A lean mean gaming system

[Pollock]

I think I may have found a way to optimize my computer to play aces high.  From what I have been reading here windows,media programs and spyware can very quickly suck alot cpu resource away.

The solution imo would be a totally stripped down pc.  In my case this would consist of the operating system (xp sp 2), track ir, and saitek profile software.  I may add a browser like mozilla but I would never surf the internet on this system.

The problem is I still need a home pc for all other stuff pictures, banking, dvds, etc.  So I need one pc with to play aces high and still do other stuff.

Is it possible to have 2 seperate XP setups on one PC. I used to have a dual boot with windows 98 (for aces high) and xp for everything else.  My other option would be to use removable hardrive bays, but i hear there are risks with them.

Does anyone run a stripped down system for AH?, what were your end results.

[JimBear]

I am lazy and just stuck a bay in the box and enclosures for 2 harddrives. and swap them out for what i want to do. 1 drive is nothing but the game drive (AH, IL2) with drivers for sound/video and game controllers. The other drive is the famibly drive with orifice et all on it.

[TheFox]

Hi Pollock

I have two networked PCs, one which is purely for business (XP, MS Office, Photoshop, Pinnacle, Spyware, emails etc), the other is my 'Boy's Toys Machine'.

The second PC has two accounts, one purely for AH and FB, the second for Music Production. Each account uses different soundcards (I have two installed ), and has different processes running.

Both machines have the usual NAV and Firewalls (which are resource heavy), but by keeping the other particularly 'heavy'  applications separate (particularly MS-Office), the performance of both machines is much better. I also removed Norton Internet Security 2004 (which is a real resource hog) and reinstalled Norton System Works 2003 (updated) which although still quite heavy, is much less of a burden on the system

The business machine is an ASUS P4B266, Intel P4 1.8c Northwood, 512 Ram - perfectly quick enough for MS-Office and Photography stuff. The Boys Toys machine is an ASUS P4C800, Intel P4 2.6c Northwood, 1 gig Ram, SB Audigy 2ZS (for games), EgoSys WamiRack (for Music), ATI 9800XT. This machine runs through a Dell 2001FP 20inch LCD (16ms response) limited to 60Fps and rarely drops below 30Fps in AH at 1600x1200x32 with the sliders about one third from the left hand side.

Hope this helps

[Pollock]

Thanks it realy does:)

I think I will do the 2 hardrive thingy with the removable bays.

[Eagler]

just ordered me a couple of these:

http://kingwin.com/pdut_detail.asp?LineID=&CateID=25&ID=127



from:

http://www.xpcgear.com/kf23ipf.html