>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.
Thanks, as always, for your comments. One thing I regret about the NDA's for the beta testers is the lack of ability to get feedback now about the "real" hardware requirements for the product, until some substantial time after it is released in a few weeks. I'm sure there are people who have been checking this program out for several months who could shed some real light on these issues.
Of course, perhaps the lesson here is to simply be patient. For some reason, that is usually difficult. I don't think I am alone in timing my computer upgrades to new FS releases. Not that it is intentional, but historically it seems to have worked out that way. A $50 investment in new software translates into $1000 invested in new hardware. The good news is that each time the cost of the hardware is a bit lower than it was 2-3 years earlier.