Full speed ahead
Upgrading flight sim computers can be a stressful and confusing exercise. Not only do we need to dig deep into our pockets but we also have to know what components to select. Advances in hardware development continue at a brisk pace and keeping up-to-date with the latest technology is a challenge. This year’s highlight is arguably the release of the RTX 2080 graphics card from Nvidia. Storage technology has also moved on and we are now seeing super-fast M.2 solid state hard drives (SSD) becoming more commonplace. Rather than using the SATA interface like conventional hard drives, M.2 drives connect to the PCI Express (PCIe) bus – the same interface that is used by the graphics card and there are significant gains to be had in data transfer rates. SATA 3 has a maximum speed of 600MB/s, while M.2 drives are capable of 3500MB/s – nearly six times faster.
