For RadarMan or anyone with PC knowledge!!

What you can upgrade will depend on your motherboard

Ram is fairly cheap at the moment,but untill we know what your mobo is ??

You say that you 512mbs of ram,what 1 stick or 2 x 256mbs

Your gfxs card is a bit of a dog(but I have seen one run fs9 very well,there is an old post somewhere with the fs settings fo the fx5200)

Upgrading also depends on how long do you expect to keep your present PC

Hi,
Where do I find what motherboard I have. Sorry, I don't know much about computers . Not sure whether it is one stick of 512 or 2 of 256, I havn't changed it at all, so what ever is standard, again, how do I know this. Thanks for your help, sorry I can't give you the info 😞

Run Belarc and it'll give you all the information.
Then we can run the MoBo # into intel's website for the specs.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Hi,
I have Belarc, as you suggested I downloaded it a while ago, but I couldn't find the motherboard on there. Don't know if its called anything else. Here are the computer specs:

System Model
Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (build 2600)

Processor a
2.67 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Drives
119.95 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
85.20 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

SAMSUNG CDRW/DVD SM-348B [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

Maxtor 6Y120P0 [Hard drive] (120.00 GB) -- drive 0, s/n Y32C1C0E, rev YAR41BW0, SMART Status: Healthy

Main Circuit Board b
Board: Dell Computer Corp. 02Y832
Serial Number: ..CN4811137C0D8P.
Bus Clock: 533 megahertz
[i]BIOS[i/]: Dell Computer Corporation A03 07/21/2003

Memory Modules c,d
512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'CHANNEL A DIMM 0' has 256 MB
Slot 'CHANNEL B DIMM 0' has 256 MB
Slot 'CHANNEL A DIMM 1' is Empty
Slot 'CHANNEL B DIMM 1' is Empty
Local Drive Volumes

c: (on drive 0) 119.95 GB 85.20 GB free

Network Drives
None detected

Display
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 [Display adapter]
DELL 1703FP [Monitor] (17.1"vis, s/n 4Y27339TAY2K, October 2003)

Other Devices
CanoScan N670U/N676U
Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
PS/2 Compatible Mouse
Generic USB Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub

Communications
BCM V.92 56K Voicemodem
Belkin USB Ethernet Adapter
GlobeSpan USB ADSL LAN Modem
Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection
Network Card MAC Address: 02:90:96:6D:C5:3A
Network IP Address: 192.168.0.1 / 24
Virus Protection
No details available

Thank a lot for all your help RadarMan and TTT

Dell Computer Corp. 02Y832

Unfortunately Dell uses their own boards made by Intel.
They might be able to tell you if you can get a bigger chip for it but that's spending $ on a small increase.
You only have bank 1 filed with ram and bank 2 is empty.
You can put another 2 sticks of 256mb each to give you a total of 1 gig or if you are planning on keeping the machine for another 2 years add 2 512mb sticks and you'll wind up with 1.5 gig for use with FS2006.
Go to www.crucial.com and you can get a good price on memory if you don't have a store that you go to now.
Don't forget, get the same speed memory that you have now or you'll run into problems.
As for a new video card, you've seen the posts about that, do you want to prepare for the next flight sim or just this one.

The maximum I can have is 4 slots of 256MB, so that equates to 1024MB which is fine. This should be plenty to run FS06 shouldn't it? For a video card, I'd like one that can be used for a few years, and that will work very well with FS06. I've heard you talking about ATI video cards ❓ (I think 😕 ) Are they good enough, and what one would you suggest?

Thanks a lot, you've been a great help 😀

I have the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 and am very happy with it.
You can get it for about $200.
Yes I have an Intel board with an AGP slot.
You see that it down the list now but still holding it's price.

http://www20.graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/vga_charts-09.html

1 gig of memory should be more than enough.

OK, cheers RadarMan and TTT 👍