NZFF

Would it run FS9 well or not?

Dell GX280
P4 3.0Ghz
2Gb DDR2
160Gb Hdd(sata)
DVD drive
Integrated sound and network
256Mb PCI-E graphics card
Dell keyboard and mouse
Dell 17â€￾ LCD
$699.00

You'd want to double-check the brands and models of the components there (esp. with things like video card etc), otherwise you have no good indicator as to the quality of the system.

Alex

as alex said, the quality cant be assured, but assuming it is quality, the specs are ok, a few things i would upgrade but most seems ok.

For 2004 yes i would think that should run alright ,i run a upspec to those specs in FSX so i really dont see why that wouldnt run 9 ok ...

Or this for $50 more?

Cheers, SB

Be careful with 'Branded' Computers (HP Dell Compaq) The desktops have very limited expansion options, your basically stuck with what you get. They tend to use motherboards with the graphics card built into them, expanded with a plugin memory module.

The specs on the 2nd machines look better, but it has onboard graphics, which means if you ever want to change the graphics, your looking at a new motherboard.

If your shopping on trademe your'd be looking for a pc description like this one

This pc is also around a price you'd want to pay for a gaming pc, anything under a $1000 is either a very good deal or a very bad computer dressed up as a very good deal.

It lists all the components, so you can see who makes the parts, and you even look then up on the internet for the actual tech specs and reviews.

Something else to watch is the wattage of the power supplies, some of the pc's come with a power supply that is underrated and will go pop on you, the one i posted is sus, 300 watts is a little light these days.

Sorry for the longish reply, hate seeing people buy these 'special deals' from retailers only to end up with a lemon.

Wow, thanks very much ronwestnz. That really got me thinking. So you are saying that the 300 watts is not big enough? So not the right computer if i hit buy now?

Thanks, SB

300 would probably suffice with that kind of GPU etc.. but as i said before, there are a few things i would look at upping, and todo that you would need more power. you could probably find a good few PC's 2nd hand alot cheaper than their new alternatives, as long as the pieces are good quality 2nd hand should be good.

It'd run FS9 ok, similar to what I had before. I wouldn't pay $700 for it though. The $749 one on trademe is just as bad. Personally I wouldn't buy ANY *new* system off trademe, I think you'll find a lot of the systems are built by fairly inexperienced people. My friend has had 2 computers off trademe, had asked to change some of the brands of harddrives and a different graphics card the first time, got his computer down and the regular advertised components were in there evn though he payed for the better stuff. The second time the harddrives died, and was told he would have to pay to send it back up and pay 30% towards a new one, even under warrenty!!

Okay thanks peppermint. What would i be looking at paying if i was to buy a set up that could handle alot of add-ons at medium-high settings? Thanks

My old PC was able to handle FS9 at a nice 20-30FPS, with addons and the CFG tweaked on medium-high settings. Though, in areas like FlyTampa's Kai Tak the FPS would drop down to 5 or so. It handled PMDG 744/737's well until all the systems were activated, from there the fps dropped about 10 and stuttered a lot. All that had was an AMD 3800+ (?) 2.2ghz dual core, 1gb ram, 250gb harddrive and a 7600gt with 450w PSU (?). That cost me just over $2000 about 3 or 4 years ago. Something like that could be picked up for about $300-400 I'd imagine. The main thing to stay away from would be on board graphics cards, I personally would never touch them or have them in a PC.

It all depends on your price range really. But to be honest, FS9 doesn't really need that much to run nicely with many addons. All you really need is a CPU with a speed of 2.5ghz, and a graphics card with 256mb of memory, although more is better. I found Tom's hardware was a great help in helping me select a PC which I won't HAVE to upgrade in a next 2 or so years (meaning it can play anything out now with no problems).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-gr...cking,2082.html

With that, you could probably knock off a few dollers out of the total price, provided you don't want to overclock. For me (with out overclocking) I'd get rid of the arctic cooler, go for half the memory/ram, a cheaper case and probably would only need a 500w PSU to run the rest. Harddrives don't have much of a price difference vs size, so I'd keep the 500gb rather than having to drop down to 250gb or so for the sake of $10-20. The end price would probably be around the NZD $1000 mark.