By: Comet - 25th March 2003 at 08:37
Thanks Simmer and Mixtec – I’l need to upgrade the memory on my PC before I do anything – it had 256MB when I got it, but with all the stuff I added it is now down to about 75MB. It has a Pentium 4 processor and Windows XP, it’s a good spec one I think.
I’d seen some video cards in our local PC World and baulked at the prices when I first saw them, but I needed to ask on the forum what was the best one, I always think if you ask in one of these chain shops you might be advised to buy something just to get the assistant some commission or something, their advice isn’t always independent.
I’m building my system bit by bit, the scanner was only added a couple of weeks back, but I’m getting there and the memory expansion and video card will be next.
By: mixtec - 24th March 2003 at 20:05
Comet- Take simmers advice and get a video card. I fried my processor playing pc games with on board video memory. The graphics are awful at low resolution, you cant appreciate good flight sims unless your at least at 1024×768. Check out my thread “whats new in combat pc games”, there are some links there for FS2002, you might want to import some new aircraft as they dont give you much of a selection in FS2002. Some tips I would give you are to put the sim on low realistic settings so you spend more time flying than crashing. And the city landscapes are surprisngly detailed and accurate, its almost like your getting an aerial tour of all the major citys of the world. When you press f4, you get differnt flying views, theres one where your outside looking at the plane from a distance which is really fun for the aerobatic plane, so you can really see how it manuveurs.
By: Simmer - 24th March 2003 at 15:20
Comet,
Depends on your budget really, I would suggest about £150 sterling for a half decent card.
There are two contenders:
Nvidia based cards
Ti4200
Ti4400
Ti4600
Ti4800 (same as Ti4200 but with 8x AGP)
Avoid the cards stating MX, they are cheaper but are based on old technology and do not perform half as well!
Or the Radeon cards:
9500
9500 PRO
9700
9700 PRO
If you’re on a budget (approx £100-125) then go for the Ti4200 or 9500 PRO, if you have a bit more to spend then go for the 9700 or Ti4400. Finally if you want the best then go for the 9700 PRO, it is currently the best performing card on the market, and you can get them for about £250-300.
Nvidia are releasing a new card called the FX and I think models are starting to trickle into the market, however Radeon are also releasing a new model based on the 9700 but performing approx 30% better.
What spec is your PC, its just that FS2002 can be quite power hungry and even with a decent video card, performance ca be bottle-necked by other factors, such as processor speed etc. You have to bear in mind that the flight modelling in flight sims can be fairly matchs heavy putting a large load on the chip.
Hope this helps.
Enjoy FS2002.
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March 24, 2003 at 3:08 pm