If you can run ETO on sliders 5...

[ndicki]

Please talk to me! My old P4 computer is finally coming to the end of its days, and after squeezing a further year out of it, it looks as though the end is nigh. The MB is no longer so young and happy...

So for the Xth time, I'm planning a new computer, but needless to say, money is getting in the way. (It's easier to accuse money, because then I won't upset my wife so much...)

What I need is the cheapest possible config that'll run CFS3 and SF2 decently. I plan to keep Windows XP because I have a legitimate copy and don't want to buy a newer version, and hope thereby to avoid all the trouble people have been having trying to get Windows 7 to do what it's supposed to do. And I don't like the new interface one bit. I've got it at work, and it's thoroughly confusing and unhelpful.

I intend to buy bits, because I can recycle a lot of my present set-up - PSU, case, HD, DVD drive, etc, so really all I need are a processor, MB, memory and video card.

This is the supplier I use, and I've included the pages that I'm looking at seriously:

Update kits:

http://www.grosbill.com/3-kit_evolution-kit_evolution_intel-type-informatique

The one I'm looking at:

http://www.grosbill.com/4-intel_h_series_kit_banana_s_4130_-600389-informatique-kit_evolution_intel

Nvidia cards:

http://www.grosbill.com/3-carte_graphique-nvidia-type-informatique

And the one I'm looking at:

http://www.grosbill.com/4-gigabyte_nvidia_geforce_gtx_650_ti_oc_-171000-informatique-nvidia

plus a new hard drive anyway:

http://www.grosbill.com/4-western_digital_caviar_blue_1_to_7200_tours_sata_6 go_s_64_mo_cache-170964-informatique-_disque_dur

Opinions?

And PLEASE do not go banging on about things that will be horribly outside my budget of about 500 Euros maximum, as it only gets frustrating! Thanks!

[MajorMagee]

Is your copy of XP 32 or 64 bit? If it's 32 bit you're going to run into a memory problem with most modern video cards that will use up all your ram address space.

[ndicki]

32 bit. Now this looks like the sort of thing I need to know about - tell me more! I assume the solution would be to go for a dual-boot arrangement, but there's more money gone...

Also, if I do go for Windows 7, what are the advantages/drawbacks of 32 bit or 64 bit? Given that the only serious objectives I have are flightsimming, namely CFS3 and SF2 at the moment.

OK, I've had a look, and it's going to have to be 64 bit. I assume that's what everybody else is already using?

[gosd]

I am using a win7 at 32 bits with dual core and it works nicely. Had my share of problems at the start but got over them; slow learning curve....!:blind:

[hairyspin]

Check whether that mobo supports XP - if there are no drivers you'll have to move to Win7. The video card looks utter, total overkill for CFS3 but supports DirectX 11 so you'll be good for anything SF comes up with for a while. If you go for Win7, get 64-bit to use the 8GB memory on the mobo package - a no brainer choice. And for the HD, it's a WD so what else is there to say?

As you'll know, I'm a Win7 fan; the best thing MS have done since XP, imo.

[ndicki]

Tom, this is good, helpful stuff! If it's total overkill for CFS3 and in line for SF2 (which I can run on my P4 set-up at the equivalent of sliders 3 as it stands, so there too, overkill might be useful) then it looks good. If you've got fully functioning CFS3 with specular effects and the MOS editor running on Windows 7, then it could be worth doing after all. An OEM version of 7 Home is between £60 and £70 from Amazon, so it could be worse.

I'll be using a new SATA 6 HD as main, partitioned into a C drive and a D drive, plus a further SATA 2 drive behind that, and my old IDE drives and DVD drive on adaptors. Lots and lots of space for once!

Is there anything I've forgotten? Ian was pushing me towards an i5, but the final price began to get silly... It's only a toy after all!

[greycap.raf]

Is it about running ETO with sliders on 5 or CFS3 with sliders on 5? That's a big difference, I have my heavily modded "normal" install that runs on "full fives" all day without breaking a sweat and rarely drops below 50 fps but the buildings and tons of stuff on ETO airfields drag it to 30 fps or so. The fact that building textures in ETO rarely seem to have mipmaps probably plays a role in it but there's something in the 3D structures too, they cause a far bigger fps hit that one would imagine - LODs, something else, I don't know but that's what you really need the brute force for as everything else will do 60 fps happily without any serious hardware. You can see that this thing is far from serious, more like seriously old by now. And while Windows 7 might give me more RAM it simply won't do the speculars like XP does, no matter what tricks are used.

Intel E6750 / Nvidia 470 GTX / 3,25 GB (because XP Home 32 bit won't allow more) of DDR2 RAM at 800 MHz

[hairyspin]

Win7 Home Premium is fine, only go for Ultimate if you really need it and know why you need it. CFS3/ETO won't use all your 8GB of RAM, but 64-bit Win7 can run more than one 32-bit app in that memory space without paging to HD. If SF goes 64-bit you'll be laughing. The CFS3 specular texture problem can be worked around, but for the proper results you need to run in XP.

One thing: they're very cheap so if your DVD drive isn't SATA, get a new one - maybe even a DVD writer for backups. Wouldn't be without mine.

[ndicki]

Well, as a skinner, I need the speculars to show, or I can't do it properly... Dual boot then? SF2 WILL profit from DX10/11 and multiple cores, etc.

Rene, I assume you're still running CFS3 on XP? What config do you recommend?

[viso]

Nigel, I understand that you're trying to keep costs down, but you really ought to spend the GBP 25.00 for these things
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=458284794264850
Imagine the sheer minutes of fun you'll have before you get bored of them!

As for PC, earlier this year I upgraded. $1,500 (around GBP $900) got me:
* i5 3470 Quad Core w/ 8 GB RAM
* MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr
* 1TB drive with 120GB solid-state drive

All of that runs CFS3 on Windows XP on full sliders with rarely a whimper.

[ndicki]

Nigel, I understand that you're trying to keep costs down, but you really ought to spend the GBP 25.00 for these things
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=458284794264850
Imagine the sheer minutes of fun you'll have before you get bored of them!

Definitely a must-have! That might prolong the life of my current rig by at least 6 months!


As for PC, earlier this year I upgraded. $1,500 (around GBP $900) got me:
* i5 3470 Quad Core w/ 8 GB RAM
* MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr
* 1TB drive with 120GB solid-state drive

All of that runs CFS3 on Windows XP on full sliders with rarely a whimper.

I'll bet it does! The interesting bit is "on Windows XP" - because for the reasons above, I want to run it on XP.

[greycap.raf]

Rene, I assume you're still running CFS3 on XP? What config do you recommend?

To put it very simply, as long as you have more of everything than I do, you'll run it on full sliders without any serious issues. And having more of everything isn't that hard seeing that this thing is already borderline ancient with the exception of the GPU - it's only medieval. I think my main bottleneck is the old E6750 and its 2,66 GHz clock frequency as when I upgraded the GPU from the original 8800GTS to the 470 GTX there was barely any improvement in performance despite the new card being from another universe when compared to its precedessor so I believe that I'd need more raw power to see a difference.

But yes, definitely dual boot if you can. I made mine with a further safety precaution so that XP and Win7 are on physically different drives, each sees itself as C: and the selection is done in the motherboard boot menu instead of a "normal" dual boot menu created by Windows. If the one of them used to make the menu goes belly up I won't lose the ability to boot into the other one and collect everything valuable before reinstalling the one that decided to not behave.