System for flights sims - £1k max budget

CSMonkeh · 17 Feb 2011 at 20:31

CSMonkeh · 17 Feb 2011 at 20:34

D'oh!! Also add that i'm donating a 750GB Seagate HDD and Samsung blu-ray drive for his storage and optical drive....

smiley1987 · 18 Feb 2011 at 03:05

"Radon Torosaur" Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz @ 4.40GHz Overclocked Bundle - Gigabyte £479.00
(£399.17) £479.00
(£399.17)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE AVP, Stalker, CODMW2 Games & 3D Mark 2011 £179.99
(£149.99) £179.99
(£149.99)
BenQ EW2420 24" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £179.99
(£149.99) £179.99
(£149.99)
Akasa Freedom Power 750W Modular Power Supply £97.99
(£81.66) £97.99
(£81.66)
Coolermaster HAF 912 Plus Case - Black £64.99
(£54.16) £64.99
(£54.16)
Sub Total : £834.97
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £169.49
Total : £1,016.96

I'd recommend these components for him to buy it would make a great system .

Andrew_McP · 18 Feb 2011 at 03:49

If he's serious about flight (or racing) sims then this is one of few areas where three screens is not just recommended, it's almost compulsory if he can justify the desk space and extra cash. I know I could never go back to one monitor unless it was ultra-wide screen.

That means a decent ATI card (or two Nvidias with all the SLI complications that can cause for a tech novice), and three reasonably priced screens (they don't have to be huge because it's all about the peripheral vision). A 2Gb GPU might be an advantage with three screens, but whether it's worth the extra is still up for debate.

Flight sims are still extremely CPU-heavy, but fortunately the overclocked 2500k has put a lot of horsepower into an affordable category. I'd just be wary about investing in motherboards with a known flaw at this stage. Another month and that problem will probably have gone away.

I'd also prefer 8Gb of RAM. Although 4Gb is plenty under the vast majority of circumstances prices are unlikely to drop lower than they are now, and flight sims can huge huge amounts of memory for landscape etc. That's one reason why the 2Gb vid card is always worth considering, if only to provide a little of that elusive future-proofing we all talk about but never seem to find. :-)

Good luck. Making choices for other people is always tricky. It's like trying to work out what Xmas present to buy only with the added risk of adding to their disappointment by wasting their money! :-)

Andrew McP

PS One option to consider is getting one screen for now, but make sure it's something which allows the option (both in physical size and price) for two more later on if your friend feels he wants to take that step. FWIW my setup is 3 x 20" x 1680x1050 screens which cost me £330 in total. Nowadays I'd buy the smallest 1080p screens I could afford, but I'm not up to speed enough to make a specific recommendation. It does seem hard to buy a bad screen these days though, and I tend to look at the warranty first... especially with 3 to go wrong. :-)

Liquid · 18 Feb 2011 at 03:51

is 64 bit really worth it? What flight sims is he intending to run? Unless they have a dedicated 64bit path in the game it will offer no improvements over x86. It might load quicker lol. Oh, and if he intends to play fsx, get as much gpu power as you can.

Most people with dual channel configurations run 4gb these days and are on 32 bit os. Besides 4gb ram is really not enough for 64bit anyway.

Liquid · 18 Feb 2011 at 03:52

Andrew_McP said:
If he's serious about flight (or racing) sims then this is one of few areas where three screens is not just recommended, it's almost compulsory if he can justify the desk space and extra cash. I know I could never go back to one monitor unless it was ultra-wide screen.

That means a decent ATI card (or two Nvidias with all the SLI complications that can cause for a tech novice), and three reasonably priced screens (they don't have to be huge because it's all about the peripheral vision). A 2Gb GPU might be an advantage with three screens, but whether it's worth the extra is still up for debate.

Flight sims are still extremely CPU-heavy, but fortunately the overclocked 2500k has put a lot of horsepower into an affordable category. I'd just be wary about investing in motherboards with a known flaw at this stage. Another month and that problem will probably have gone away.

I'd also prefer 8Gb of RAM. Although 4Gb is plenty under the vast majority of circumstances prices are unlikely to drop lower than they are now, and flight sims can huge huge amounts of memory for landscape etc. That's one reason why the 2Gb vid card is always worth considering, if only to provide a little of that elusive future-proofing we all talk about but never seem to find.

