Low Frames at Airports

[RollerBall]

Thanks for that Charles.

What you say certainly seems to support my thinking.

With my AMD2100+ I just doubled my RAM from 512MB 2100 DDR to 1024MB and saw NO change in FR at heavily populated airports.

So you need to go for both memory AND CPU power as you've done.

[foo_fighter]

Roller

indeed there's no change due to memo upgrade only
as a matter of fact, fs needs a good video card and some strong processor
My old computer was a Pentium IV 1.2 524 RAM DDR GF mx200 - very low frame rates  :(
Since I've changed to a Athlon Dual 2.5+ 1024 RAM e Ti4600 128 everything changed from water to wine, so I do think that memo will not be effective in fs's case

[RollerBall]

Nice setup foo

Athlon processors are coming down all the time and I only pay dealer price as well because I'm in the biz so I'll be looking to upgrade myself soon. I'm selling 2000+ processors as 'bog standard' now so my 2100+ isn't looking like anything special. Be able to pass it on to a customer soon!!

Sold my first Radeon chip graphics card this week (don't do much to ordinary guys - I mainly sell to companies) only a 64MB 7500 equivalent to or a bit better than a 64MB GForce 4 MX but it performed well 'out of the box' and I'll replace my GeForce 3 Ti 200 with a Radeon I guess.

Gotta get some FRs like you've got!

[Charles Foster]

You need a good strong video card  also to take alot of the work off of your cpu. if you get the the right video card it will take alot of the work off of your CPU.
You want your CPU and your video card to work together. I wouldn't recommend anything less than a 2.4 GHz processor and would suggest a 2.8 or above
and as far as video cards I would suggest nothing less than a Ti4200 AGP 8.0 over PCI
although if PCI slots is all you have you can get by with that, and make sure you have a big enough power supply.  350 watts minimum although 480 watts or above is what I would suggest. Nvidia Geforce ti cards require at least 350 watts and above. to function properly. Also a good sound card makes a difference in FS performance, if you have an integrated sound card your performance will be less than if you had a good plug and play sound card. You can test this by checking you frame rates with high sound quality and then slide you sound quality setting to low and check your frame rates again, you should se a difference it may or may not be a big difference since every machine is different but and difference at all is valueble if you only gain 1 frame per second that's 1 frame more than you had before. So if you want good sound without lossing frame rates then get a good sound card. the Creative labs sound blaster live dolby digital 5.1 is a very good choice. You can get it at www.newegg.com for around $33.00 plus shipping and handling. Well I'm going to fly out of here for now. Happy Flying!!

[FSTipster]

You need a good strong video card  also to take alot of the work off of your cpu. if you get the the right video card it will take alot of the work off of your CPU.
You want your CPU and your video card to work together. I wouldn't recommend anything less than a 2.4 GHz processor and would suggest a 2.8 or above
and as far as video cards I would suggest nothing less than a Ti4200 AGP 8.0 over PCI
although if PCI slots is all you have you can get by with that, and make sure you have a big enough power supply.  350 watts minimum although 480 watts or above is what I would suggest. Nvidia Geforce ti cards require at least 350 watts and above. to function properly. Also a good sound card makes a difference in FS performance, if you have an integrated sound card your performance will be less than if you had a good plug and play sound card. You can test this by checking you frame rates with high sound quality and then slide you sound quality setting to low and check your frame rates again, you should se a difference it may or may not be a big difference since every machine is different but and difference at all is valueble if you only gain 1 frame per second that's 1 frame more than you had before. So if you want good sound without lossing frame rates then get a good sound card. the Creative labs sound blaster live dolby digital 5.1 is a very good choice. You can get it at www.newegg.com for around $33.00 plus shipping and handling. Well I'm going to fly out of here for now. Happy Flying!!

I'm sorry but......Bull****!

I wouldn't recommend anything less than a 2.4 GHz processor and would suggest a 2.8 or above

Based on what information/experience exactly?? Plenty of people can run FS2002 smoothly on processors far less powerful than a 2.4 and recommending the fastest range of CPU is hadly rocket science is it?

and as far as video cards I would suggest nothing less than a Ti4200 AGP 8.0 over PCI

Oh really... and what is it you think that an AGPx8 card has that the flight simmer can't live without? Have you seen the (independant) bench testing on AGP8?? An AGPx8 benchmarked against an AGP normal standard card produced a total frame rate improvement of less than 3%. AGPx8 does NOT give you 8 times the graphic speed.

So....to clarify the question, what is it that a TI4200 4X AGP does so badly that it's beneath your "nothing less than" level?

and make sure you have a big enough power supply.  350 watts minimum although 480 watts or above is what I would suggest. Nvidia Geforce ti cards require at least 350 watts and above. to function properly.

Absolute rubbish. The rating your power supply should be is based on the power consumption of the total components of your P.C., not one graphics card. If you happen to be running, let's say, a 1.0ghz chip with 1 CD drive, the TI4200 card and no other peripherals, you could do it quite easily on a 250w power supply.

o if you want good sound without lossing frame rates then get a good sound card. the Creative labs sound blaster live dolby digital 5.1 is a very good choice. You can get it at www.newegg.com for around $33.00 plus shipping and handling.

