Need advice on basic H/W set-up for old uncle

[fjalar13]

I will be happily assisting my 75 year old uncle choose hardware to set up a basic and good Flight Sim environment . He is an old flight navigator and he loves lying instruments in as close to life environment as possible.
He dos have some money to spend on this.
Besides picking up a well spec-ed out PC system, a great   graphics card and a big nice (flat?) monitor he also needs a  yoke, throttle etc. but not a joystick.
He used to have an old CH product, really old, and an ancient version of FS, so any improvement will make him happy. I want to blow him away!
Any and all help appreciated, but remember, it should be comfortable and as maintenance free as possible, so no beta products or cutting edge stuff :-)

[Dan]

Can you give a figure of the amount of money this gentleman is going to put up for aforementioned rig? That way we can give a proper spec.

There are two schools of thought in my mind, if he wants to spend around

[the_autopilot]

Agree with the above.

BTW, the fx-57 isn't out yet.

[Dan]

I know....  ;) But it will be good when it comes!  ;)

[the_autopilot]

Of course. The fx-57 will dominate the CURRENT gaming market, even the dual cores. This is because of the how games are programmed (most games today are single-thread).

But to future proof, your uncle may want to get a dual core as games are starting to go that way (the way of multi-thread) in which a dual core would reign supreme.

[fjalar13]

Money is not really an issue :-) that is the fun part. But I guess he would probably not go further than what amounts to your buying power of say 1500 pounds.

No experimental systems! And If you could be so kind to spell put the acronyms for me :-)

I guess it is an AMD processor
Nvidia card - what type?
1 GB RAM

How about yoke, rudder and throttle etc?
Monitor?

thanks guys.
F.

[4_Series_Scania]

[quote]AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-132-AM)

[Dan]

Well Paul the thing here is 'future proofing' I think... Sure that lesser system you detailed there would easily satisfy most people, in two years or so he may not be so happy with it. I think what the_autopilot said about the increasing use of dual cores should be taken into account.

I would definitely go with the DFI Mobo, my only thoughts -

If money isn't an issue then maybe BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra should be considered - I have heard that a pair go really nice! I haven't got any experience of 7800's, but they might be worth looking at.

Get the best RAM available - G.Skill 1GB DDR FF PC4800. Personally I would get 2Gb, I know a lot of people have, but that would be a lot of money gone on RAM! Probably 1Gb of good quality is best.

As for HDD, as its got to be a 'nice' system I would avoid SCSI - although its fast a lump of metal spinning at 15'000rpm makes a fair bit of noise! Get some nice SATA's,  I doubt the speed is going to be much of an issue but you could get any combination of Raptors + storage drives, or RAID some larger drives together. Up to you really!
Dan

P.s. fjalar13 - If any of this is going over your head then say yeah? Better than being confused!  ;)

[the_autopilot]

If money isn't an issue then maybe BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra should be considered - I have heard that a pair go really nice! I haven't got any experience of 7800's, but they might be worth looking at.

A pair of 6800 ultras can cost more than a 7800 GTX and in many cases performs much worse.

The 7800 GTX is a new generation card and is future proof. I would recommend a single 7800 GTX over any SLI config bcause it costs less and is just as or sometimes even more powerful.