Nigel H-J wrote:Oh dear!! Any remote thought of the dark side is no more!! :roll:
That would mean a complete upgrade and OS....unfortunately there has to come a time when spending hundreds of pounds to run a new flight sim cannot be deemed appropriate or cost effective.....I have put a complete stop to upgrades on my computer as there are more important issues to consider especially in this present financial climate.
Have to say I am very happy with FS9 but not going to open a can of worms....Many thanks for the information.
Regards
Nigel.
Actually Nigel you CAN run FSX on your current system and it will be smoother than FS9 and have better eye candy than FS9 even though you won't be able to run with all sliders full right.
Before I upgraded my system last summer I had a rig very similar to yours except I had a 6800GS Extreme Edition GFX card with 256 Mb of RAM and I could run FSX very smoothly. On weaker rigs you really need SP2/Acceleration though as that helps tremendously and make sure you update to the latest version of DX9c (there are MANY variants of that beast unfortunately) as some of the updates produced stunning improvements in FSX performance. In fact if you are running XP and have SP3 installed it's a fair bet that you have the latest flavour of DX9c anyway. The DX9c updates have never been part of the regular XP updates but I think I am right in saying it was included in SP3 for some reason.
Thanks for the information Larry, I suppose for me it is, in effect, becoming an option, maybe I just want it purely out of curiousity and we all know what happened to the cat!! :o
I don't think it will be in the immediate future but thinking of it towards the end of this year....
One reason is that I have only 6Gb free on the hard drive, can get rid of a number of programmes that I do not use that will free up space so the last question is.......Ideally how much free space (Gb) should I have on my hard drive to accomodate FSX?
Regards
Nigel.
I used to be an optimist but with age I am now a grumpy old pessimist.
As much as you can get mate A fresh install plus GenX sends it to over 100gb :o If you only have 6gb spare with the possibility to eek a little more.. consider buying a new drive instead as 6gb won't (I don't think) get you through FSX.. not by some way.
Thanks Dave, in that case I will probably install a 2nd hard drive of something like 145Gb to use solely for FSX and leave my current one as it is. Would that be OK? Sorry for what may be seen as a silly question....... but just wait until I get FSX!!
Regards
Nigel.
I used to be an optimist but with age I am now a grumpy old pessimist.
Don't worry.. there's no way you could know this unless you asked ;-) I have FSX deluxe and it advertises 15gb of disc space. Whether this is is for the install procedure too, I honestly can't remember off the top of my head. One thing is for certain.. once you've installed it (preferably onto a dedicated drive).. run defrag as even on a new drive, it throws stuff all over the shop.
I think BenW advised at least a 150/200gig drive if you're going for GenX too but when you consider what addons you'll try over the coming months/years.. aim higher. Both my FSX installs reside on 500gig drives and I can't at this stage ever see me filling them.. with FSX goodies. One has already been taken over by overspill from my FS9 install Note also that if you buy the 'Gold' edition which comes with ACCEL.. you'll be looking at a minimum in excess of the 15gb quoted for the deluxe edition I have ;-) The good news is that HD's are now both huge and cheap.. cheap in the grand scale of things anyway ;-)
EDIT..
Just had a look at my ACCEL box and it quotes (or rather misquotes) Memory.. 4gb plus space required for FSX :roll:
ATB
I just checked my FSX install and it currently shows 32 Gb and that is for FSX+Acceleration with 690+ aircraft variants (when you include all the repaints of various models). :o :roll:
In addition I also have a FSX scenery folder on the same drive which is almost 1 Gb in size (I install all add-on scenery to a location outside of the main FSX install) and all my FSX 'tools' I need for modding airfields, painting, etc. which accounts for another 0.6 Gb.
On my C:\ drive I have my main REX files installed and that is a further 6.75 Gb! :doho:
Oh and while looking at my C:\ drive I see I have 0.5 Gb of screenshots in my 'My Pictures\FSX' folder
I guess you can get a bit carried away when hard drive space is plentiful!
Many thanks Dave, Larry and Chris....may well go for it later on in the year.....just call me mad!
Just one other question, would it be best to just buy a bigger hard drive and install everything onto that or will FSX run just as well on a 2nd hard drive as it would on just one?
Thanks in advance and promise I won't bother you on this til the day itself. :roll:
Regards
Nigel.
I used to be an optimist but with age I am now a grumpy old pessimist.
Not quite sure what you mean mate :think: My FSX drives on the 2 installs I have are just that. They were bought to put FSX on so all my FSX stuff (which isn't a great deal it has to be said) goes onto those drives. There are trains of thought that suggest having scenery installed to a different drive (GenX for example) make the whole plot run quicker but I honestly couldn't say if it works mate as I've not tried it.
If you mean you might get a new HD and put everything on including your OS.. well many folk are in this situation as new pc's come with 1 drive and 1 partition. For my part, I like to have as much fs stuff as possible on dedicated HD's to stop it consuming the OS
Sorry Dave, it's just the way I put things across, even the wife gives me funny looks at times!!
What I really meant was that by installing a 2nd hard drive into the computer, will there be any performance issues with FSX running on it as apposed to running it on the main hard disk where all OS are installed?......think I might have put the question right this time!! :think:
Oh....think I've got it from your post now....best to keep FSX away from the OS?
Regards
Nigel.
I used to be an optimist but with age I am now a grumpy old pessimist.
A fresh install plus GenX sends it to over 100gb :o If you only have 6gb spare with the possibility to eek a little more.. consider buying a new drive instead as 6gb won't (I don't think) get you through FSX.. not by some way.
