Help! Building a new computer for fs9!!!

[JET TECH]

Thanks to Tom McHowat,Byrna,Heavy747 for the advice on the hardware info.I've decided to order a new system from Dell. I now have the 4500 home version win.xp with 1.8ghz processor, 512mb ram, directx 9.0, and G-force fx 5200 128mb ram ddr. The only major installation on this system is my fs9 along with capsim 727 and all the basic installations from the factory. I still experience that jerky movement when the aircraft is taking off down the runway and when making turns around a cloud , or when close to the ground, its like watching one of the early King Kong movies. I am fairly new at add-on a/c and have been flying fs9 since it came out. I talked with tech support at microsoft and they assured me that I had more than enough computer to run fs9 to its optimum performance, but as I have seen in this forum, some or most of you out there have computers that are on steroids! If you were to build one up for the applications that I have, Please, what would you take-on to make this more realistic? Thanks to all in advance,

Mark
Jet Tech

[hdjuey]

they lied I have a 3.2 intel 9800 pro 256mb ati and over a gig of ram, stricly for fs9 still get the jerk and pause.

[aigean]

<deleated>

nevermind i misread your post.

[JimmiG]

My current system is fine for FS2004 but I plan on upgrading it this fall. I currently have: 2 GHz AthlonXP overclocked to 2.2 GHz, 512MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, 280GB harddrive space (two 7200 RPM/8MB cache drives) - most settings maxed + some tweaks, I get about 25-30 FPS over complex scenery (default Seattle, LA, NY) and 40-80 FPS over rural areas with great image quality (4x FSAA/8x Anisotropic, 1280x1024 resolution)

CPU and videocard are the most important for FS.

CPU: Get an Athlon64 3200+ or better (don't waste your money on the Athlon "FX"), or a very fast Pentium4 (3.2+ GHz).

Videocard: Currently, the Radeon cards offer better FS9 performance and image quality than NVidia.
Nvidia's just-announced Geforce 6800 videocard will be even faster and provide similar image quality to the Radeon cards, but at a price of $500. ATI will very soon release their new card which could be even faster and it will definitely cause price drops on both cards because of the competition. My suggestion is to either get a Radeon 9800 Pro now (don't waste your money on an XT) or if possible, wait about 1-2 months so you can get a next generation NVidia or ATI card.

RAM: Some claim that 1 GB of memory provides much better performance than 512MB. This depends on how efficently your system is configured - my setup works fine with 512MB though loading times would probably be a little shorter with 1 GB. Some have a ton of junk programs running, and improperly configured cache and paging file settings etc., that their systems struggle with anything less than 1 GB of RAM. If you can afford it, go with 1GB but it's not essential in my experience.

Harddrive: Even if you don't need a lot of harddrive space, make sure you get a fast and reliable harddrive. Many cheap, small harddrives have abyssmal performance and often "crash" resulting in lost data. 7200 RPM and 8 MB cache is standard these days but even if the tech-specs are the same, performance and especially reliability differs.
I have one Western Digital drive and one Maxtor and they both function great and provide similar performance. The WD drive is somewhat less noisy than the Maxtor.
Maybe you should even look into getting a 10,000 RPM Serial-ATA drive. They're extremely fast which would reduce loading pauses and improve general windows performance significantly. They're more expensive but if you don't need much storage space you can get one at a reasonable price.

Another good brand to look for is Seagate, their drives are extremely quiet which is good if noise is a concern - *It should be* - sitting for hours on end next to a buzzing, rattling box can actually cause both physical and psychic problems. At work we replaced all computers with super-quiet ones and fanless "thin clients" and everyone feels much better and don't get as tired. Also keep this in mind when choosing the computer system or components (if you build it yourself) - quiet CPU and case fans are very important.