Budget Hardware setup?

[Dan Brown]

Hello All-

  This is my first post on this board. I am a helocopter pilot who stumbled across the FSX demo and love it! I have a very old (circa 2002) Dell laptop that I'm running at the moment for all my computing needs, which is obviously not cutting it for this game.

I'm looking to upgrade my system across the board to something new, but don't want to break the bank. Does anyone have any recommendations on what to go with? I don't need an amazing setup with a 512+mb graphics card, but I do need something better than my 32mb graphics card on this old laptop. Thanks for your help......

[dcunning30]

If budget is your primary concern, take a stroll down to your local Best Buy and take a look at their Compaq or EMachine computers, and plan on spending about $100 extra for the video card, which is a must.

[Dan Brown]

Give me your thoughts on this system:

-Pentium

[ctjoyce]

What exactly is your budget? Once I have a number to work with I'll get back to you.

Cheers
Cameron

[dcunning30]

That looks like a good system.  Definately get the video card.

[Dan Brown]

Thanks to all who have replied:


Cam- I'm looking to spend around 600 dollars for the actual desktop unit. Followed by about 200-250 for a monitor.

[ctjoyce]

I'm having a real problem coming up with anything. My biggest problem is that everyone is shipping with Vista, and well Vista is horrable for gaming.

So I may be able to get you something from scratch, but we shall see.

Cheers
Cameron

[ctjoyce]

Yea, as I figured, scratch was getting me $400 over budget. Now granted that the parts were much more powerful than those offered by Dell or HP....but even still.

And I even got a 20" widescreen in that.

Cheers
Cameron

EDIT: Lol checking again with dell, its going to cost someone $1300 to get a system that would cost $1190 to build themselves. Now I'm going to try to chew down the price as much as I can...but I can't guarantee anything.

[Dan Brown]

Cameron-

Can you elaborate on the problems with Vista? The system I mentioned above is going to do most of what I need in terms of personal computing, with FSX being a side item. I would however upgrade the system above to 2GB of RAM from dell, now that I've been able to cut cost corners elsewhere.

Is it even worth buying if it has vista?

[ctjoyce]

Truely no. Currently video drivers aren't what they should be, not to mention that Vista is a huge resource hog. So if you have Aero + FSX running, thats a lot of stress on a GPU. Vista has gotten to the point where its perfect for the normal PC user, but anyone who is a gamer should stay away. Not to mention the problems with sound drivers.

Cheers
Cameron

[Dan Brown]

Cameron-


   Thanks for your input. In reality, I can't go through with this purchase unless I have a computer that'll do everything else I need as well, not just game.

   I think my last hope is buying a Vista machine with a huge hard drive, then installing XP Pro on a second partition. There seems to be a few articles on how to partition the drives and install both OS's on the internet. Vista for everyday, then reboot into XP to game. Luckily I have a fresh version of XP Pro sitting around on DVD....

  IF I were able to get XP loaded in a seperate partition, would those specs above be adequate at least if running XP Pro? This is probably my last attempt on a workaround for getting a new computer..... If this doesn't work, I'm just gonna have to ride this laptop out for a while longer....

[ctjoyce]

Well doing a dual boot is a very easy thing to setup, however be warned. There are some manufactures that are locking their BIOS to only boot to Vista, which means no easy dual boot to XP.

What I would recomend for a spec if you do decide to go Dell,

Intel Core 2 Duo E6420
2GB RAM
250GB Hdd for Dual boot
nVidia 7800 or X1900 or better.

Currently a ATi card is the better choice for Vista, but ithor are good.

Cheers
Cameron

[Dan Brown]

Cameron-

Thanks for your info, you have been very helpful to this Sim noob.

I will probably place a call to Dell tomorrow and see if I can get some answers from them. I will let you know how it goes.

Should it all work out, expect some screenshots from me in 2-3 weeks

[ctjoyce]

Whatever you do, don't tell them that you are planing to do a dual boot. Dell will tell you that it voids the warranty, and they wouln't even support it. They will just say "sorry we don't support dual boot systems at this time, even though the problem you are calling about is on a operating system that we support, we actually don't know anything about how to actually solve your problem....have a nice day"

Cheers
Cameron

[dcunning30]

Regarding video drivers, everything I read complaining about Vista video drivers has to do with GeForce, not ATI.  BTW, I have a GeForce 7600 and so far I don't have any complaints.  But then again, I'm on my 3rd GeForce driver since I bought my PC about a month 1/2 ago.  It appears NVidia is feeling the heat!  LOL!!!!!