innovation to the table. In a sim I'd go for the stability of XP over Vista any day of the week.

A word about liquid cooling. I've run a Danger Den rig for awhile. Liquid cooling WILL leak no matter how careful you are. Both liquid cooling and air cooling only deal with ambient room temps. Neither will be be any better than your room temperature. It's just a matter of how it's designed, one might get there faster than the other. Many air cooling setups are on par with water cooling and are no maintenance vs. water cooling high maintenance.

8gig ram. Only use this on a 64-bit OS like Windows XP 64 or Vista 64. If you use the 32 bit version it simply won't see 3/4ths of that ram. With the 64 bit OS rquirement, make sure all your hardware has 64 bit versions of the drivers. Vista 64 bit has a signed drivers issue at the moment. I'd not recommend Vista 64 bit right now, doubly so because of drivers.

You'll never keep ahead of the tech curve. The tech curve changes every 6 months -- be it with a new top of the line video card or CPU. At most you're going to be bulletproof on the tech side for about a year or less. Having the top still doesn't mean that you'll always have great FPS either.

I thought I'd inject a bit of reality into the situation, so you are not let down or frustrated later when you encounter these things first hand. Given all the money in the world, there will never be the ideal performance computer.

My main gamer: 790FX mobo, 2x 8800GTX, 1x 7800GTXKO, Phenom 9600BE, 4GB ram, 2x iRam v2 4GB, 2x Raptor 37GB

BRAD,

THANKS FOR THE IN DEPTH RESPONSE, THIS IS THE INFO. I HOPING TO RECEIVE.

THE SYSTEM YOU DESCRIBED, WOULD YOU MIND "ARTICULATING" A BIT ON THESE COMPONENT'S

790FX MOBO , PHENOM 9600BE , 2X IRAM , V2 RAM AND RAPTOR 37 GB

I RECOGNIZE THE GPU CARD'S , HOWEVER I AM NOT TO FAMILIAL WITH THE OTHER'S.

I CURRENTLY HAVE AN ALIENWARE CUSTOM PC

AMD 64 FX-57 DUAL CORE , 2.81 GIG 2X GB RAM ,2 X 7800 GTXKO GPU'S WITH SLI .

QUESTION'S

DO YOU THINK THE 8800GTX CARD'S ARE "MUCH" BETTER THAN THE 7800?
IF SO, PLEASE GIVE ME AN IDEA OF WHAT THE "UPTICKS" ARE TO THE 880GTX.

I CURRENTLY CANNOT USE THE SLI MODE, AS I HAVE 3 MONITOR'S AND 1 DLP PROJECTOR RUNNING MY EXTERIOR GRAPHICS. DO YOU KNOW OF A CONFIGURATION THAT WOULD ALLOW ME TO USE SLI WITH MY CURRENT SET UP?

WHAT WOULD YOU SUGGEST I ADD TO MY CURRENT SYSTEM TO BETTER MY FPS AND OVERALL GRAPHICS


SORRY TO BE SO "VERBOSE', YOU SEEM QUITE KNOWLEDGEABLE

REGARDS
DENNIS

[DENNIS ORSAG]

Hi Dennis,

If you havent already, take a look at the hardware forum over at avsim.com

It is a very good and up to date forum concerning hardware and is the very first place I look when it comes to new computer purchases. Most posts now are from guys wanting to build the best system for fsx with the latest and greatest parts and there is alot of expert computer guys answering. I think most of us here are still using fs9 and havent really crossed that bridge yet to the same extent as the guys over there so you will be able to obtain more info to your new system build.

Gary

GARY,

THANK YOU , GREAT IDEA!!!!!!!!!

REGARDS
DENNI

[DENNIS ORSAG]

I'm running Vista64 with FSX and only SP1. SP2 causes too many crashes.

MB is Asus P5E, CPU is Intel Q6600 w/ 4gb ram, two hard drives (one for Vista64 and one for FSX).

GFConfig works with Vista64 but FSX is always asking to run the program at FSX launch. I also always get a data bridge error when closing FSX. Have reported this to GF many times. No idea when it will be fixed.

