How does this sound for a new PC?

[Hammer_other]

For flight sims only:

AMD Athlon 64 FX55 (Socket 939) Dual DDR400 CPU
DFI LanParty SLi-DR nForce4 SLi Dual Channel PCI-Express Motherboard
Crucial 1GB (2x512MB) DDR BALLISTIX PC4000 CAS2.0 Dual Channel Kit
300GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 16mb cache SATA 150 Hard Drive
2 x XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB DDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Cards (SLi Configured)
NEC ND3540 16x 16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter Black
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy ZS 7.1 Sound Card
Black floppy drive

Cougar HOTAS w/ CH Pro pedals

[PanzerMeyer]

wow. very nice system. you buying it soon?

[Hammer_other]

It's not actually for me: it's for the RAF cadets at my school. I just so happen to have been made master in charge of the section's flight sims, and I've been asked to come up with some stuff. I still have no clue as to what budget we're on, but that's the best stuff I could find. I'll provide all the sims and add-on stuff, and I'll also set everything up myself - the last time the head of IT at my school got involved with trying to set up a flight sim, nothing happened in over a year

[Hammer]

i would change the dfi for the asus or msi...

i seriously don't think you need anywhre near sli...

i certainly would not go with a maxtor hard drive and would recommend a raptor sata hard drive (or two if you think you need more than 73GB). you are crippling the throughput of your sata subsystem by not going to a faster hard drive - in benchmarking i have gotten equal to ultra-scsi 320 speeds out of a raptor and sata2 controller. if it is just flight sims you are not going to need 300GB of disk space, or get two raptor hard drives. if you need more space just get an ide then - the drives are the same except for the controller and your sata 1 hard drive is no faster than an ide. if you go ide i would recommend an WD RE (RAID Enterprise) drive...(they created that line for our company and customers).

and if you are flying flight sims you do not need the extra expense (and software that will get added) of a dvd-writer. i seriously doubt the school would condone piracy anyway...

you do not mention a speaker setup. if you can not take advatage of the 7.1 a 5.1 card is just fine (plain audigy).

you also do not mention a monitor setup. do not get a flat screen lcd - you will likely have ghosting of images when playting games - those screens are not really fast enough. get a 20 or 21 inch CRT flatscreen, probably sony trinitron tube based is your best bet.

[Jedi Master]

I don't know what the budget will be, but that is simply going to be as close to "max price" as you can get.
Forget SLI, it works only in games that nvidia specifically writes support into their drivers for and I doubt ANY flight sims will ever show up.

[Nemisis]

Forget SLI, it works only in games that nvidia specifically writes support into their drivers for and I doubt ANY flight sims will ever show up.

That's not true from what i know of SLI. SLI will work on any game by using the power of the two GPU rather than just one increasing the frame rate of any game by sharing the amount of GFX calculations between them. SLI support does not need to be written into the Game.

As for Steels suggestion of the Asus or MSI Mobo i can only agree on that one. Both these boards are top notch for stability/reliabilty and shear number of features.

Also have to agree with his suggestion of the Raptor Hard Drive/s as during my last series of upgrades GFX card CPU and more recently a new Raptor HD i have to say that i noticed a larger increase in my systems speed reboot and application start up times after i added my Raptor than when i upgraded my CPU, and as Steel says if you are only going to be using the new system solely for Flight sims for you and your fellow cadets then you don't need all that much space.

[Hammer]

the jury is really still out on sli performance increase though - especially when compared to the expense. no sim really needs it right now...and probably not for a while. i would get an sli capable board and be ready for it and whatever ati comes out with in the future though.

[Jedi Master]

No, not the game, the video drivers. The big deal about nvidia's new SLI is that it's not a hardware-level implementation like the old 3DFx SLI was. There it stood for Scan Line Interleaving, where one card rendered odd lines and the other rendered even ones.
Now the cards work in one of 2 ways: AFR, alternate frame rendering, where the cards each display every other frame (so you get 2 cards running at 40fps interleaved to display at 80fps), and load balancing where each card renders half the picture--one takes the top and the other the bottom. Where the line is moves dynamically based on what's on screen--if you've got a big sky and dense jungle, the split will be well below the mid-line since sky takes next to no power and jungle takes a lot.

The problem is the driver chooses EVERYTHING. First, it decides if it will support SLI in the game. This is coded right in and you can't do anything about it. If the game is not on the list, it turns off. Second, it decides what type of SLI to do (AFR or load balanced) and you can't change that, either.

Check out here for more info and supported games:
http://www.slizone.com/content/slizone/game.html
So far, only Il-2 and Joint Ops are on the list as far as we're concerned.

So, as a result the new SLI isn't nearly as useful as the old one was, and that's why I didn't hesitate to get another ATI card. Besides, ATI is working on their implementation as well.