Good luck. Making choices for other people is always tricky. It's like trying to work out what Xmas present to buy only with the added risk of adding to their disappointment by wasting their money!

Andrew McP

PS One option to consider is getting one screen for now, but make sure it's something which allows the option (both in physical size and price) for two more later on if your friend feels he wants to take that step. FWIW my setup is 3 x 20" x 1680x1050 screens which cost me £330 in total. Nowadays I'd buy the smallest 1080p screens I could afford, but I'm not up to speed enough to make a specific recommendation. It does seem hard to buy a bad screen these days though, and I tend to look at the warranty first... especially with 3 to go wrong.

Did you see the bit that said his budget is £1000?

fk506 · 18 Feb 2011 at 04:15

64bit is all but mandatory if you use more than 3gb ram these days( who doesn't)

Liquid · 18 Feb 2011 at 04:26

fk506 said:
64bit is all but mandatory if you use more than 3gb ram these days( who doesn't)

Sorry but that is a ridiculous statement, 64bit is mandatory if the software you are using has fully implemented 64bit support and can actually take advantage of more than 3gb ram i.e Photoshop, Video Rendering etc.

If you are running a 32 bit program in windows 64bit, the only benefit of having more than 3gb of ram would be for windows itself, not the program. big deal lol.

Andrew_McP · 18 Feb 2011 at 04:41

Liquid said:
Did you see the bit that said his budget is £1000?

Funnily enough the title did somewhat give that away. But as a flight and racing sim enthusiast used to working with a budget and planning ahead, I made what I considered to be a relevant contribution to the thread. It was meant as food for thought, not diktat.

Compromises can always be made, but you rarely get a chance to start a system from scratch, and the choices you make now can limit your options or minimise additional expense later on.

I learned this the hard way when I invested in a 2MB 486 system just to run 'Tornado' in 1993, only to find 4MB was essential for to make it work properly. That was an expensive planning error.

Andrew McP

fk506 · 18 Feb 2011 at 05:23

Liquid said:
Sorry but that is a ridiculous statement, 64bit is mandatory if the software you are using has fully implemented 64bit support and can actually take advantage of more than 3gb ram i.e Photoshop, Video Rendering etc.

If you are running a 32 bit program in windows 64bit, the only benefit of having more than 3gb of ram would be for windows itself, not the program. big deal lol.

I disagree here. For a start, Windows has a memory overhead. Since when do you run a single app as the only program. Even if you did, how much memory does windows use in itself. Are you telling me Photoshop 32bit in a PC with 3Gb ram runs the same as an equivalent PC with x64 windows and 6Gb of ram ?. Maybe, if all you do is load and close Photoshop. Try loading a few big photos. In between the HD trashing away at the virtual drive, you'll find even with an SSD the 6Gb PC will always win. Even better still, get 12gb of ram, and use a 6Gb as a ram drive as the swap drive.

And would you really use x86 Win 7 in a PC with 4Gb of ram or more ?. Hence, it is virtually mandatory. If you get 32bit Windows with more than 3Gb of ram, you're wasting your money

fk506 · 18 Feb 2011 at 05:34

I should add that the £2 premium for the 64bit over 32bit version with 4Gb ran for CSMonkeh is a no brainer.

gcaster · 18 Feb 2011 at 05:59

^ What he said ^

Liquid · 18 Feb 2011 at 08:34

fk506 said:
I disagree here. For a start, Windows has a memory overhead. Since when do you run a single app as the only program. Even if you did, how much memory does windows use in itself. Are you telling me Photoshop 32bit in a PC with 3Gb ram runs the same as an equivalent PC with x64 windows and 6Gb of ram ?. Maybe, if all you do is load and close Photoshop. Try loading a few big photos. In between the HD trashing away at the virtual drive, you'll find even with an SSD the 6Gb PC will always win. Even better still, get 12gb of ram, and use a 6Gb as a ram drive as the swap drive.

And would you really use x86 Win 7 in a PC with 4Gb of ram or more ?. Hence, it is virtually mandatory. If you get 32bit Windows with more than 3Gb of ram, you're wasting your money

If you were working in photoshop(single app) would you honestly be using something else at the same time, highly unlikely don't you think. Also if photoshop 32bit is running on both x86 and 64bit as you describe, do you think it would be that much quicker working on the 64bit one, well it really isnt, I have tried it first hand but that was a while ago now I must admit. The 64bit version of photoshop did run much quicker but then thats expected. Windows of course would be quicker as 64bit and that's something I have already conceded.

