PC Tweaking

[caveman16]

Hi Guys and Ladies,  "Me" again from the corners of my lil' cave.     Study is a "hobby" of mine [never got over being 3years old - - - - -  WHY -WHY - Why ].       I have a Gateway Micro tower.   I can't find all that info that you Guys mention such as motherboard speed / graphics card speed , etc etc !  I've got my FS2k2 on a partition alone ,and I've got "REAL SCENE 2004 /USA Terrain and Landclass Data Sets" installed. I fly only ultralights  VFR in SE Alaska.    Here's what info I do have :  motherboard : Nimitz 4000792.     Pentium4   /   1800 mHz /      Memory768 Mb RAM /   Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service pack 2  /  VideoCard is Intel Video 4000 792 /   Hard drive is 80 GB /   and after some "clean-up" I have  565MB  RAM that I can use for the FS2k2.   Oh- -  the CPU is1.80 GHz.  I don't know how to get more info about my PC.  NOW IS THE QUESTION :   What would you suggest I do to improve my SCENERY ?   Believe me - - - I almost LIVE to have the "poor-man's " dream of seeing the rest of the world in these SIMS.    As ALWAYS - - I thank you for your time and in-put in helping me.  caveman

[Apex]

Speaking for FS2002: Gerish's trees are somewhere on this site, they helped a bit.

[caveman16]

That was fast - - -  had them on hand /   the trees and "Flight water Pro".   They're installed now - - -  need to test them yet.  Thanks for your help.   caveman

[congo]

Unfortunately your computer is not upgradeable as far as the video card is concerned, which is your major drawback.

Your motherboard has an "onboard" graphics processing chip rather than a dedicated graphics card.

Please sell it and start again, there is no hope for that system.

[thejman]

As far as i,m concerned every pc is upgradable in some way if you have a PCI slot in your computer you can upgrade your graphic card, every system has a PCI slots for modems and lan cards and such. normally most system,s take an AGP graphic card only if they have the slot in your case your going for a PCI card any size from 64mb to 252mb

covvvvveeeeee!

[thejman]

As far as i,m concerned every pc is upgradable in some way if you have a PCI slot in your computer you can upgrade your graphic card, every system has a PCI slots for modems and lan cards and such. normally most system,s take an AGP graphic card only if they have the slot in your case your going for a PCI card any size from 64mb to 252mb

covvvvveeeeee!

[congo]

This is an old thread but........

Adding a PCI graphics card (not PCIe) is a dubious "upgrade". The better PCI cards are barely an improvent over the onboard chip and they are generally way overpriced for what they are.

The money would be better spent on another mainboard that supports a dedicated graphics slot like AGP or PCIe. Then you have to buy a video card to go into that slot. By this time we are throwing a lot of cash into a most likely, dated system. (slower graphics interface, bus speeds, cpu and ram on an older second rate chipset).

You would really have to weigh up whether it's worth it or not, and I say not in most cases.

The mistake was made with the original purchase not being a suitable simming platform.

[ctjoyce]

Exactly. Guys me and congo for a long time now been telling you that you NEED PCI-E. AGP 8x is okey, but for a true simming platform you MUST have a PCI-E motherboard with a MINUM spec of a 3.0Ghz Intel or 1.8Ghz AMD, 1G of RAM, and a 6600GT or Radeon X800 256MB. Yes it costs more, but you will thank yourself for it when you can actually run everything with more than 15 FPS.

Cheers
Cameron