[Nemisis]

Jedi that link proved usefull, but also showed that you can use SLI for any application/Game!

There is a link in the second paragraph that tells you how to set up a profile for an application not on the list and it also tells you how you can change the SLI mode selected for an application/Game from AFR to load balanced or vice versa.

So not as limited as first thought.

The main draw back of SLI that i can see is that it will only provide about a 80% boost maximum, So doing what a lot of people have done and gone out and bought 2 X 6600GT's to get better frame rates, when they should have just gone and bought 1 x 6800 Ultra and saved money and got better performance from the one card!

Since the 6600 GT is a Mid range GFX card and the 6800 ultra is top of the heap at the moment on the Nvidia side of things. 2 x 6600 GT's in SLI mode will not match the performance of 1 x 6800 Ultra on it's own, something proven time and again in the numerous benchmark tests on Websites and PC magazines. Plus the bigger downside of doing it is that 1 x 6800 Ultra will cost you about £130 ($200) LESS than buying 2 x 6600 GT's!

So to get any serious extra power from SLI at the moment, involves buying 2 X 6800 GT's or Ultras and that is serious big bucks that only a few hardcore (Rich B*****ds) will be able to take advantage of.

But as Steel says if you are doing an upgrade soon like me, it's probably best to get an SLI capable board so the option is there for you in the future, but will these boards be capable of using ATI's version of SLI if and when it comes out is another matter, since it will probably mean a new chipset required for Mobo's to be compatible with both Nvidia and ATI versions, but them again it might be possible with just a BIOS update.

As for me well i'll be getting an MSI SLI board but i will be buying an ATI XT850 XT TURBO for it (PCI-E version of course ) and an Athlon 64 XP3800+ (Venice core), and should have that by the end of June at the latest but hoping more for the begining to middle June.

[Jedi Master]

I'm likely going to go for a San Diego-core 3700+ (1MB L2 vs 512kb Venice) and an ASUS A8V Deluxe (since I just bought an X800XT AGP a few months back) in the next month or so. Maybe for my b-day in July.

As for enabling SLI anywhere, that's new. Previously nvidia gave no such option. No idea how well it will work for a game not on the list.
Also, as mentioned you never get much over 50% fps increase, and often you get less--just not worth it for double the price on video and almost double for the SLI mobo.

[KODIAK]

I'm looking at probably just opting for an ASUS AGP board which will support the FX55, but will allow use of the Athlon64 3800, both being Skt 939. The move to SLI capable and PCI-E can be next time for me I think.
Unless anyone can suggest anything better to do.

[Hammer_other]

I was thinking of a custom build, but was trying to stay away from it, cause I'm not confident with sorting out the power/casing/wiring.

[Hammer_other]

OK, I finally have a set budget - £1000. Looks like the SLi is out of the question!

EDIT: I've now got my eye on this. Comments welcome.

- Intel Pentium IV 'Prescott LGA775' 3.0GHz (800FSB) HyperThreading CPU
- Abit AG8 3rd Eye (LGA775) PCI-Express Motherboard
- GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) DDR Value PC3200 CAS2.5 Dual Channel Kit
- 160GB Western Digital 8mb cache SATA 150 Hard Drive
- OcUK ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB DDR3 PCI-Express Graphics card
- Sony Black 52x/32x/16x CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive
- Onboard 6 Channel Audio
- Black Floppy Drive

Or this:

- AMD Athlon 64 3500+
- MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nForce4 Ultra PCI-Express Motherboard
- GeIL 1GB Value (2x512MB) DDR PC3200 CAS2.5 Dual Channel Kit
- 250GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 16mb Cache SATA 150 Hard Drive
- Leadtek nVidia GeForce 6800 GT 256MB DDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card
- NEC ND3540 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter
- Onboard 6 Channel Audio
- Floppy Drive

[KODIAK]

Athlon set-up:

1. Drop the humungous hard drive - don't think you'll ever need anything that large - think about it, do the arithmetic on all the capacities of ALL the 'flight sims' currently available and soon to be (don't forget the various add-ons), add MS Office, a photoshop proggy, and a few other things you can think of. You still don't come anywhere near 250GB.
2. That alone should allow you to upgrade to a decent ASUS SLI mobo.
3. You may even have enough now to upgrade to an ULTRA model 6800.

[Nemisis]

In dropping the large hard drive you could also go for the MSI SLI version of that Mobo which is probably slightly better than the Asus Mobos (although they are good MSI and Asus being the top 2 boards at the moment for Nforce 4 chipset), and also as Kodiak says go for the Ultra version of the 6800.

Kodiak is right about the HD size for sure all my Flight sims and games as well as other apps are on my 74 Gig Raptor drive and it's not even half full! and thats a lot of Flight sims/games on there.