Video card question

[marklaur]

Just wondering what video card people are using to fly the older sims. Since my Nvidia GTX280 died about a week ago I have been reassessing my requirements.

I am thinking that my Flight Sim rig never really ran FSX any good so I am thinking of possibly not replacing the hardware to get it going again. My thoughts are now to just use CFS1 & 2, possibly 3 for OFF and FS2004.

One of the new top end video cards still costs around AU$500.00, but I can get a ATI 5770 card for about $200.00 and it is a passive one with just a giant heat sink. I could put a case fan blowing on the heat sink to give extra cooling. I just do not want to go down the path of purchasing an expensive card again only to have the fan die and over heat.

Does anyone know how these ATI 5770 cards run sims OK. I can even get an ATI 5750 for about $150.00 AUD passive as well. I saw these online and the heat sinks are very impressive. These are gigabyte cards. I am pretty sure they will be fine for CFS1 & 2 but not sure about FS2004 and possibly OFF.

Open to any suggestion.

Regards MarkL

[smilo]

hello Mark,
I use a NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
as I recall the price was very reasonable.
it isn't real fancy, but it has two monitor outputs
which I really like.
I built the machine several years ago,
so she's no hot rod.
just a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 with 2 GB of RAM
I run FS9 and CFS1 with no issues.

[marklaur]

Hello Smilo,
Your rig is very similar to my old P4. Same processor but I had the 6800 GT card. My Hard Drive failed and I have not replaced that yet. I should get one while I still can get an IDE drive.

To be honest the rig I am using now a dual core 3.00 gig is not much different to the P4 with FPS.
Our family has two of these. One had the GTS280 card that failed that I am not replacing yet, and may not now. My daughter no longer plays "The Sims" so I am using her dual core PC. These older dual core PC are very cheap in Australia now. From what I have seem with friends that have the new quad core PC's is that they are not really doing much better than me. It appears if you do not overclock the only benifit you get from upgrading is the faster memory and Graphics Cards. Some other minor gains that seem to show up in bench marks, but when I compare games on our PC and theirs, not much difference that I can see.

What I am thinking of doing is getting another drive for the P4 and putting Win98 on it for older games that like a single core PC.

Cheers MarkL

[smilo]

I run XP with no issues for older games.
Hubba is the man to talk to about 98

[hubbabubba]

Yep, like smilo says;

Under W98SE with an Intel® 82810E Graphic Controller and "chipset" that can call 37MB of memory for video. Works fine with CFS1 but not with CFS2. Some say it can be done but I doubt it.

P.S.- I forgot; Intel® Celeron 667Mhz, 320MB RAM, cheap equivalent to a PIII.

[marklaur]

If I can get the old P4 going for Win98 it will run CFS2 from memory OK, as it has 512 normal PC memory and a 6200 Nvidia card with 128 MB memory. Under the limit for Win98. The processor was 3.0 gig

I might make this a project for early next year.

But I think I may leave CFS2 on the newer PC, depends on where I spend my money after Christmas when I see what funds I have left.

Cheers MarkL