One rule when buying PC's never get any thing that has INTERGRADED on it. It means that it takes your ram to run it.

And about that ram its according on the Mother board. To up grade that Ram you will probly have to throw that 256 mb's out and put 512's if you wanna upgrade. Hope it has another slot for another piece of ram my guess is that it most likly dont.

I just dont see why u bought that big grafics card though you payed 400 $ and a 32 mb would have been just as good as what you will see.


}{unter

It has SB live sound not integrated sound.

The video card was an extra $200 CAD

And will the 512mb RAM make that big a difference?

lol yes it will. and im not talking about the sound card. Its the intergrated sound for the Dimension 4550.

THeres no reson to get a 128 mb card with 256 mb ram it makes no sense to me. Its useless. You should have just got a 32 mb becuase thats what you are gonna be seeing. If you upgrade your ram more you will see more grafics also



}{unter

He said its got a SBLive so how will that affect anything?
Even if the motherboard has onboard sound it will be disabled in the bios, and will make ZERO difference to the PC's peformance.
Integrated sound WILL NOT take any ram or resources from the motherboard, it will have its own rom.
Integrated Video will also be disabled on the board and if a decent video card is put in the AGP slot then there will be NO difference between a motherboard with no integrated video and a 9700 and a motherboard with integrated video disabled and a 9700. Get your facts straight.


that is completely RUBBISH.
Ram is easy to upgrade on the motherboard (as he asked) its just a case of dropping a extra stick in the available slot.
512mb in this persons case will make little to no difference.
In fact in some benchmarks/situations a PC can run slower with too much ram, despite what logic tells us.
I do CAD, 3D & Photoshop work and run a P4 @ 2.5Gig with only 256mb (albeit at 200mhz) and I never want for more Ram.
In the case of someone using a PC for flightsims, i can categorically state that 512mb will not be needed.
512mb will not see better graphics, I have built many of the fastest machines possible with only 256mb, we are talking 17000+ with 3dmark2001, so by your logic we should add speed with an extra 256mb......I THINK NOT.

I state these things from experience, I have been:

Manager Online PC Retailer building machines for 10years+
IT Manager for large Engineering Firm 10years+
PC enthusiast (as long as I can remember), building & overclocking the fastest machines available.

I really cant thank you enough SimJen,
So with the 256mb of DDR RAM and 2.4 GHZ with the vodeo card im getting this will run all the newest video games (CFS3) and programs (photoshop, CAD). I would want to get 512mb but its just too expensive. (And i want the video card instead). I could get the 8320 dimesion which comes with 256PC RDRAM? Would this make a difference. (This really wouldn't change the price either). And whats the difference between a 4 highway 845E Motherboard (4550) compared to a 8 highway 850 motherboard (8320).

Thanks alot,

Papa

performance wise, the system you specified will give you all you need. It is similar to my system, although mine is pushed a bit harder by overclocking the ram etc. But yours should run everything fine. RDRam is better in some respects but not in others. I've done the tests with RDRam systems and although they run benchmarks (3dmark2001, Sisoft Sandra) and get higher scores than DDR, they seldom make much real world difference.
Especially when compared to a CPU or Video Card upgrade.
850 Intel boards are very good and used in lots of servers as it gives nice memory bandwidth which is critical in web database stuff. Problem is they don't have many tweaking options in most cases, the 845E is a better solution if you plan on overclocking your CPU later on.
Again, if you want more ram, just drop in another 256mb stick later on. I'm afraid you won't notice any real speed improvements though.
Happy simming.

I'm using a GeForce2 MX400 and it runs great

Which sim G2 or CFS3?
How much mb is the GF2?
How much RAM you using?
And does the ATI 9700 128mb TX work as well as the GForce?

Papa

In fact in some benchmarks/situations a PC can run slower with too much ram

Lmao how dumb do you gotta be to say somthing like that. dude listen to yourself the more you have the SLOWER IT will run ?? ok thats just plain stupid. Thats like saying take half my ram out to play a video game lmao.

I was meaning its hard to upgrade because you will have to basicly throw that ram away thats the only hard part i ment. And it will also be hard as he sounds for not having any experience with the hardwear of the computer. Its not hard to install though.

And yes Intergraded does run off your ram DUH thats why they call it INTERGRADED . If you have a intergraded Video card its gonna run off of your ram just becuase it doesnt have its on thats why its called intergraded.

Wow i cant belive you really got all that 10 + year things you are saying.

256 mb ram and never want more?? have u ever tryed more or are u just to slow to get More???

Yes its a good system but im saying theres no reson to get that big of grafics card. Your puter will run the newest games and its a good system just think u should have at least got 512 mb's of ram with that good system.