But most people buy 4gb ram to have the maximum addressable memory in 32bit Windows, cant remember exactly what that is but it's around 3gb to 3.25gb. The majority of systems around today still use dual channel memory and the only way to get 3gb is to buy a 4gb kit so no it's not a waste of money buying 4gb for a 32bit os, surely you can see that.

And for the record you would have a bigger page file in the 64bit operating system than you would the 32bit one, something that really surprised me when I installed it. I was primarily checking it out because at the time there was a general opinion that you could run without a page file in 64bit windows, which I was interested in but found it to be tosh.

How many people run windows 64bit with 4gb ram, not many I would wager, 8/12/16gb seems way more likely to me and of course the triple channel gang with 6/12gb.

I would be interested to hear about using ram as a page file though, given the prices of ram today it sounds like an attractive proposition, does it offer much benefit.

Liquid · 18 Feb 2011 at 08:39

Andrew_McP said:
Funnily enough the title did somewhat give that away. But as a flight and racing sim enthusiast used to working with a budget and planning ahead, I made what I considered to be a relevant contribution to the thread. It was meant as food for thought, not diktat.

Compromises can always be made, but you rarely get a chance to start a system from scratch, and the choices you make now can limit your options or minimise additional expense later on.

I learned this the hard way when I invested in a 2MB 486 system just to run 'Tornado' in 1993, only to find 4MB was essential for to make it work properly. That was an expensive planning error.

Andrew McP

I do agree with you on the video card front, as much as you can get is usually a good way to go lol, but the screens can come later and pushing his resolution up with 3 screens will only mean less performance at the end of the day. Personally I also think he could get a cheaper joystick and put the money to the internals.

Ah expensive planning error, had a few of them, bought a 486 system with 4 meg ram back in the day to play the newly launched Doom, only to get it all home and realise that Doom itself wanted 4 meg min and it would not run. Another 4gb cost me £120 at the time and a trip to north london, and of course I piled the money I had into the system with little spare...ouch lol

Bradmax57 · 18 Feb 2011 at 08:43

IMO no point in buying 32bit win7 your just limiting yourself for future memory upgrades!

andicole0 · 18 Feb 2011 at 08:44

Win 7 64bit made a 20% improvement in performance when I first moved to it with no hardware changes. Regardless of whether the application supports 64 bit, Windows will be running it and benefiting from it.

Anyway there is no argument in the fact that Win 64 bit costs almost nothing extra.

As for the OP any sort of sim will require as much GPU power as possible especially FSX. Personally I would go nvidia as I've had very few problems with them and simulator software.

Andi.

matthab · 18 Feb 2011 at 08:54

Liquid said:
Sorry but that is a ridiculous statement, 64bit is mandatory if the software you are using has fully implemented 64bit support and can actually take advantage of more than 3gb ram i.e Photoshop, Video Rendering etc.

If you are running a 32 bit program in windows 64bit, the only benefit of having more than 3gb of ram would be for windows itself, not the program. big deal lol.

^Not even going to explain how wrong that post is.

FSX likes a big powerful single card, lots of cores and RAM!!!

I would go for a 64bit OS, Nvidia GFX, Sandy bridge and 8 - 16gb of Memory.

Philtor · 18 Feb 2011 at 09:10

FSX is more CPU dependant than GPU so keep this in mind when putting together your spec. As a FSX user myself one of the best upgrades I have done recently was getting a SSD which makes it run much better

This is because FSX has to load a lot of Autogen scenery which a normal HDD tends to bottle neck.

Bradmax57 · 18 Feb 2011 at 09:19

philtorrens said:
FSX is more CPU dependant than GPU so keep this in mind when putting together your spec. As a FSX user myself one of the best upgrades I have done recently was getting a SSD which makes it run much better This is because FSX has to load a lot of Autogen scenery which a normal HDD tends to bottle neck.

Interesting I recently reinstalled fsx on my ssd and didnt notice any difference in performance than when it was isntalled on my hdd

Philtor · 18 Feb 2011 at 09:23

Bradmax57 said:
Interesting I recently reinstalled fsx on my ssd and didnt notice any difference in performance than when it was isntalled on my hdd

That's weird :confused:

I have noticed it seems a great deal smoother when having to load the Autogen scenery etc. Maybe my HDD previously was just p*** poor

What kind of SSD did you get?