Buying new puter... best for sim?
 

Hi...

I am planning on buying or piecing together a new computer... I work with and really like Dells... but am not decided... so what kind of computer would you get if you wanted a sim workhorse?

I was wondering what hardware I should consider including to make sure it has the juevos to run most upper scale RC Sims... I like what I read about REFLEX...

I guess I am mainly looking for input on video graphics card and processing speed and ram... more is always better I realize... but what are the basics?

Any and all info is greatly appreciated... Bman

RE: Buying new puter... best for sim?
 

Having owned, used, and supported Dells in the workplace and home, I can't in good conscience recommend them. Their pricing can be outstanding at times, but their service and support is abysmal.

If I wanted to get a new PC right now, I'd look to buying my own components and putting it together myself. It'll be cheaper and allow you to get the components you really want. It's not difficult to do. If you can build an ARF, you can build a computer.

The only brand-name desktops that I can feel confident in recommending are Apples, but nobody has written a modern RC sim for them. :)

RE: Buying new puter... best for sim?
 

Most of the sims will actually work OK on even a 1GHz machine so if you get a modern one (2GHz .. 3GHz) the CPU of whatever you choose should be fine. But I would pay a bit of attention to the video adapter. Obviously it's got to be 3D and I'd get at least 64MB of video memory. No one ever got fired for buying nVidia based cards!

Personally I bought this a few years ago and even now it still gives great performance with almost all sims (but I recently upgraded CPU from 466MHz to AMD 2.4GHz):

http://www.prolink-usa.com/english/product/gts-64a.html

They obviously now have quite a range of much more modern (faster!) cards to choose from too. If they're anything like this one then they should be good.

Cliff