Just a little report here as I've taken the weekend and part of my week to blow away my box, reinstall, put everything back, and get FS9 running again. To give some background, here's what I had:
Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 (rev. 1.0)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+
2GB (2 x 1GB) OCZ DDR2-800 (PC6400) Memory (5-5-5-12, 1.8v)
4GB (2 x 2GB) Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 Memory (5-5-5-12, 1.8v)
NVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB PCI-E video card
Maxtor 7200RPM 15GB PATA (EIDE) HD
Maxtor 7200RPM 200GB PATA (EIDE) HD
Maxtor 7200RPM 200GB SATA HD
HP 22x LightScribe DVD+/-RW
Antec Sonata II Case
Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU
OS was Windows XP w/SP3 Corporate Edition on the 15GB drive. All other programs were on the 200GB SATA. FS9 was on the 200GB PATA (drive was split into 2 x 100GB partitions). Version 169.21 of the nVidia video drivers were used for the card.
Well, I had a bit of a problem. First, My father wanted a new computer built to replace the previous one I built for him 3 years ago, and a week before him asking, I had bought the 4GB Corsairs. Second, the Socket AM3 CPUs needed a new revision of that board, which I didn't have, so that limited me to the CPUs I could get. Third, Windows XP is subject to the 4GB memory limitation that the 32bit OS has, so no matter how much memory I throw on the board (max is 16GB), XP would only see 3.25GB of it. And finally, Windows 7 64bit requires a minimum of 20GB, so I'd be down a drive if I wanted to keep the OS isolated from any other programs (which I prefer).
So I stripped out the video card, the 4GB of Corsairs, the 15GB drive, and the 200GB SATA drive. Dropped in a GeForce 210 card (dad wants HDMI), reformatted the 200GB PATA for him, and he's good to go. For me, a bit of a change:
Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P (rev. 1.0)
AMD Athlon II X2 240 2.8GB Dual Core CPU
8GB (2 x 4GB) Corsair XMS DDR2-800 (PC6400) Memory (5-5-5-12, 1.8v)
NVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB PCI-E video card
Maxtor 7200RPM 200GB SATA II HD
Maxtor 7200RPM 320GB SATA II HD
Seagate 5900RPM 1.5TB SATA II HD
Lite-On 24x DVD+/- RW SATA Optical
Antec Sonata III case
Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU
OS is Windows 7 Professional, 64bit. The 200GB is the primary, with FS9 on the 1.5TB drive (2 x 750GB partitions). Version 190.62 of the NVidia video drivers were used for the card (191.07 or whatever the latest is has a LOT of problems). FS9 reinstalled without any problems, and I'm happy to say that the FSDT McCarran scenery went on without a problem either. NHancer 2.5.7 is out, so that is installed, along with a good FS2004 profile found
here.
I did a quick test this morning of a quick circuit in the right pattern for 19R and had nothing less than 55fps in the entire pattern(keep in mind I still have the BlueSkyScenery underneath FSDT, and that I locked myself at 60fps, and can go higher).
No screenshots yet (obviously! I had to go to work!) but plan to have them tonight on the KLAS-KSMF run I plan to do. But so far, Windows 7 is impressive, especially with the use of all 8GB of memory (finally!).
More to follow.
BL.
