I would like to hear from all the low end FSx users - lets have a competition for the person with the lowest spec computer who is running the FSx demo or beta to THEIR satisfaction. Winner gets bragging rights! :) OK, fellas- what is your experience?Users with the high end machines need not apply !! :)Barry

HiIn the fsx demo I can get a useable 20-25 fps without autogen or air traffic but with some 15% road and sea traffic and most of the other sliders at the mid way point. With the FX5600 card I can only use 1.0x water settings. Spec - AMD Athlon 1.3, 640mb 133 SDRAM, Nvidia 128mb FX5600. Hard drives : 1)5400 HD 40gb with XPSP2, . 2)7200 80gb FS9.1 FSX demo+ all add ons on. This system is now 5yrs old and will be replaced at the end of this year. As I hope to upgrade to DX10 at some point and funds are limited I'll probably only fit a low end 256mb graphics card to the upgrade and see what the state of play is regarding DX10/Vista in about a year.Chriswww.cwdflight.co.uk/flightsim

Hi Chris To give us some kind of "feel" about your situation (and you certainly do have a low end machine!! ) :) ..........What are your "gut" feelings regarding the difference between using FS9 on your machine and FSX? Useable - not useable? Comparability?? RegardsBarry

You can see a very detailed one of mine here: http://www.freewebs.com/flightsimshowcase/fsx.htm

Great review. Thanks for sharing it. - Doug

Hi BarryI would certainly say that FSX is useable. The settings I used in the demo were mostly above the default settings the sim suggested. Most of the time I was getting above 20 fps this compares to about 50 fps with FS9. I found the flights smoother in FSX even at about 15 fps. I did find that the autogen gave a big hit (known issue) and the clouds to a lesser extent. In FS9 I use replacement cloud textures and fly mostly in the UK (VFR Photographic scenery) so generally less autogen.I will be buying it in October and run it on my present system until I upgrade at the end of the year.Chris www.cwdflight.co.uk/flightsim

I've run it on my 3.1 ghz and on 2.19 laptop.It is pretty simple-the lower the machine the more the sliders go to the left. The program seems to figure this all out and install with the sliders in a default position-and if you leave them there you will get good performance .Of course few will leave the sliders alone......http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

I am running what I consider a low end machine. ProcessorModel : AMD Athlon XP 2700+Speed : 2.18GHZNvidia Gforce 6600GT 256mb 1GB of memory.Operating System(s)Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Home 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 2)I get acceptable frame rates 15 fps or so with water slider set full right and most other sliders at the medium setting. Overall impression is that the flight model is smoother and less jerky than FS9. The water effects are superb. Terrain textures are a big improvement over the default ones in FS9. The planes feel better and more realistic than in FS9.One major complaint that I have is concerning seaplanes. While there has been a big improvement over the "stickiness" of seaplanes on the water as in FS9 there still seems to be no effect on planes in the water when powered down. I parked the beaver next to the ship at St. Maartens so I could compare my position by sighting a spot view towards the ship's bow. I then cranked the wind up to 24 knots. Instead of the plane weathervaning and starting to drift backwards it stayed in one spot. I think this is a major flaw and hope that they fix it before release.Other than that one major complaint I am overall pleased with what I see in the demo.Bob

Super Eric! That's for that review.RH

Hi,I "fly" an old machine (not vintage...) and I have average 20 fps with FS9 AND FSX Demo with most of the sliders to 3/4 right, many add ons and ASv6..My equipment is overclocked !I have NO plans to upgrade for the moment.

let me get this straight you are getting up to 50 frames per sec on fs9 and getting 25 30 with FSX.i have not seen fifty frames per sec ever in fs9 and i know im not in FSX.of course im a hard core simmer and i have a whole lot of add ons so that is expected.after going to the avsim conferance im going to revamp my system and get ready for FSX.i have a 3800+64, 80 gig sata, 7800 agp 0s vid card, and im going to format my drive and load fsx only and i bet you i will not see 50 fps let alone 30 or 40.because if you guys are getting that kind of frame rate you must be using default planes, and you are using no add-ons etc.but if you are getting all that fps i have been doing somthing wrong for ten years.Thanks.....................................Robert

Hi all,I run the FSX demo on a 5 year old Athlon 1800+ (1,5 GHz) with 1 GB 266MHz-DDR, Radeon 9600 with 128 MB at 1280x1024, 4x AA, 4x AF and a 160 GB EIDE HD. A new rig will come when DX10-cards are available at a reasonable price.With customized medium high to high settings (however no self shadowing or blooming, no ground traffic and water at high 1.x ), the "fair weather" theme and the Baron I get 10 to 18 fps (locked at 18). There are some stutters (may depend on some running services?) and the blurries as well, that hopefully should be gone in the final release.After all I'm quite happy with what I see, as I get with FS9 seldom more than 20 fps (all maxed out and some addon mesh etc.).

Eric did you know that the page in that link displays with no page breaks on Firefox, and yet in IE it displays fine? That's weird. Just thought I would mention that.RhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

I see your FPS is sub 10 in the last couple of screen shots. Does that rub some of the shine off your appreciation of FSX or does it really not bother you?Gary

I'm going to TRY :) to run it on a P4 1.6 with 768MB RAM with a GeForce FX 5200 with 128MB RAM.I just can't afford a new anything right now. I'll have to wait for my tax refund before I can afford something halfway decent.