Hi all,
Been pondering building a new p.c for fs2004/fsx lately, and i'm wondering with a budget of around £320 how this set up would run the sims?

Processor:
MD CPU AM2 Athlon 64 Dual Core 4200 Retail Box inc Fan, Socket AM2 940 PIN, Energy Efficient
£42.29 Inc VAT
Case and motherboard
Asus Vintage V2-M2V890 Barebone Socket AM2 on board VGA +PCI-e x 16 Gigabit LAN
£61.10 Inc VAT
Memory:
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1024) Value Pro DDR2 PC4200 533Mhz Dual Channel Memory With Copper Heatspreade
£26.67 Inc VAT
Hard Drive:
Seagate 400GB Barracuda ATA 100 Hard Disk Drive 7200 rpm 8MB cache oem
£53.46 Inc VAT
DVD Rom
Lite-on DH-20A4P-21C IDE 20x DL DVD +/-R/RW RAM Black bare drive +software
£15.76 Inc VAT
Graphics:
INNO3D GeForce 8500 GT 512MB DDR2 PCI-E, HDTV, DVI,
£44.89 Inc VAT

Would this be a suitable set up for both sims or would it be worth investing in something pre-built.

Thanks for Looking

John

The 8500GT is (and I quote slightly from another person on another forum) "A multimedia card and isnt good for gaming atall."

Invest in something like an 8600GTS 512mb (which although many despise, is actually alright at running FSX and great on FS9) or maybe even an 8800GT which I think would take the cost up to about your maximum. Remember... you will need a powersupply of atleast 600W if you do get the 8800GT... 500W runs the 8600GTS fine for me.

I'd think about at least upping the CPU a bit. My new one is the AMD Athlon x2 64 5000 and that is by no means the top of the range.

I'll second what was said about the 8500GT as well. When I first built my system, that's the card I bought as the next step up was nearly double the price. However, I was so unimpressed that I took it back and got an ATI Radeon HD2600pro 512mb. Not only does it run better than the 8500 but it was £20 cheaper too!

Finaly, get a SATA hard drive (Serial ATA). They are faster and offer more functionality than the old ATA format. Mine is a 250gb SATA drive that only cost £45.