What a guy (SimJen)




}{unter

BTW yes ATI works good as geforce i belive its also better if im not mistaking. You got the best grafics card out right now im sure i havent checked latly

good luck on ya new system let us know how it works out



}{unter

Obviously you aren't terribly bright, in some situations too much ram can cause some software to run slower. Its a fact, often with PC's a sweet spot can be found. Due to tests done around the net the best performance in the mainstream software is with 256mb ram (mainstream being the odd bit of gaming with internet surfing etc). Due to paging limitations and latencies within the ram, if a computer doesn't need the available ram then it will end up having to access more pages in say a 512mb stick than a smaller 256mb stick. This can slightly hurt performance.
tomshardware or arstechnica did a test on it a while back.
The performance difference is only slight, but it can be enough to worry some people. I mean if you are that worried then you should be getting ram that can run at Cas 2 and overclock it to 200mhz +.


why would you throw it away?
Just add another stick of 256mb
Its easy enough to do and there is spare ram slots.

I didn't say INTEGRATED didn't use ram, but when disabled in the bios it WON'T. Ask anyone with a brain.
And its INTEGRATED NOT INTEGRADED

Yep, and still better than you.

I have tried more, I had 512mb for 12months, before upgrading to faster memory. I noticed zero decrease in speed, and thats working with 50mb+ Photoshop files.
As with all parts of a PC, the overall performance is a sum of its parts. With a generic HP/Compaq/Dell, they often just use whatever to satisfy demand.
With an enthusiasts built machine, you have Hard Drives in a raid array, Overclocked CPU, Overclocked Ram running at 200mhz+ all up they add to make a kickass system. Due to all this I feel that 512mb is of no benefit to my computing needs, and especially as I upgrade a lot, lots of ram soon becomes outdated by newer faster technologies.

True its nice to get 512mb, but who really uses it, especially a newbie. 128mb+ Card are needed for the upcoming Doom III, as said by Doom III's designer John Carmack. He also thinks the 9700 will run it just fine


What a Looohooser (}{unter)

Cheers

SimJen

256mb of ram for any version of Windows XP should be considered a minimum. 512mb I recommend personally if you play games. Any kind of flight sim or FPS will run better with more ram. When I run Battlefield or a Flight Sim they can and will use upwards of 300 to 400mb of free memory. Imagine if you didn't have that free memory? It's written to the disk, which is SLOW.

What's all this talk about integrated being bad? Integrated Graphics are BAD. Not other things. The nForce 2 boards have integrated sound that rivals the best sound cards on the market. They feature DOLBY DIGITAL and have every input and output you need. ON THE BOARD. People love them. Just because it's integrated doesn't mean its crap. That simply means instead of being on a separate board the components are attached the motherboard. The NIC works the same way. There isn't much to a nic, but if you physically look at a mb, you can see the ethernet controller on it. For the nForce 2 boards it just so happens they are all integrated on one controller. And }{unter do you know that the Xbox is basically a PC with an nForce Board? Yes it has integrated Everything on it, and it is an awesome console.

What's all this crazy talk about the video card, Hunter? Have you ever used a flight sim or done ANY gaming? The better the video card, the better the gaming experience. It has been proven over and over.
The only time adding more RAM is slower used to be in WinNT after adding more than 2 GB, it took NT more resources to manage the RAM, slowing down the system kernal. In Win2k or XP, more is better, especially with a slower hard drive, because you will not be using the swap partition as much with more RAM. RAM is cheap, get as much as you can afford and you can always add as many DIMMs as you have slots.
As far as integrated sound and NIC, they don't use shared memory like the video card, because the video card uses RAM to display the screen. All the NIC and sound hardware is built into the mother board just like it is on a PCI card. If you don't like the built in sound or NIC, add a better PCI sound card or NIC. You can get a 100BT NIC for around $20, and a top of the line sound card for $200.

Hunter, think before you respond.

PaPa, your computer will be more than satisfactory for the current generation of simulators and 3-D games. Purchase Real Flight and stop wasting you time listening to Hunter's drivel.

i agree with SimJen .


}{unter

Alright im kind of confused about the RAM but at least i know all the other stuff is fine. I just received the computer which is the 4550 with 256 ddr Ram (i can always add more) (can i add any type of 256mb ddr memory).
You said that G2 will work fine which is nice but one problem G2 is $300!!! compared to the other simulator i want which is CFS3 (no one has really commented one that). Would you buy the game with the computer i have (i dont really mind if i have to put the graphics down a bit)?

Thanks for all the replies,

Papa

I just bought the G2 program (paid $220 cdn). I'm running a 1.8 amd athlon, 384 meg ram , with a g-force 440 xtasy. I can run in 32 bit, 1600x1200 , with graphics and detail turned to the highest settings and it purr's like a kitten. Not a single glitch. Infact I'm a serious gamer and I'm yet to see a game or program give me any trouble running full graphic's. Yes the g-force cards are dear, but I promise you will never regret spending the cash.

p.s G2 may also sound like a lot of money, but it has saved my x-cell 60 graphite from certain doom!!!

