Rahvin

I've got a similar configuration (With an MSI Hawk instead of the 2GB, a crucial C300 SSD, and a Scythe Yasya fan), and it works pretty well. I've only gone for a 500 Watt power supply though, and I think even that is plenty. So you could probably opt for something smaller, unless you want to run two GTX cards at some point. Be careful with the cooler, the graphics card is pretty close to the CPU, and the Yasya almost touches the card -- but it is quite wide. Also watch for possible height issues - don't know how wide that case is, but don't want to find out it doesn't fit. Finally: Even a 'lowly' 560Ti will need reasonable case cooling to stay cool, so make sure there are enough fans in the case. I'd recommend one side fan, and one front fan.

Some notes: Try to get the low profile vengeance memory - will give you more flexibility with CPU coolers. Speaking of which: get a decent aftermarket cooler. Scythe has the mugen, ninja and yasya, which are relatively close to one another in performance. all recommended at their low prices. You don't need an 850W powersupply. 450 will easily do the trick. Get something upscale like Seasonic or Enermax instead. Wireless, I'd say stay away from cards and get a USB-device instead. Easier to deal with, and you don't need external atennas to get the thing to work. But then, I'd wire up tower computers anyway and forget about wireless. Finally, personally I prefer the G400 to the G500. Finally, you might consider putting a mid-sized SSD in, and use it for caching with a Z68 chipset.

In fact, I have such a screen (two, actually, EIZO S1910), and I have no perceivable ghosting in any FPS or other situation. With some early, non-overdriven PVA and IPS panels, ghosting was an issue, as repsonse times were in the 20s and 30s or even 50s of miliseconds. But today ghosting isn't a problem with most screens, unless you get color-optimized screen for the graphics market. These are priced outside the average gamer's budget though. The super low refresh rates are only possible with TN panels, which have are useless for anything else, as they have horrid viewing angles, often terrible backlighting, few and badly calibrated colors, and all too often poor true contrast. But again - the spec values are all crap - only buy screens you've looked at yourself.

Actually, 10-12 ms is still plenty fast reaction time. Of course, it depends on what value they are giving. Reading tests and checking screens out in scores is something you should absolutely do, otherwise you may end up disappointed or paying too much

I'd recommend an Eizo (or samsung, if you're penny pinching) S-PVA panel. Viewing angles are similar to IPS, switching times are better, the Eizo's have low input lag and often better back-lighting. On the other hand, I am somewhat of a monitor snob :-S

Depends on what kind of latency you can get. Usually wireless stuff has atrocious latency and odd packet loss. Might want to look at a combination of wired and wireless, maybe via a sattelite and segregate by latency priority what's going to get pulled in over the line and what over the air. Otherwise try to get a fiber pulled. Probably not going to happen though.

MPS were my childhood heroes :(

Does not work for me. Returns: Patch 1.1.0.8 [EN] should be installed. There being a 1.1.0.8 readme in the steamapps/dcsa10 folder, I assume that is there (also, 1.1.0.8 won't install either) ...Not sure what went wrong there.

You will probably have to measure the output with an oscilloscope and artificial loads to check the ripple values. Those are often linked to noise and also more likely to lead to problems in other devices. The problem is, that measuring that will most likely be way more expensive than a new PSU. If the whine annoys you, try and get a new one (Seasonic or Enermax 450~500W) and see if it goes away. In my experience, having a surplus PSU is always a good thing, as they don't go out of date, and they are one of the components that are the most likely to break during a computer's life span.

Don't discount nVidia either, most of the time some games run faster on a less powerful card, simply by being optimized for the platform. Sadly, I have not yet seen anyone categorically benchmarking cards with the DCS engine... My suggestion for you: The Powercolor 6950 PCS++ which is basically a 6970, for 30 dollars/euros less, and a decent custom cooler to boot. (If you can still find one)

Bad news: It's going to be pretty much impossible to do what you want to do. Maxing out a two year old eagle soft game was never the 600-700 pound range, even back in the original lock-on days. They "planned ahead" with their maximum settings so that it would require next years high-end machines to even be playable. But with a budget it should be possible to find something that will get you something where you can play with slightly more than medium settings. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-210-OK&groupid=43&catid=2040&subcat=1444 with an HD 6950 graphics card and win 7 home option selected are getting pretty close to what you're looking for, and just within your budget. Similar retailers will probably offer similar deals.

