Will my computer handle FSX

* * * FSX * * *

Hey look, it is another one of those. I am sure you have noticed many threads on asking if my computer is compatible or if the one I am going to buy is. I thought, I will try and stop people from doing that by making a post explaining FSX's compatability etc. . .

Take a look at this: Game Advisor. Go to the link, click on "My Advisor". From that you can find out system specs and whether it will work with many games!

First we need to find out the minimum specs for FSX (FSX will work with these specs, so no need to ask if you have them, but that is literally minimum settings):

Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista
Processor: 1.0 Ghz
RAM: Windows XP SP2 - 256MB, Windows Vista – 512MB
Hard Drive: 14GB
Video Card: 32MB DirectX 9 compatible

I'll take a computer that is pretty much top of the range:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Dual Core CPU

2GB DDR400 DIMM PC3200 Memory

512MB PCI-E NVidia Inno3D GeForce 7900GTX Graphics Card

16x DVD-ROM Drive
Price is £1,299.00

Lets start with:

The CPU: Microsoft reccomend 1.0GHz, but you and I know that that isn't even enough to run FS2004 with half settings smoothly with a good frame rate count. Dual Core CPUs are getting more common. The AMD Athlon 64 X2 is enough to run FSX. The range of AMD Athlon 64 X2s are sufficient. Likewise so are Intel Core 2 Duos. The processor isn't everything, but lets face it, if you don't have a good processor then you PC won't run smoothly.

RAM: As it says above, Microsoft reccomend 256MB for use with XP and 512MB for use with Vista. On the Windows Vista site it says that you need 512MB of RAM just to run Vista. It is recomended that you have at least 1GB of RAM for running Vista and another gigabyte of RAM for FSX. Remember we want to run FSX as full on as possible.

Graphics Card: FSX will and can only run with all the bells and whistles when ran with DirectX10 which is only available for Vista. The GPU above, the nVidia GeForce 7900GTX is more than sufficient for running FSX with XP, but there is one thing no one really is sure about. If using Vista for FSX as I said you probably want DirectX10, otherwise what is the point of Vista. The only problem is, is that no DirectX10 graphics cards are out, so if planning for Vista, you should wait a few more months. It is unknown whether there will be patches to upgrade from DX9 to DX10 though. So, you shouldn't spend $$ on GPUs.

DVD-ROM: To use FSX you will need a DVD-ROM drive. Not a CD-ROM drive.

Hope this helps![/url]