Hi Bill,<<Certainly, the small number of PCI slots can be an issue, depending on what you need to add. But, if one slot goes to the sound card, and the video card goes to the AGP slot, and the machine has built in Ethernet, how far off can you be?>>
If you know that you're not going to add any more PCI peripherals apart from a sound card then you might be okay. Watch the one closest to the AGP slot as some graphics cards are so large they prevent that slot being used.
It's hard to recommend products to people living outside the UK. I notice many Americans tend to buy corporate PCs such as those from Dell, Compaq etc. Over here not many do preferring independent companies that are more oriented to the home market.
Whatever you choose the important things remain the same. Fastest processor you can (or can't!) afford, good graphics card and a decent display. Those are expensive or difficult to replace afterwards.
I take your point about a noisy Athlon vs a quiet Intel. I'm getting used to the noise from mine now but at first it was quite a surprise. I'm not even going to guess as to what I'll need to run FS2004 until it's loaded early next month. Rumour has it that frame rates are pretty comparable to FS2002 until you ratch up the cloud settings at which point you need a lot more processing power to gain the reality.
Regards,
Ray Proudfoot,
Cheshire, England
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