Yeah, something like their "best" Enix is also pretty good. Adding a 120GB SSD is one customization to consider though.

If it has to be prebuilt, you might want to have a look at the basic Aurora model by alienware/dell. That specced with the base CPU option, 8 GB RAM and the HD6950 should get you pretty close. If you also spec the 256 GB SSD and 2TB hard drive you hit 2250 dollars, but without the two, it should be around 1500. A total rip-off in every way, but that's the price you pay. here is the configurator: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dpcwsx1&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&model_id=alienware-aurora-r3 You probably won't find a computer which has a reasonable price and enough performance without customization to do what you require. Not sure where you are from, so can't recommend much more, but both in Europe and the US there are plenty of custom-builders that will build a performance machine mostly to specs, so you don't have to worry about that.

Neither of those has a sufficiently powerful graphics card for anything beyond low-def 800x600 gaming... Having had a look around HP offers, they have no reasonably graphics cards for any of their boxes.

Graphics memory should have nothing to do with HDD-based stuttering. Could be a matter of not enough RAM or inefficient buffering. Here more memory or a more modern OS will help. Also, increasing bandwidth to storage might help - installing an SSD speeds that kind of thing up nicely.

Radeon is just what ATI started calling their cards in 2000. Before that, it was ATI Rage (of which I had an 128 back in the day) and ATI Mach :-)

Does the Radeon brand even exist for 15 years? ...nope only 11!

Actually, a 6950 should require less power and deliver similar performance to a 5870, at roughly the same price. Size shouldn't be that much larger either, but that also depends on all the custom implementations. In general, now is a bad time to buy GPUs, as both ATI and nVidia struggled moving to 40 nm, and failed to move to 28nm, so the last generation is only a mild improvement on the previous, which was a disaster (especially for nVidia, but the power consumption on the high end HD 5 series was already quite excessive). I wonder if any of those two will get a 28 nm die on the market, before Intel brings us 22nm graphics with Ivy Bridge next year.

If it's a memory limitation, lowering texture detail should do the trick.

I'd say get an 1156 board and one of those high end i5 dualcores, overclock the hell out of it, and get some of the cheapest dual thread high performance available today. Also, you might want to try out just OC'ing your 955 a bit (big cooler, a few extra V and give it the beans) and see if that helps with CPU performance. If it doesn'T spring for a 6950 and hope it unlocks - at the very least it'll OC to about 850 though. Might want to look out for a custom card like the PCS++ or the MSI power edition.

That's not a rumor, it's a fact. Just buy another stick of RAM and be done with it? Or just keep using only three channels. In either case you're not losing anything. Also, this is at least another 8 months in the future....

The larger ones are also faster (similar to HDDs, but for different reasons). Also, 240 isn't even that expensive these days.... If you're dumping that much on graphics and cpu, the storage subsystem might as well see equal investment.

My advice regardng CPU cooler: Scythe Yasya. Extremely cheap, silent, powerful, customizaable, compatible and easy to install. Absolutely cannot go wrong with it. (Unless you plan to move your computer a lot, where some say the pushpins might not hold up. I moved my computer though, and never had a problem. It's just ridiculously good.

I'm currently looking at a number of cards in this range, GTX560Ti's and HD 6950, and I'm having a hard time deciding which to stick into my next machine. The GTX560Ti stock is relatively silent (less noisy than my current GTX260 at least), while the stock HD6950 can apparently get pretty noisy under load. That's where the custom cards come in. The 560 has plenty of overclocked cards, and there's even a 2 GB variant (though apparently it doesn't OC well) My main criterium is good performance, OC potential (or works OC) and above all relatively silent operation, especially when mounted vertically (Fortress FT03 case) Triple slot is somewhat of a hindrance, but I've been looking at the gainward phantoms, the MSI power edition and hawk, as well as the powercolor pcs+ and the ASUS Cu-whatever. My current favourite is probably the hawk, but triple screening might make 2GB useful. I've been reading a bunch of reviews, but found nothing that really put together a nice comparison of all the custom cards, so I'd really like to hear experiences (and performance reports) with cards in this range. Thanks!

Talking of landings, blown tires and Anti-skid: I switched it off after take-off last time, then had it not come back for the landing, switch wouldn't stick. Just a random system failure or does it depend on some system that I might have forgotten to activate? ...I fudged the crosswind in the end anyway, but without the added stress of anti-skid being off, maybe I'd have kept her on the tarmac...