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My system specs: Dell Dimension 8400 Series(Its like 3 Yrs old)

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU
3.20GHZ, 3.19GHZ
3GB of RAM
500GB Hard Drive + 160GB Hard Drive
ATI RADEON X300 Series (Yes I need a new Graphics Card)

thanx for the feedback

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2 ... 1190754444

If the graphics card is updated with something decent it should be reasonable enough providing the PC is set up fairly clean. It won't be a flawless experience, FSX is not really designed for "retro" hardware, however, for the least expense possible, a good video card might prove good enough for you.

A poor graphics card choice would be a waste of money though. If you decide to get a better system, the card could be moved into that.

No.... fsx will run like dirt on that computer.

The Dell 8400 has an Intel 925x motherboard with a locked up Dell BIOS. It does NOT support dual core processors or anything beyond a Pentium 4, the best of which you can get is the Pentium 4 670... limited benifits over the Pentium 4 540 or 640 (What you have). Dell cases are piles of crap and there motherboards usually will not fit in other cases and vice versa.

X300 is a pile of crap no matter how you put it... a DECENT videocard (8800GT for example) will be running at $200 and would be MASSIVELY bottlenecked by the rare Pentium 4 670 (or any P4 for that matter).

To put it simply, your computer is old and slow... it cannot run fsx well no matter how you put it. If you want to upgrade computer to something capable of running fsx half decently then you're going to need a new videocard, which will push you into a new CPU which will push you into getting a new motherboard which will push you into getting a new case.

Whole new computer anyone? That's what you should do if you want to run fsx. If you want to run fs9 well then you could pick up a second hand Ati X850, Nvidia 6800, Nvidia 7800, Nvidia 7900, Ati X1800 or X1900. Or get a whole new computer for fsx.

I just saw FSX running on a mates Q6600 with 4gb ram, 8800GT and Vista, and it was a real POS compared to my rig, hands down, no contest....

.... so it's not only about the hardware.

I just saw FSX running on a mates Q6600 with 4gb ram, 8800GT and Vista, and it was a real POS compared to my rig, hands down, no contest....

.... so it's not only about the hardware.

Of course... however, I had a Dell 8400 once... a few weeks ago actually. Mine had Pentium 4 660 and 6800 Ultra (And then a X1800GTO). I had spent a very, very, very long time tweaking it, trying to get every ounce of performance from it, somehow, in the hope that fsx would magically clear up. It didn't. I went back to fs9 after hundreds of hours wasted.

Now with my Q6600, I'm truely embarrassed I even tried to run fsx on my old ancient rig. It was crap and WORSE than fs9 (and fs9's pretty bad

I just saw FSX running on a mates Q6600 with 4gb ram, 8800GT and Vista, and it was a real POS compared to my rig, hands down, no contest....

.... so it's not only about the hardware.

I was runnning something very similar to you, Congo (in fact, you helped me pick out the parts and o-clock it