Looking for advice

[Rickitycrate 10]

My OFF: BHAH flying time has not been what I would like it to be. My long standing problem has been the fact that I have been using a laptop all along.

The trouble as you may suspect has been with overheating. My budget being what it is I have been on the market for an affordable desktop pc strictly formy flight simming setup. I have acquired a desktop pc that specs out very similar to my laptop. While that is not great it is not so bad of a thing as I thought OFF ran rather well but for the overheating. So with the advantage of the improved cooling I have hopes of being back in the OFF skies on a more regular basis.

 

My point of relating this info is to ask for help or opinions about possible RAM and graphics card updates. The info I have for this pc is as follows:

 

HP Pavillion (yeah, I know) a6750t

Windows Vista Home Premium x64

Intel Core Duo E7400 @ 2.8GHz

64 bit O/S

Currently 3.0 GB Ram with 2 open slots

nvidia GeForce 9300 GE graphics card

Direct X vers.10

Forceware vers.175.78

dedicated video memory 128 MB

Total available graphics memory 1407 MB

System video memory 0 MB

IRQ-16

BUS PCI Express x16

Current Windows experience score of 4.0 Gaming graphics rating is 4.8

 

I just don't know how to determine what card would be appropriate and give a nice performanc boost.

Would increasing the RAM another 2.0 Gigs be helpful? As you may imagine I am hoping that with some modifications this new box might handle P4 in the near future, he,hehee.

 

I can hear Uncleal right about now, can't you? Well I'm on a tight budget and always hopeful. Any thoughts or suggestions are very welcome.

Just today I loaded OFF:BHAH and it ran okay at slider settings of 2's and 3's without tweeking the graphics card settings. I was getting FPS of 59.

[Von Paulus 8]

I think ot won't make much difference if you use 4Mb instead of 3Mb.

I would buy a better graphic card.

A GTX 560 or a ATI 6950, if you don't want to spend much money.

If you find a ATI 5870 with a good price, it's also a solution.

You can always go for GTX550, if you're working on a tight budget.

[Rickitycrate 10]

Thanks Von Paulus! Looks like I have a number of options.

[Tamper 9]

Hi Rickitycrate,

 

IMHO the biggest single bottleneck in the description you gave is that video card. Yes, the RAM could probably use attention too...but it's not too bad.

 

Good news is, where video is concerned, you're in a good spot at least to start, because you have a PCIe x16 slot - very important to good graphics these days.

 

It happens I have a 8600GT 256M card without a home at the moment. The 8600 - numerically - might seem a step backwards from the 9300, but I assure you it's a huge improvement. The 9300GE has an 8:8:4 core on a 64-bit bus, where the 8600GT has a 32:16:8 core on a 128-bit bus (in addition to having twice as much memory, 256M v 128). Also, this specific model 8800GT card has GDDR3 memory @1400MHz, compared to DDR2 memory @1000MHz on the 9300.

 

http://en.wikipedia....89xxx.29_series

 

http://www.evga.com/...-P2-N751-TR.pdf

 

 

PM me to work out details, and the card is yours - Merry Christmas early I may also have some memory that will work in your machine (I know what it's like living on a budget.)

 

Best regards,

[Olham 164]

The sim is running fine and high-res my end with an ATI RADEON HD 4870 (1 GB).

This card might be available cheaply meanwhile?