It's also a notorious resources hog. Any advantage you might get from improving your performance (and performance is what you're referring to here, not sound quality) would be wiped out by the loss of CPU cycles.

I know you claim to have a massively specified P.C. and 'm sure we're all very happy for you, but before you start telling people that you can't run FS2002 satisfactorily on the mid-rage systems, you'd do well to find out what you're talking about.

Sorry if this sounds abrasive, but people visit these forums looking for advice and assume, quite wrongly in this case, that if you make a post like yours it must be correct and make large financial investments on the strength of it.

[foo_fighter]

Roller

thanks pal! but I think U ll build one as good as mine, I'm sure!  ;)

 FSTipster

I do agree with U in the majority of your  statement, but I disagree just a few moments.
my energy suplier was too weak and I was not aware of it, so my PC always boot or worst, lost the info and windows totally and massively failed - so my techinician changed it to a powerful unit and here I am, nice, and smooth - what I'm saying that this tip in special is not wrong
but the rest I do agree indeed

Charles
nothing less than a 2.4?? Geez, I was running at the very beginning fs2002 in a Riva TNT2 16 Pentium III 750 524 RAM, sound blaster 32 (regular) and I would have some frame rates not that bad - 8 to 12 airborne and 5-8 max on the tarmac!
no no no, even using a very weak one I was still able to fly - so this CPU UR demanding, is too strong for this purpose only.
Yup, myself is too strong I know, but I thought 2 things: the new fs2004 witch I think shall need more computer power to process info and I work hard on graphics applications! so a powerful PC is needed
and the sound is not clear to me when U say that the sound card will "Intefere" in the frame rate...dunno if it's right too

[FSTipster]

[quote] [b]

[foo_fighter]

hmmm IC.....oooook!

I understand that and UR right again

just I was thinking that not the entire answer of Charles is actually wrong, some bad mistakes was taken but that's ok - I think everybody ll learn more!

cya!

[Iroquois]

Just out of curiousity, if I did upgrade to the GF4 MX440, how much of a preformance increase in FS do you guys think I'll get.

[foo_fighter]

Orenda

I might be wrong I'm no hardware wizard but I think U may expect a 5-9 frame rate increase at the tarmac, maybe 8 fps airborne

if I'm wrong, plz, guys, correct me

[FSTipster]

Just out of curiousity, if I did upgrade to the GF4 MX440, how much of a preformance increase in FS do you guys think I'll get.

I doubt it would be much to be honest. It's hard to say because both cards you're comparing are MX chipset based. (I have the GF4 MX 440 btw).

The problem is that the MX chipset severely restricts the bandwidth of data flowing through the card. If you can afford to, I'd strongly recommend avoiding anything using MX and look at a GF4 TI series card. With the advent of the recent high end graphics cards, these have now significantly dropped in price and will give you a major boost in performance.

[_526th_Fireman]

Well, high would be good if you can afford it. Funny thing, I can fly Fs2k2 very nicely on this Compaq 800MHZ Duron with 640 MBs SDRAM, SB X Gamer 5.1 and an ATI Radeon 8500 64 MB card on Windows ME.
Now I had already performed some tweaks myself and the coupe de gras was hooking up with Ramsa329 for the final touches. They were good ones.
Here's the kicker, my test was always at Meigs. With everything fully maxed on settings, I got at a minimum 12fps and smooth flying. I was probably right on the line there. Get away from Meigs a little bit and the fps jumped up considerably. Oh, and that is at 1280 X 1024 X32 bit resolution on a 17" NEC LCD flat panel.

I know more is to be gained if I spent the money, but the way I look at it, smooth flight is what I want and I got it. Turn a thing or two down a notch and still have the visual beauty for the most part and never worry about frame rates. So, no need to go out and spend the bucks at this point. And I sure don't get into "Keeping up with the Jone's" thing!  :o

Big machine to fly in FS2k2, NO YOU DON"T HAVE TO HAVE ONE!!

Oh! And I have seen several posts in this thread about spending big money to buy or build your own. Tech TV with Patrick Norton and Leo Laporte did a thing on building a top of the line gaming machine (Case and all the goodies inside, maybe without the VID card though) for roughly $500. They benchmarked it using the latest Quake game, which is what they use to test their stuff, and blew all the big dollar machines out of the water.
Might be worth a hunt in the archives to get those show notes. :-)

[MattNW]

From what I read M$ says I can run this thing on a 300 Mhz processor, 64 Mb RAM and an 8 Mb video card.  ;D

Of course if you do have that kind of system I'd recommend having a lot of chores to do cause you'll give her full throttle, go mow the lawn and come back in time to rotate. Anyone getting 8 Fph (Frames Per Hour)?  ;D

[darkhorse]

Another testament that you don't need a high power system. I've got a 1.2 Celeron, 384 MB SDRAM, no sound or vid card (yet) and with some tweakes, I'm getting 8-10 FPS on the ground at bigger airports, 20-30 in the air.  With good visuals too.  Not great, but good.

[foo_fighter]

hey! U2 guys (Matt and Dark) R really luck guys!

your systems are to be considered "weak" but as U mentioned, is quite good the performances!!!
wwow!!! very nice!!!