Deputy

Doubletap and Rattler said what I was stating...go to any store that sells software and you will see shelves full of various incarnations of FPS or First Person Role-Playing. Be it Sci-Fi, WW2 or Dungeons & Dragons games. Yes, there is a core of flight sim fans. But they are a very small core and they are not the major part of the market. And retailers are looking for volume sales, not selling to a small group. WW2 FPS games get TV exposure quite often. Same with SciFi and D&D games. I don't think I ever saw an advertisement on TV for IL-2 or any other flight sim. Even MFS doesn't get TV exposure. IL-2 has "realism to the kill". Maybe for a flight sim. But it doesn't come close to the gore and death that exists in some of the more extreme (and big-selling) FPS. Personally, I don't go in for that type of thing. But kids seem to and it's kids that are driving the computer and cartridge game markets...not old farts like us.

heh...only for right now.

454.2 with End It All. Can't wait till my new video card arrives

Okay...I got a 450.8 on my HP xw4200 workstation. It couldn't even test 3D rendering because the crappy video card doesn't support 3D. I'm gonna try it now with End It All.

B16Enk: I'm reall happy with the changeover to 64 bit XP. I really think 64 bit is the wave of the future. Like Windows 95, 98, and XP, it just takes a while for it to become popular. When people realize the benefits for future upgradeability, they will come over. Unfortunately, VISTA 64 bit is kinda screwed up becasue it sucks down a large amount of RAM. But that system is an interim solution and the next Windows is already being worked on. I think VISTA is gonna end up like Windows Millenium. Crash: I am gonna test my other workstation that I am on right now. I bet I beat everyone at low scoring. It has a TERRIBLE video card. I'll post the score when I[m done. Dep

BG: At least yours is making rickshaw progress. Here's what mine STILL says... Tracking Detail

Jabo: Do you have/use Bittorrent or a similar program? I can supply you with the link for the 64-bit download. It's what I'm using on both comps. IL-2 works great on it. Only thing I found that doesn't work is Flash Player. But the next version will work on it. Only driver problem I had was with my wireless Linksys modem. I went on their forum and a guy there had posted links to downloads of 64 bit modem drivers. So I got the modem driver and saved it on a CDROM. If you use a wireless modem you may want to check to see if there are 64 bit drivers for it or if someone has posted them online. As far as video card drivers and all the rest, there are plenty of 64 bit drivers for nVidia cards. Not sure about ATI but I assume they have them too. Dep

Thank you for that link B16Enk!!! SP3 did a lot of things to defeat an "improper install".

Jabo: Here's the info about useable RAM and the effect of hardware devices with RAM on the useable RAM in Windows XP Home Edition. It was written a while back, so the comment about "Video cards nowadays commonly have one or two hundred MB of RAM on them" is incorrect. Nowadays the video cards we use in gaming can have anywhere from 125Meg to 1 GIG of RAM on them. So things have gotten worse instead of better. 4 GB RAM in 32-bit Windows XP and Vista As more and more of us load up our systems with lots and lots of RAM, this question surfaces more and more. You put 4GB in your computer. The motherboard supports 4GB, Windows XP and Vista support 4GB, so everything is fine. But when you open the System applet in Control Panel, the system tells you that there is 3.5GB, or maybe 3 GB even. Where did the rest go? It turns out that these systems have a 4GB address space, which must be used to address physical RAM, as well as other things. This is addressed in the Microsoft document Memory Management: What Every Driver Writer Needs To Know. In particular, the fourth full paragraph on page 10 says: The physical address space is used to address more than just RAM. It is also used to address all of the memory and some of the registers presented by devices. Consequently, if a machine is configured with the maximum amount of physical memory, some of that memory will be unusable because some of the physical address space is mapped for other uses. So the machine must use that 4GB address space for other things besides your RAM. But what other things? I recently had a new Dell Optiplex computer put on my desk at work. Being curious, I went to the Dell web site and found the manual for this computer. In that document, it says this: This computer supports a maximum of 4 GB of memory when you use four 1-GB DIMMs or two 2-GB DIMMs. Current operating systems, such as Microsoft® Windows® XP, can only use a maximum of 4 GB of address space; however, the amount of memory available to the operating system is less than 4 GB. Certain components within the computer require address space in the 4-GB range. Any address space reserved for these components cannot be used by computer memory. The following components require memory address space: System ROM APIC(s) Integrated PCI devices, such as network connectors and SCSI controllers PCI cards Graphics card PCI Express cards (if applicable) At start-up, the BIOS identifies the components that require address space. The BIOS dynamically calculates the amount of reserved address space required. The BIOS then subtracts the reserved address space from 4 GB to determine the amount of usable space. If the total installed computer memory is less than the usable space, all installed computer memory is available for use only by the operating system. If the total installed computer memory is equal to or greater than the usable address space, a small portion of installed memory is unavailable for use by the operating system. The first thing that I see on this list is “Graphics cardâ€

