Funny thing is I bought this rig to play SH3 (thats how old it is) my former rig was a 1mhz PIII that I spent more time tweaking files, adding cards and generally farting around with than gaming. It was speced for Janes 688I, Janes WW2 and Grand Prix Legends box release. But it ran EA sports F1 99, IL2 Sturmovik and sort of IL2 FB with alot of work. SH3 did it in.

So when I bought I knew what I needed, and AMD and Intel were in a hardware war with new chips coming out every month. If I had my money together in March, I would have wound up with a 5xx Pentium with a smaller Bus size (333 or 500mhz I think) and AGP graphics. But I was forced to wait and I got the then hot 800mhz bus PCI graphics and 6XX series Pentium at a great price. Since then only going to a 24" monitor and SH4 forced a major upgrade to the 512MB 7950GTO card.

I write all of this to point out that there are sweet spots, especially if you are not into the Quake DOOm and Crysis type of games. Simulators are released only every couple of years, and getting a 12 month old former top line cpu can really be an advantage. IMHO get the most forward speced mainboard you can (socketed for the newest class of chips) check out whats comming down the pike,info on Intel and AMD next designs are on the web( check out http://www.anandtech.com/ ) for the release pattern on chip classes and know the type of chip in the computer you are buying. Wikipedea actually has alot of info on this stuff.

Of course builders know all this and a lot more, but alot of guys buy off the shelf and may not realize that the chip/board/socket configuration they are getting is at the end of its development cycle and literally has no future.

Would you also recommend that for somebody like me who has no interest in new games and only wants to run some old stuff that probably always will use just one core anyway? Wouldn'T a dual core, but that one with a high Ghz, be better than a quad core with lower GHz per core?

SH5 is not necessarily a criterion for me. I demand more than just eyecandy from it. If it really offers realism and a good AI, then I may wish to join the boat (upgrading first). If it is just a 3D boat, but detail, realism and AI letting players down, I would pass.

My only sim today that could need more system power is FS9, which nevertheless is fully playable in frames even with plenty of mods.


P.S. I have started to scan the market, but I admit that the plethora of labels and terms and products and standards has left me behind, I no longer feel competent to keep up with the stuff, it changes so damn fast. There is so much input about so many things from so many sources - I can'T say which constellation gives me the loudest bang for the buck, would be a reasonable compromise modest in price, or the fastest thing you can get.

Im with you, but I will be looking to add newer sims such as BOB SOW and SH5 so an upgrade is a metter of time for me. But I havent kept up with technology. Check out the http://www.anandtech.com/guides/ site above to get the big picture. They will have overview articles about Mobos, CPU, RAM, technologies. They go into some detail and when you are through you will know the what and most importantly the why of various PC technologies. You will be much better able to decide for yourself what you need after reading up on their site. Then go to Tomshardware for comparisons and Newegg for prices and user comments. Takes a while but you will be much more informed.

Aye, Anand really goes into detail, though the tech-babble can be a bit much at times. Tom's is a little more "user friendly". Best sources on the web for this kind of stuff. :)