Geforce 3, Geforce 4, Geforce FX, and Radeon R300 based cards all support Anti Aliasing which makes the rough edges on the screen smooth, and overall makes it really purdy They also support cool graphics effects the others don't like shiny water

PaPa-NeGeorgeo-

Your DDR is probably DDR2100.

I use FMS, I'm too cheap to drop that much in a RCflight sim. Combat Flight sim 3 however can be had for something like $40? You can probably pick up combat flight sim 2 out of the bargin bin at walmart for $10 and the difference isn't that much. They're still fun.

Considering you don't have something integrated I belive you can play anygame as long as you turn down your graphics like I discussed earlier.

I too play Battlefield, UT2003 etc. and I find that with 256mb and a fully tweaked XP system that its no slower than my mates similar spec machine. We get almost identical benchmark scores and load times, despite his machine having 512mb.
I found that looking at memory usage in games with 256 & 512mb that XP would use as much memory as is available.
But if it was quicker with 512mb I couldn't tell the difference, again this could be due to my ram's bandwidth being 3gb/s by being overclocked to 200mhz.

I run FMS as I too am a cheapskate, and would prefer to invest more money in my planes than a sim. FMS while somewhat unrealistic helps immensely with orientation and co-ordination.
Can't argue with Free either. Hopefully it will get better the more its worked on.
With FMS and my GF4 Ti4400 I can run at 1600x1200x32bit with 4x Antialiasing and average around 55fps. Not too bad.

Papa-NeGeorgeo, the ram thing..... its probably best to phone up Dell when you want to upgrade. They will send you a matching stick, as its usually best to match ram by brand. They may put you in contact with a tech who will install it for you.
The biggest increase I saw when upgrading ram was going from 64mb to 128mb on an old Windows 98 machine. Since then I haven't noticed a difference, except on our work server going from 512mb to 2gb....definately sped things up.

SimJen

I could somewhat agree. I've seen differences, when adding memory, specifically in battefield. I've found the biggest thing to increase load times is to have a fast hard drive. My brother has a system very similar to mine, but with a 5400 rpm drive, I have a 7200, and Battlefield loads at least 2x as fast on my machine. I even have an old 600mhz Athlon system with a new WD 7200 rpm drive and it loads faster than my brother's system. I've also noticed that when in battlefield my system can handle pressing the esc key and it jumps out of the game instantly, while my others with 256 will hesitate and sometimes take a while to get out of the game. I'm guess because XP on any given day will use ~70MB of system memory for a system with 256. I just opened battlefield and it used 202MB. That means the overage is sent to the page file, which would make it slower.
btw, you should get Road to Rome and the 1.3 patch The new maps are awesome and the guns sound better now.

Reason why i want to get CFS3 instead of G2.
About FMS i have it on my old computer with crappy 2.5 year old stuff and the graphics aren't very good. Does this increase significantly as the system increases. Cause i much rather get FMS than pay G2. Also just wondering how many of you use the usb controller for FMS. I find it kind of pointless to buy i controller ($80) for a free game. Does anyone use there own controller (mines a futaba 4vf) on the simulators?

I let you all know how well everything runs thanks,

Papa

graphics with FMS aren't very good anyway, but with 4xAA they aren't too bad, at least it gets rid of the jaggies.
I've been planning on getting a controller connector for my RD6000 set, but I've been baulking on the cost ($50+). So i've been using an old Acoms AM 4 channel set wired to the standard joystick port....bit dodgy but does the job.

SimJen

G2 is only 200 $ go to towerhobbies.com


}{unter

About $300 CAD!!! and i dont get that much money in a year (im serious). And if i did id get a nice four-stroke or computer radio or a warbird or a fast charger or a flight pack or a maybe a helicopter, then i got to get a heli engine and some digital servos or maybe ill just get more fuel, anyways you get the picture id rather pick up some rc stuff than a $300 sim (Damn this hobby is so expensive). Ive already bought CFS3 hope it runs well. (Haven't tried it yet). Thanks so much for everyone who contributed to this thread. Really helped me alot,

Papa

I too just bought CFS3 and G2, my New Puter will be completed this Thursday. P-4 2.4ghz, 512ddr, 533FSB, Ati Radeon 9700 Pro 128ddr, USB 2.0, etc.
Mannn Thursdays never gonna get here

Amen to the comment about sims saving potential crashes, I was able to hover my Nexus 46 my first attempt after using the old dave brown sim, not very long though; but it did hover.

Has anyone tried CFS3 on the Zone yet??

David

Has anyone added a video card to an HP 753n? Comes with integrated intel extreme graphics. I don't know which one to get, an AGP or PCI. Having trouble finding out what expansion slots may be available. Any help much appreciated. I believe I have to first disable the onboard graphics in device manager, correct?

Hal