Advice on proposed Bunle specs

[luke]

I only use fs9 and 500 smackers is a big weight on an OAP.
In your opinion how far can I reduse this below, & still get a decent flt.sim. operation?           luke

Bundle:-
AMD Athlon 64 3500 Retail / Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi / 1GB GeIL Value PC3200 Dual Channel Kit - Bundle (BU-048-OK)
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3500BPBOX) (CP-119-AM)
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS)
Price:  

[the_autopilot]

[quote] Bundle:-
AMD Athlon 64 3500 Retail / Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi / 1GB GeIL Value PC3200 Dual Channel Kit - Bundle (BU-048-OK)  
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3500BPBOX) (CP-119-AM)
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS)
Price:  

[luke]

The Grfx must be the 6600gt I understand,

but can I reduce the price, without noticable degredation to fs9 by  say:-

1. a less pricey mobo ie.(MSI, ABIT, Gygabite etc), or
2. CPU down to 3000 or 3200, or
3. NON SLI,  or
4. just PCI-E?

thnx                    luke

[Weather_Man]

Don't get SLI unless you plan on 2 cards eventually. You pay a premium for the SLI boards.

You can save money on a slower CPU, but will affect performance. If you keep this new system 3 years or more, get the best you can afford.

Stay with socket 939 and PCI-e. Any other features you want can determine which mobo to get. Price out purchasing individual components versus bundles. Bundles are not always cheaper and may include things you don't want or need.

[luke]

Thanx Weather Man,

I do not exactly understand how it affects me, this SLI and 2 cards thing.

As an old person that the only greedy program I will ever use is FS9, do I really need 2 gfx cards for it ?

When is it likely they come up with onother FS9 new model, and will it then need 2 cards?

Opinions welcomed,                      luke

[congo]

You can get any brand mobo, but get a decent one.
You could substitute the nForce SLI chipset with an nForce4 Ultra chipset if you only plan on using a single graphics card.

Video card upgrades will always be available either way, so the choice is your's.

[luke]

Thnx Congo,
which are the decent & enexpensive mobos, by name?
luke

[the_autopilot]

Thanx Weather Man,

I do not exactly understand how it affects me, this SLI and 2 cards thing.

As an old person that the only greedy program I will ever use is FS9, do I really need 2 gfx cards for it ?

When is it likely they come up with onother FS9 new model, and will it then need 2 cards?

Opinions welcomed,                      luke

If you ALL you play is fs9, do NOT get SLI. SLI'ed cards actually perform worse than a single card solution in fs9.

SLI is where your computer has two video cards in it. Usually, this increases gfx performence tremendously. In some exceptions like fs9, it decreaes performence due to incompatibility. Both the motherboard and the video cards must support SLI for it to work.

[congo]

Prices tend to be rather arbitrary, with retailers taking advantage of current trends and media hype.

Obviously, the latest and greatest is going to cost a bit more than yesterday's news. So this is our dilemma.
Normally I recommend buying into technology which is one step behind the latest release, but mainboard selection is the one exception I make to this rule, it needs to be the very best you can buy because

[the_autopilot]

Wow, congo, you are on top of everything today.

Just go with what congo says, and you'll have a great system.

BTW, make sure you get a decent PSU. Its often overlooked, but causes random system reboots and fialures if it is fualty/underpowered.

For a typical setup with a decent gfx card, a 420 watt is the mininum. Make sure you buy a good brand of PSU as some obsecure brands rate their PSU's higher than the actual wattage at full load. Some brands I recommend are antec, thermal take, enermax.

If buya case and it comes with a PSU, toss it. Generally PSU's that come with cases are horrible. The exception is if they tell you exactly waht kind of PSU is in there and that PSU is a good one (generally they won't tell you this).

[Ivan]

Biggest difference between the 'Deluxe' and 'standard' for the A8N-SLI is that the deluxe version has the SLI connector plug-in board built in (BIOS) instead of having it as a separate PCB that you have to fiddle between the 3 PCI-e slots that live in that area of the motherboard.

SLI does have an advantage with the latest drivers: FSAA load is spread over the two cards. But with FS9 still being limited by disk IO when it comes to framerate (you should try a high-res mesh on 4x rate and then listen to the harddisk...) it will probably not have much effect.

Dual channel kit means that you have 2 strips that have a combined size being the advertised size. A8N-SLI takes 2x2 in dual channel mode (4 connectors)

In holland, that config does around 150 euros for the motherboard, 270 for the processor and another 250 euros for the memory (Corsair TwinX 1GB). That makes 670 euros with all stuff in retail type packaging, but i don't know the exchange rate from euros to pounds and yours probably comes as OEM which can chop off some 10-20 percent of the price.

[luke]

Well thanx all, I am overwholmed with responce.

Geting down to more work again. I get dizzy, with so many combinations on 100 sheets of paper.

But as fs9 is not improved with SLI, I may stick with only PCI-E.

Is it yet known if a new MS flt.sim. will need SLI ?

That may be a factor for future proofing, if I leave that long!

luke

[Ivan]

As long as the textures are read from disk as bitmaps and there isnt much post processing going on after that the only thing that will benefit is having a huge IO speed on the system bus

If they go for real reflection and bump mapping with the next one, SLI will give a speed improvement.

If i were you, i'd keep the option open and buy a SLI capable board with just one card. The plans are that the coming generation of nVidia drivers will support SLI on different cards as long as the chipsets are the same (for example 2x 7800GT or 2x 7800GTX from different manufacturers and with different memory sizes)

[congo]

I don't think we will see MSoft limit their potential and traditional market by requiring 2 x 7800's or similar just to run it.

Any release by them is going to be mainstream.

Not having 2 graphics slots will never be as crippling as, say, not having an AGP or PCIe graphics slot. It will simply cut off one upgrade path.

Be very careful with mainboard choice though, as there is a limited choice of suitable, non-sli boards if you go that route.


http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1770

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3 ... odelmenu=1

http://tw.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Pro ... K8NF-9.htm

The Gigabyte board is probably as good as the Asus, The MSI board looks good as well.

[luke]

I have no idea what those PCStats mean, but a glance at the blue slides Gigabyte bothe SLI & Non SLI appear longer than the MSI's.

& MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (NF4 Ultra 200/400) is always Red at the bottom. Surely NOT red= poor.

And by golly, Asus is not shown. Is it above comparison?

Any info