I'll add that its all about how fat one's wallet is these days.
Mine's so thin, I can never keep up with it.
Falcon5 is stunning but who gives a rat about CTD...? Noone I've met lately.
BMS has it going on strong, but I'll need someone else's wallet for that sweet dog.
At this age in my life, I don't know if I'll ever have a trip to the moon system (again).
Savings tanked...economy looks promising (that's a joke, folks)
I simply have to work with what little I have left..and trust me, it ain't much.
Love, Peace and Falcon4Ever

Now eveyone, pour up some Turkey.

Sorry, but does BMS require a different system? I mean, I thought if your rig ran AF, you could run BMS, right?

CuMelter, I don't know exactly what your upgrade options are (not familiar with your specs above), but if your motherboard accepts DDR3 RAM and PCI-E video cards, you could be able to upgrade very cheaply. 4GB RAM is dirt cheap now, so much so that an 8GB DDR3 kit is very reasonably priced. As for a video card, a lot of people are selling their GPUs here every now and then... right now there is a 6950 2GB up for grabs and though it is expensive, it is a "just behind the bleeding edge" card and it will run anything with no sweat. Other cards can be had for cheaper (less than $100), you can even try eBay.

That's a huge a## tip, Ice...moocho appreciated. I just got this video card in Feb. I didn't know HOW to BUY a damn vcard.
And I still don't. 64 bit this....128 bit that.....256 bit over yonder.
I mean..WTF?
Later, I discover that the GeForce 8400 is frowned upon by the 'In The Know' crowd.
I've been out of the loop way too long. The card works(it is a pci-e deal)...and I do believe another couple cards of ram should help.
My system runs BMS, but I can't enjoy all of the work that went into BMS with this system.
BMS eye candy is spectacular. And stable.
To my eyes, FreeFalcon5 wins the marbles in eye candy. But CTD=WTF=FTS....
Allied Force doesn't CTD. Period.

I'm glad to have helped, CuMelter. Sorry, I forgot you just joined SimHQ. If you look, we have a Hardware & Software - PC section and if you post there, a lot of "in the know" people will help you out. Whether you are buying a whole new PC or just upgrading one component and are wondering if XXX hardware is a good deal for $YY.00 price, people will be glad to help.

Let me point you to Tom's HW Graphics card heirarchy chart. It is not 100% accurate but it gives you a rough guess as to how your card performs in relation to everything else out on the market. You will see that your 8400 is ranked way down... in fact, it is around the same ballpark as my ATI 9600 that I had on my old PC which was built 8 years ago, incidentally the same PC that I played AF on. If you search for "5770," you will see it is about 17-18 "tiers" above your current system. That is what I had just recently and I played DCS A10C on it with decent framerates and good eyecandy on a 1920x1080 screen. If you were to upgrade your GPU, I would suggest aiming for around the 5770 area, which a quick Newegg search gives me a price range of about $100. Tom's HW still rates the 5770 as one of the best buys for it's price range, as shown here. Obviously your final choice will depend on how much cash you have, but the general advice for GPU purchase is "buy the best you can afford."

A quick search on RAM shows that a 4GB (2x2GB kit) DDR3 1600MHz can cost a whopping $28.99 for the Kingston HyperX variant, while a 8GB (2x4GB kit) seen here can cost up to $49.99 for the Kingston variant, although the Mushkin, Crucial, and G.Skill variants can be had for less. With RAM, my advice is get the most GB you can afford, 8GB being a nice sweet spot (anything above is overkill) and 4GB being a decent size. For an additional $10-15, if you can double your RAM, why not? So, find a decent size and try for 1600MHz if you can (nice if you want to overclock later) and find the tightest timings you can, from a reputable brand. However, in the overall scheme of things, premium RAM does not boost the performance enough to justify the extra cost, IMHO. BTW, it is generally advised to have a "kit" installed rather than mixing up RAM sticks, hence my recommendations.

As for the eternal AF vs BMS argument, let me just say that BMS has its own merits as well. If you have to upgrade your PC to enjoy BMS, that's not BMS's fault, as the modders just seeks to optimize the sim as much as possible since "modern" PCs can handle it. Plus if you upgrade your PC, all your other games will benefit as well. Win-win!


Sorry for the long post. Hope to have given you some ideas, and hopefully convinced you that a "powerful" PC need not be expensive.

