So how powerful a computer do you need to run Realflight G4?

A while back, I started playing some games like call of duty-world at war, grid and farcry 2. However, the low end card I have in my computer proved to be a very severe bottleneck to the smoothness of the game. While those game were not as demanding as realflight G4, they were somehow still unplayable on my Geforce 7300. Coupled with the fact that I had always wanted a more powerful card for running realflight in the rendered fields, I started looking at a graphic card upgrade. It was obviously stupid for a person like me who so rarely play games to be spending a lot on a GFX, so my I wanted something that is cheap, good and supported by my other components in my current com.

And with my tiny budget... I got a Asus EAH4830

From 50D

It is the slightly overclocked version of the standard ATI 4830 and is cheap and good enough for the 1280x1024 resolution that I run my games and simulator at. This is a full size, dual slot card which is quite a bit longer than my old card and requires one PCI-E power connector, which just so forunately is supported by my P.S.U.

From 50D

From 50D

And this is how it looks like when installed in my rig. I was lucky enough that it fits my small casing after I shifted the harddisk down. Just a bit longer and I will probably have to change the casing with computer for videos in my bedroom which has a old and ugly full size tower.

From 50D

From 50D

This card is IMPRESSIVE. At my monitor's native resolution of 1280x1024, everything was much much quicker during gameplay and there was no lag even during large explosion. Impressive card.

Now the important part...How does Realflight G4.5 runs with this?
Good enough for me. For the rendered fields which my previous card was struggling to do, framerate never for once, dropped below 30fps with this new card. That is, even with all the bloom effect, shadows, soft shadow and what not turned on the max.

Night flying in the circus looks awesome and is perfectly playable now. On my old card, I was more like looking at slide show, rather than flying.

Water flying is the tricky bit. With all the effects turned on to the max, I am still not getting the 30fps that Iwant. It hovers somewhere around 25.5-27fps, which I guess is good enough considering that this is a budget gaming card. I suspect the bottleneck is my cpu which is the first generation core 2 duo.

All in all, it was well worth the money and it is something that I regret not doing earlier.

However, there is one tiny problem. Because of the amount of power that it consumes in gameplay, it produces a lot of heat that my mini-tower finds hard to dissipate. System temperature shot up by a whole 4 degree when I am playing game and my P.S.U. seems to be running a low warmer. Probably need one or two more fans to increase air circulation in the casing.