Aww c'mon Crash. Nobody's gonna poke fun at you. Not everyone can afford a high end comp. Heck, I'm using old workstations from 2004 that I'm upgrading. I sure can't afford one of those new whizbang comps. Plus don't forget that what is blazingly fast today will be putting along in a couple of years. I remember when I bought my Pentium 100 mhz comp. That was back when Windows newest release was Windows for Workgroups 3.1.1 I had the hottest thing going for about 3 months.

My preference is FedEx.

Just found out UPS may have "lost" my order for a new power supply and video card. ACK!!! Useless Parcel Service. I think they hire talking monkeys during the Christmas season

Tonar: As long as you have WinXp on the C drive, you will NOT be able to format it by right-clicking on format. You have to reboot with an XP CD in the drive to format the hard drive.

I ran the test again on the Xeon with anti-virus and anti-spyware turned off and got a 640.7 So running programs do have some effect on the rating. I just ran my laptop and I figured it would blow away the Xeon. No way. It scored only 563.4 That surprised me since it has plenty of RAM and a decent nVidia video card. It sure runs IL-2 okay.

BG: I was wondering if I turned off some of the running processes like anti-virus and anti-spyware if the results would be different. Think I will go back and try again.

Merdog: It means we need to do some upgrading I got a 637.7 on my dual Xenon comp. I also found out that Hyperthreading was disabled on my motherboard. So I went in and enabled it. I'm not really upset with my results. My hard drive is an old IDE, the video card is an nVidia that was made for workstations and not speed (Quadro 290 NVS), and I am only using 4 Gig of RAM. I can up the RAM tremendously (16 GB) and buy a hot gaming video card and either hi-speed SATA or SCSI hard drive. I haven't even started upgrading this comp and it got decent results.

ACK! I finally figured out why I couldn't install from my XP Pro 64 bit disk...it's a DVD and the comp I was trying to install it on only has a CDROM in it!!!! Good grief...color me stoopid

I've been messing around with this formatting stuff today. The pisser is you CAN'T format the hard drive that the operating system is on if you have XP. Used to be able to drop to a DOS prompt in Win98 and format from there. No can do any more. Best way to format the hard drive is to insert the Windows installation disk and boot from it. That offers you the opportunity to format or partition.

Got my problem solved....but here's a weird one. Seems that some HP workstations won't recognize CD+R or -R versions of Windows XP. The 64 bit CD that installed perfectly on my xw4200 workstation wouldn't recognize on the xw8200. I had to install XP Pro 32 bit to get it running. Very weird. Oh well...XP Pro 32 bit recognizes multiple processors, but is limited in RAM recognition like XP Home. But it does run all 32 bit programs. I'll see how it works and if it runs good, I'll keep it. Otherwise I may be forced to buy a REAL version of XP Pro 64 bit. Falcon: Thanks for that points program. I'm gonna test out and post my specs. Hey!!! We need a thread to compare our comp's specs!!!

Well I am having bigger problems than Jabo with my rebuild. My Xeon workstation refuses to load Win XP. It comes up with an error message about cables being unplugged. Either the hard drive or the CDROM. Guess I will have to tear into the guts today.

Is that 32 bit or 64 bit? Let us know how she runs.

Outstanding Jabo!!!! BTW...time to update your Windows XP CD to something newer. If you know about Bitorrent (hint-hint, nudge-nudge, know what I mean?), there are versions available with SP2 already installed. It would be worth it to download one and have it in case you need it.