You're a gentleman & a scholar. This ol'bird is grateful.
Have no doubt.
Now I have to determine what kind of ram this intel board will accept.
I don't know if DDR 2 is in there or 3....or if I'm limited to what type of ram to buy....???
And lookie here- this board will only give a video card 75 watts of power.
Now I feel cornered here.
All The Best-
Ed in 'Bama USA
PS-just ran utils for this board.
FSB is only 200...sucks
Max Install Ram is only 4 Gb...oh well
Current ram is 2 Gb of Kingston. Vendor told me he installed Crucial....hmmm
Isn't Kingston lower on the scale compared to Crucial?

For comparison purposes, my system that ran BMS at MAX was:

- Intel Dual Core 2.6 Ghz (not to confuse with Core 2 Duo, mine is a lot older, circa 2008 I think).
- 2 GB of some cheap DDR2 RAM.
- And a GeForce 9500 GT with 1 GB of RAM.

It ran in a perfect 1920x1080 resolution in that system. So with BMS in mind, you don't need 4 GB of RAM or a super graphic card. I see the same card for 50 bucks in Amazon, so some other a little better could still be affordable.

I do apologize. Of course you can run BMS with much lower hardware. How low? Dunno. Me, I prefer a slight overkill as I just want to sit down and play and enjoy the game, not figuring out how to get more eye candy or to push up framerates. I'm done with that (I hope!).

Cu, I did a quick search on Google for your motherboard. This is what Intel says and this is a pic I saw at Amazon. Is that what your motherboard looks like? If so, you are limited to the old DDR memory. Note that RAM comes in DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 flavors, so your MB are two "generations" behind. Unless I am sorely mistaken, it will be a pain to upgrade this board, you are better off upgrading to a modern CPU and motherboard combo which unfortunately costs quite a bit.

Here's another pic I dug up:



If you can, download CPU-Z and run it. It will give you specs of your CPU, motherboard, and RAM. As to brand rankings, I'm not sure. Kingston and Crucial are good brands though, and like I said, even the premium, bleeding-edge RAM kits won't give a significant, noticeable improvement so a good, quick, brand-named RAM should do the trick.

I do apologize again if I got your hopes up. Best bet is probably eBay or if someone here from SimHQ is getting rid of his old CPU and motherboard. I once got lucky and managed to get a core2quad 2.4GHz, mobo, and 8GB DDR2 RAM for a little over £120, which I used to build a PC for my son, so just keep an eye out!

I'm on the same page with ya. Trust me. I'm sick and tired of having to try to keep up with why this is different from that and that is this and this is NOT that....Jesus.

Yep...I'm afraid you're right. And Yep, that's my board, sorry to say. And it came w/a Gateway bios chip...no means to overclock anything-just enhance settings is all ya get. Even still, it runs IL-2 1946 really smoothe and of course Falcon. So I'll copy down the components you list and just phone someone and tell them to make me a package deal. Period. No second guessing around.

My Toshiba is fixed at 60 Hz freshrates...but it does allow a 'ClearView' setting that takes it up to 120 Hz if you use an HDMI port....So in a sense, what I've been doing is running Falcon at 1024...Ultra 32bit...and using the 'full-stretch' feature of the TV to get a widescreen display. It's really not that bad of a perspective. But Falcon will save screen prints in the resolution its running, so here's a snap of the cleaner HUD at my monitor's setting. Gone is that eyesore edge of the plexi-glass and the frame fingers that hold it in place.
At any rate, if there are any readers here that are using a 16:9 monitor-
I cleaned up the Balkan Cockpit as seen below. Ya just can't have enough viewing area in flight sims, IMO...



PS- No Offense towards Aeyes

I took one look at the two pics and though "Ugh! What a grainy pic!" Then I realized... AF 2D pit. Sigh... BMS has spoiled me.

Cu, I would strongly suggest you build your PC yourself. Not only will you learn a lot about how your PC works, you will also gain familiarity with the terms used and gain appreciation for your rig and your upgrade options later on. Pity you are on the other side of the pond, I would've happily built you one, pack the tower case properly, and ship it to you with no labor cost.

If you are serious about building a new PC (or even just spec-ing one out), I would suggest you post over in the Hardware & Software - PC section of the forums. Lots of guys will be happy to help. Before you do, you need to note your current specs, what games/sims you want to play on the new PC, and the budget you have for new parts. If you have any old hardware that you can carry over to the new PC (ie, monitor, keyboard, mouse, SATA hard drives), mention that too so we can "save" money from them and put them towards other parts.

Right off the bat, I am guessing you will want a new CPU and motherboard, RAM, GPU (though you can probably use your old one for now, as I would suggest saving up again and buying a beefy card around the $150-200 price range), PSU, and maybe a new case too, one that has proper airflow.

Good luck, and I look forward to you PC-build thread!