im getting a new motherboard and processor for my pc....i love flight simulator and play often, but noticed on my intel 4, the framerate wasn't so great...of course, amd is supposed to be a better gaming processor of the two...but if i want great quality, which amd processor should i get...money isn't too much of a problem...also, which graphics card should i get with it...by the way, with the intel, i had 2gb of memory, so that wasn't the problem....thanks
It's all about the video card. A midrange cpu with a highend video card will play games faster than a highend cpu with a lowend video card. What is the speed of your intel 4 and what is the video card that you have? If your intel 4 is fast enough all you might need is a better video card. The newer cpu's dual/quad cores are mainly for media/video encoding, they can also play games but it would be paying too much money to get a highend cpu just to play games. I have an intel coreduo 6300 and also a amd 64x2 4800 cpus (both lowend cpu's) but they play every game I throw at them. The only thing I need to do to increase the framerates in my games is to upgrade my video cards. Even a $200.00 video card (consider midrange) will elevate my play tremendously.
AMDs aren't really any faster for gaming, and Intel chips are faster in the grand scheme of things so you may as well get one of those. Your P4 is just old, for cheap, get a Pentium Dual core, like an E2180, that will be ample, but jony is right, though your CPU will be limiting for games, the graphics card is the biggest problem. It's worth mentioning that if you have an older P4, for example, when they only quoted the clock speed, e.g. "P4 2.4Ghz", rather than "P4 530", then it will most likely be an old Socket 478 chip, so you will need a new motherboard for a new CPU, and also to fit a new graphics card. The exact parts required depend on the budget.
well, now im thinking about getting the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600....with that processor, which video card should i get? like i said...money isn't too much of an issue...thanks
I'd recommend an ATI Radeon HD4870, it's a powerful card. However, if you only play flight sim, I'd recommend a Geforce GTX280 instead, as Flight sim is quite biased in favour of nvidia graphics cards. This is rarely significant for any other games though, so if you play several games, the HD4870 will do you fine. If you use a 24" or 30" monitor, you may also want to consider the HD4870X2.
I hate Vista, I find it an absolute pain to get working, many others here support that view, and many more think Vista is fine, so it comes down to personal opinion based on your experience. Generally, there's little XP can't do except DirectX10, which in my opinion is a bit of a con, so I would tell you to stick with XP.
