>Ian, what's the specs of your son's computer now? If you>don't mind me asking what hardware requirement were the games>mentioned above calling for on the box???>>I guess it would also help to know what you had in the>computer prior to your upgrade as well...>>A good thing to concider in your argument here is you were>able to upgrade your existing computer not buy a new one.>>Thanks in advance because you offer some interesting facts to>toss around...>>"gamers are in their twenties and have a large amount of>disposable income and can afford the latest and greatest>gaming rig">>With high gas prices and increasing tuition I don't know about>this one but I could be wrong... :-)>>Oblivion recommends a 3Ghz processor "Or equivalant" (account for dual core builds), 512MB DDR RAM, and a X800 video card or better with 256MB of RAM.I know FEAR is similar, and Battlefield 2 is supposed to be near there, but in reality is much larger resource hog than it claims.

>What's the internal specs in an XBOX360???Tripple core cpu and some serious ATI stuff under the hood....Have seen the first flightsim title on the XBOX 360 is great regarding visuals...With great shading and lightning not seen on any PC hardware and games...My two son's are very happy with there XBOX360 titles but also playing on there own PC's which both are above the 3.4 ghz with 1 gb memory and ATI 9800 pro and Nvidia 6660GT stuff :-lolMy oldest son 16 years now is besides school working hard for his brand new top of the line gaming PC...It's the never ending story that the games will push the hardware bounderies and vice versa....Also the operating systems will do this just look 15 years back...We where happy with one 1 mb memory and tweaked the autoexe.bat and the config.sys for the upper memory blocks :-lol FS series is just a game for many out there... (for me the hardcore guy it's the closed experience to fly different third party add-on aircraft as real as possible which I never can in real life beside GA flyhing :-))The game industrie is booming as never before the hardcore gamers spent more in hardware as the average hardcore flightsimmer :-lolMore games have the slider technique so it could run with great FPS on your hardware but humans are curious and when you turn the sliders to the right.... you guessed it... it's difficult to turn it to the left when all the stuff can look so good ;-)When FSX comes out I will just enjoy the great hardwork MS guys and girls did for all of us to enjoy and the community will make it a greater experience with all the add-ons freeware or payware...Do I turn the sliders to the right yes I will :-lolIt's just about fun and that can be different with so many people out there :-)Andr

The specs of the games are mentioned below, minimums are different of course. My pc had an on board graphics card with 128k memory, which I upgraded to 2 512kb cards, 1 512 from the 4 year old e-machines I had. I also had a geforce 5200 that I upgraded with first, then about 6 months ago moved up to the 6600. I do have to keep the side panel off and have a small fan blowing over the computer to keep things cool otherwise the poor thing locks up.I usually buy a new computer every 2 or 3 years and I'm due for another, and pass the old ones down to my kids. Although the e-machines are cheap and not durable, I figure 499 dollars for a system isn't bad if you know generally what to upgrade, and if a new one is needed every few years it's still cheaper than a 2000 dollar system which will tweak out an extra bit of performance but may be obsolete in a few years. This type of upgrading is required track for me. I have no choice but to work with what I have as I assume many others do as well, though I'd love to have a new top of the line 5000 dollar machine, it just ain't gonna happen. If FSX runs poorly on my current computer I'll keep the settings low until I can afford to shell out another 500 for an e-machines or similar base machine. The one I have now has reached it's peak.I will say the 6600 ultra has been really helpful in allowing the top end games to run fairly well on the pc including FS and stretching this 500 dollar machine for another year or so.Ian.

Here's the real trick:You don't need a 5000 dollar computer. I could put you together a wishlist on NewEgg for the parts to a computer that I assure you will smoke most games out today easily, and for not more than $1500. I've priced out plenty of them, built quite a few for my friends, and use one myself.In fact, I have a pretty hefty upgrade coming up before FSX comes out that will be about $700, but will superbly increase my performance.

Ian what's the processor speed???

AMD 2.2ghz. Fairly behind the curve, but at this point acceptable.Ian.

>Bill has been taking a more slam the poster type approach>lately..if he is still with Eaglesoft, he is giving them a>real bad name. Bill really, go away if that is all your going>to contribute.Not to make excuses, but I've already apologized for the tone of my post, so why keep hammering away?Seriously, I am very tired of the constant nattering nabobs of negativism, and would truly like to read more positive perspectives...

Battlefield 2 -requires- 2GB to run 'smoothly'. With 1GB it will hit heavy FPS drops (down to sub-1FPS scores) whenever you make turns that cause terrain to be loaded.

I haven't encountered that yet. I can't run at full detail, but at medium settings, my 1GB of RAM runs well enough.

If I remember correctly I had things tuned pretty high (with the exception of shadows). I expect 2GB of RAM to be a minimum in Vista days for games.

That's almost a definite.Of course, 2GB (2x1GB) of DDR2 on new egg is starting around $150, so it's not terrible. Those who don't need the latest or greatest should be able to amply up the amount of standard DDR in their box for much much less. I mean, I have a three year old system in my apartment that can handle 4GB of DDR333, so it shouldn't be a huge problem for most people.

Well, you're already over at simflight, they seem more overall positive about things. But if you wish to get this community to be completely happy with what has and has not been improved for this version, I don't think that will happen. It's just reality. Some people demand everything, some are complacent with just moderate improvement, and some don't even care. A lot of the people you are hearing from fall into the first catagory.

Now that the FSX demo is out and the performance issues are more than a notion, the points mentioned in this thread should be better received and understood. It seems with this current demo not many machines currently in use can run FSX with comparable graphics to FS2k4 (well some of you are jumping up and down with $5,000+ comparible rigs). This is why it makes much more since to me to wait for Vista...

Keyword is demo though. Still holding opinion until the final version, and my rickety old amd 2.2ghz machine runs medium settings without a problem at 20 fps. I've noticed no stuttering due to texture loads. I can actually get a fairly decent look from it. Still, reading tdragger's blog and the readme the disclaimer seems stress this is not a fully optimized version. Ian.

>Keyword is demo though. Still holding opinion until the>final version, and my rickety old amd 2.2ghz machine runs>medium settings without a problem at 20 fps. I've noticed no>stuttering due to texture loads. I can actually get a fairly>decent look from it. Still, reading tdragger's blog and the>readme the disclaimer seems stress this is not a fully>optimized version. >>Ian.See, I've got a 2.0GHz Athlon XP, and I'm running fine at medium settings, and it certainly looks a lot better than FS2004.Also, I've found that I can crank the water to max, and even the textures to "max" (there seems to be a point where it stops improving) and I still get a solid lock at 18-20 fps, I can run it smoothly at 24 if I don't turn up AI or autogen too high and I don't look directly at a mountain covered in trees. That's when I drop.But I'm so surprised by the performance issues. Maybe people just aren't keeping their computers at the level they should be for high-end gaming?