Would I be better off reverting to FS2000 or '04?

[David I]

I've recently installed FSX and am having a bear of a time getting it to work decently. I'm running a Intel P4 3.06Ghz processor, 2GB RAM and have a GE Force 8400GS. I know that its no great gaming system, but to get any real frame rate I've got to set everything to minimal settings, no fun! I don't have the bucks right now to upgrade (but would take some advice if anyone thinks a new card might help). The real question is, with my current PC, would I be better off going back to an older version of FS or is that the same as running FSX with min settings? I watched some YouTube vids of FSX running at max settings and started to drool on my keyboard. That's where I really want to be.

Bottom line question, my Dell can't take anymore RAM, so would a new GPU help? Or am I S.O.L.?

Thanks!

[Slotback]

FS2004 would probably be better for your system. A new card might help a little, but not significantly. Save up for a new system instead IMHO because to run FSX well you need a fast quad core, 4 gigabytes of RAM, and a decent graphics card preferably with over 100 gigabytes per second of video memory bandwidth. And then there's MS Flight coming out late this year probably next year...

[David I]

100 gigabytes per second of video memory? I think mine has like 4, are there really cards out there with 100? Where have I been?

[Slotback]

100 gigabytes per second of video memory? I think mine has like 4, are there really cards out there with 100? Where have I been?

The fastest card at the moment has 1536mb of memory with a bandwidth of 192.4 GB/s... yours has 6.4. A GTX 460 256 bit is a decent card and costs $185 USD, but to feed that power you're going to need a completely new computer.

[patchz]

[color=#000000]NNNG is correct. You are better off going with FS2004 now and saving for a better system.

My ATI 5970 HD has dual RV870 chips each clocked at 725MHz and 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1000MHz on dual 256-bit buses. If you're thinking these are HD 5850 clocks, you are right. However, the HD 5970 has

2 x 1600 stream processors and 2 x 80 texture units, twice that of an HD 5870. I could probably run default FSX with sliders maxed, but not with addons like FTX, REX, GEX, and UTX all active. And certainly not while flying

Iris' Twin Star with 4096 x 2048 textures.

[Skittles]

David,

It appears you and I are in the same situation... Simular machines except my cpu is OC'd to 3.5 and I have a crappy Vidcard. I'm currently stuck with FS2004 until I get my new machine. If you haven't seen it and your behind in todays tech... run through THIS.

[David I]

Thanks for all the great advice. My plan is to see how '04 runs on what I've got and work towards a new system.

I'd like to buy a barebones system (case, video card and processor and add 2GB memory to my existing 2GB). How much difference does the hard drive make? I've got three internal drives and am running FS on a drive separate from the OS. The drive is only a few years old so I don't imagine that would be a terrible bottleneck for me, or would it?

The one thing I think I won't do to improve FS is start with a fresh harddrive, just don't want to go there with reinstalling an OS and everything else I'm running.

Thanks!