What would you do?

[cessnac182golf]

I purchased a Gateway FX541S SLI 680i q6600 about a month ago... what a mistake... nice rig but it wont run FSX very well no matter what vid card I have in there. I have added 2 9600GT's, 4GB ddr2 6400/800...and with most of the start up programs killed I still cant get past 1/2 way on the sliders without having frame rates below 20... most of the time way below. I was thinking of oc'ing the q6600 but everyone tells me the mobo is a not one to OC.....and wait untill you see this mobo...... it does not look like any of the replacements that I have been looking at.... the CPU is sideways...what kind of heatsink do you put on that? And it mounts on the LH side, and the pci slots are front to back matching the ram.... so if I change it means a new case. Do I just swap the q6600 for a bigger cpu...thinking of 2 speeds faster 2.66 or more if I can afford it, or use the guts from the new gateway, get one of the 700 series sli boards , a new case and another cpu? Darn... for a few more bucks I could have started from scratch! What would you do? Budget needs to be 400 bucks or so. Thanks! Tim
Here is the link for the board....scroll down to it. Do they make aftermarket heat sinks that will fit this? http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=G180-1002

 

[Shadow703793]

Any LGA775 heatsink will fit a LGA 775 board. Btw, what do you mean by:

and wait untill you see this mobo...... it does not look like any of the replacements that I have been looking at.... the CPU is sideways...what kind of heatsink do you put on that?

edit: I see what you mean, I think that's a BTX board so therefor a different form factor than ATX. Notice the location of the RAM.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/25

Imo, grab a P45-DS3x and a copy of Vista/XP and OC the Q6600. And a new case/PSU too.

 

[marcellis22]

"I purchased a Gateway"... and you expected what? Who suggested the machine? I suspect it was CHEAP SKATE decision, hope you got your money's worth!! OH, YOU DIDN'T!! Just another STUPID decision on that road called LIFE...

 

[dragonsprayer]

its a junker

you need to overclock the cpu - if the mobo will not let you then yank it

get rid of that nvidia junk put an intel p35 mobo and clock the cpu too 3.6ghz and you fly fsx - make sure your ram is high bandwidth tooo

fsb 400 3.6ghz 4-4-4-12 to 4-4-3-10 settings on timings

gpu is not the issue always!

 

[dragonsprayer]

fsx is not an sli game - you need a good 8800GTX 768 or gtx 280

research your game before you go buy name brand crap!

my fliers have no issues - they use 3 drive raid0 plus storage

put your planes, large data files on the 3rd drive and run the game and os on raid0

have fun!

 

[knotknut]

Lets highlight this.

I purchased a Gateway
what a mistake
wont run FSX
wait untill you see this mobo
CPU is sideways...what kind of heatsink do you put on that?
Darn... for a few more bucks I could have started from scratch!

What was you question?