Upgrades

[Tyro48]

Soon I will have the opportunity to upgrade my computer system but before I do I would like to get some informed relevant input from the Ah community at large.

At the present I have a 15" monitor ( 13" viewable ) with a 550 Mhz celeron micro-p
on an ABit BE-6 II mother board, video delevired by a Viper 770 ultra, 128M of ram, and a Creative Labs PCI 512 sound card. And hooking up to AH through cable modem. My stick input comes from a CH 565F USB combat joy-stick.

So heres the thing of this what kind of bang for my buck can I expect in AH main arena if I upgrade to a 21" Hitachi .22mm dot pitch monitor and upgrading the micro-p to a Pentium 1Ghz, expanding ram to 256 Meg, buying new CH USB Pro Pedals and standard Pro-Throttle ( although CH says they are starting production of the USB Pro-throttle in Jan. ) in conjunction with my stick.

Will I see the enemy farther out, or pick them out of the ground clutter any easier?
Will the 1Ghz processor make a bif diff in frame rates and if so what will these frame rates do for my game? Will the pro-pedals and pro-throttle make a big diff?

A large investment here I would just like input from those of you who may have something close +/-  a wee bit.
 

[SOB]

The monitor definitely helps.  I just upgraded to a 21" myself, and the difference is amazing!  Of course, I fly sitting a couple of feet back from the monitor...if you have your face plastered to it while you fly, it might not make that much of a difference.

For the processor, I'd see where the price break is.  There'll be a point you can go up to for a reasonable price...say 800mHz, before the prices take a huge leap.  I'd take the best bang for the buck processor below that leap, and invest in a new video card too...a GeForce 2 or V5-5500.

I've always believed a good flight setup is essential, but I've never flown without a stick, throttle & rudders, so I'm probably not the best to answer this one.  I've seen Pyro fly with one hand on a stick and the other on the keyboard, and I doubt I'd outfly him any day of the week.


SOB

[MrSiD]

I agree with SOB, go for PIII 800 or similar, first of all its relatively cheap to obtain, secondly its highly overclockable.

With some preparations (mainly by getting information about overclocking before doing it) you can get almost 20% performance increase from the PIII800. Now that makes a really good price/value..

I myself am running Aces High with Celeron667 overclocked to 950Mhz and its running solid, fps ranging around 60fps at 1024x768 32Bit color. I have Geforce SDR 256 (overclocked of course.)

The most important thing to consider when upgrading is that you get a system which is good in all areas..
First of all you'll want upgradeability so when you choose your motherboard, go for the big names on the market like Asus or Abit (I suggest reading articles from places like www.ocshoot.com  for further information..)

You'll need enough system memory, at least 128Mb but 256 is advisable these days, make sure its PC133 minimum (that way, if you get PIII with 100Mhz Front bus speed you'll get 33% in-spec room to play with your memory for overclocking your chip.)

After you've setup your mainboard and processor, you have to consider upgrading your display card. Geforce 2 is the only way to go if you want to get the best (albeit not ultimate) performance from your new PIII system. If price is an issue, Geforce 2 MX is a very good price/quality item - however when upgrading like this I strongly suggest you take the Geforce 2 since the MX model will not be able to make use of your new cpu processing power.

Finally, the monitor: Anything from 19" up is good. Some people say that 21" is too big if you sit up close to the monitor - thats a matter of opinnion. I'd say you'll be fine with 19" and AH. Just keep in mind that you NEED to CHECK the monitor BEFORE buying it.
Monitors (same brand, same model) have huge differences amongst them. They never leave the factory with exactly same settings so you may get a 19" trinitron screen with a foggy and blurry picture even if the same model at shop seemed to be crisp clear and sharp. Trinitron and Diamontron screens are best overall quality, but they do have some issues with Geforce line videocards - it is imperative that you test your monitor first with a geforce videocard before buying it. Otherwise you may end up returning it for another one anyway.

I hope this advice will help you with choosing your next system setup.

- MrSiD

[Spatula]

If ya want my 2 cents, dont waste your money on intel processors. Pent 4 is total crap from what i've read, and not enough of them to push the Pent 3 down to a reasonable price.
Buy an AMD Athlon or Duron processor. The Durons are very cheap and outperform all pentiums. The Athlons are slightly better, but for the price i'd go for a Duron. They are very overclockable and the cache runs at full clock speed  
Im kinda partial to Asus motherboards too.
As for vid cards the standard seems to be a GForce 2. If you got money get the one with DDR memory.
128 Meg RAM is plenty for AH.
As for CH pro USB pedals - *get them* go for all USB. CH make good gear. Not sure if you use foot pedals at the moment, if you dont and use the twist stick thang, then you'll love pedals.

[Tac]

Hmm.. right now the PC is limited in its speed by the hard drives. Last time i heard a 1ghz system behaved like a 600mhz because the HDD wasnt fast enough. HT confirm. deny, abstain?

I got a 300mhz Pentium 2 with Voodoo3 and AWE64 sound card, if I were upgrading I`d go for a 1GHZ with a toejamLOAD (256+) of ram and a big monitor (21 inch+) and a damn fast Ultra DMA hard drive (quantum fireball HDD seem to be the fastest around now, not sure)

I want to win the lottery too...

[MrSiD]

Spatula: Yes, AMD processors are a very good choice at the moment. However he would have to change his motherboard (he can install PIII to his current one) and overclocking Duron or Thunderbird requires manual modifications on the processor. Most common pencil-bridgeing can destroy the processor if done wrong.. Also the core of the processor is very fragile so installing the heatsink/fan combo can crack/destroy the core - again if the user doesnt know what he's doing..

I'd say a beginner is better off with PIII in terms of overclocking. However I agree that AMD is the way to go if you want top notch performance (P4 excluded for price etc. reasons.)

-MrSiD

[Rickenbacker]

 

Originally posted by Tac:
Hmm.. right now the PC is limited in its speed by the hard drives. Last time i heard a 1ghz system behaved like a 600mhz because the HDD wasnt fast enough.

I wouldn't worry about that, AH doesn't access the HD during play  . Sounds a bit like an urban legend to me, but I suppose it could be true for disk-intensive operations.