Hope this helps.

THANKS
I ALSO HAVE THE SAME DATA BRIDGE ISSUE WITH FSX AND XP!!!, HOWEVER, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE QUAD CORE AND FPS YOU ARE GETTING?

REGARDS
DENNIS

[BHawthorne]

BRAD,
790FX MOBO , PHENOM 9600BE , 2X IRAM , V2 RAM AND RAPTOR 37 GB

AMD 790FX:
AMD/ATI recently came out with a new motherboard chip the 790FX. This motherboard allows for 4 16X PCIe slots...which gives you a lot of video card options. I didn't go 790FX because of performance, I went 790FX because no other motherboards at the moment give you the option to run 4 current era video cards. If you're looking for strictly performance, then I'd go with one of the new nForce 780i or 790i motherboards.

AMD Phenom 9600BE:
With the selection of the 790FX motherboard, it forced me to pick an AMD cpu. The Phenom series by AMD are the latest quad cores. As far as performance they're not quite on par with the Intel Core 2 Quads. The BE in the serial means it's a Black Edition processor with unlocked multipliers.

Gigabyte iRAM V2.0:
Gigabyte in the last year has come up with a true SATA SSD ramdisk where you install regular DDR memory into the thing and it can be formatted as a SATA drive. It has battery backup to maintain the data while the computer is disconnected. I run 2 of these in a RAID 0 for my boot drive. Lightning fast. Faster than anything else out there for disk drives. Downsides are that the boxes cost $200 each and you still got to buy the ram to put in them. If you have an optimized Windows XP install and a game that can fit in the rest of that 8GB space then you can have a very responsive game with no stuttering from hitting scratch disk.

WD Raptor HDs:
Western Digital still makes one of the best SATA drives out there in the Raptor and Raptor X series. Sure, 15k rpm SCSI drives are faster, but they're tons more expensive too. For a enthusiast gamer machine Raptors are pretty standard SATA drives.

DO YOU THINK THE 8800GTX CARD'S ARE "MUCH" BETTER THAN THE 7800? IF SO, PLEASE GIVE ME AN IDEA OF WHAT THE "UPTICKS" ARE TO THE 880GTX.

I think the 7800GTXKO is a very capable card solo or in SLI. It's almost too new to upgrade. That will soon change with the new nVidia 9800 cards coming out "soon". If you're planning on upgrading video cards, wait for the 9800's.

I CURRENTLY CANNOT USE THE SLI MODE, AS I HAVE 3 MONITOR'S AND 1 DLP PROJECTOR RUNNING MY EXTERIOR GRAPHICS. DO YOU KNOW OF A CONFIGURATION THAT WOULD ALLOW ME TO USE SLI WITH MY CURRENT SET UP?

With the mechanics of SLI, to the best of my knowledge you'll never be able to run SLI with a 3 display TH2G + 1 projector setup. This is because nVidia's drivers when in SLI mode want all video ports out disabled except the one being used to output video to the SLI screen. I've always been a fan of SLI motherboards, but not on SLI itself. SLI motherboards gives me more slots to run more video outs. I prefer more video outs instead of one really fast single video out. It's a delima of how you want to use the hardware and what the hardware will let you do.

WHAT WOULD YOU SUGGEST I ADD TO MY CURRENT SYSTEM TO BETTER MY FPS AND OVERALL GRAPHICS

It's really hard to say here. It looks like you've got pretty solid specs even though it's not the latest everything. The fastest stuff out there is undoubtedly the Intel Core 2 Quad setups with the nForce 780i/790i motherboards. But that's going to essentially cause you to have to get everything new, and I'd hate to recommend that considering how solid your current system is. I'm not so certain you'd feel a large enough upgrade in performance to justify it at the moment. Maybe shoot for Christmas upgrade time frame. Between shopping specials and a few new hardware releases between now and then it might make more sense at that time.

Do you happen to know if your motherboard is a Socket-939 or is it a Socket-AM2?