here is a vid showing a 580 (570 is listed as minimum) managing high settings at a reasonable 35 fps @1080p, so thats promising but not definative i guess
at 15:00 it shows the fps, at 14:30 it shows the diff in med/high/ultra (no low setting shown in this one, but i have seen it and its not much diff i can tell from vids)

 

Edited August 6, 20205 yr by AirWayMan

8 hours ago, IgorBR said:

Hi there,

my specs are:
Intel Core i5-3470 3.2GHz
RAM 16GB DDR3
GPU RX 550 4GB
HDD 3TB


I am mostly concerned about GPU, because minimum requirement is RX 590 which is like over 200% better than my RX550 (according to GPU user benchmarks). GPU is going to be a bottle neck, but all in all I believe I have a solid machine. However, FSX does not run smoothly on my PC, I have average of 35 FPS.

What do you think, should I give MSFS2020 a try with my machine? I am very tempted. 😄

Unfortunately, not only GPU is much under requirement. Your CPU is very slow too. So you can try it, but i'm sure, that you will be disapointed. It will be not playable with a good experience.

Edited August 6, 20205 yr by ludekbrno

1 hour ago, IgorBR said:

I have no problem with buying a better graphic card but the problem with more powerful ones is that they are bigger and they simply do not fit into my case. They would also interfere with sata cables. That is the issue for me unfortunately. :(

Technically you don't really need a case.  I have seen people screw the mobo into a desk drawer and then be able to just pull drawer open to access components.  Just drill holes on the back side of drawer for cables.

3 hours ago, G-RFRY said:

In my opinion you need 8MB or better.

I don't agree with your opinion sir.  I think 8GB should do the trick though.  Careful how you type tech numbers, can make a world of difference

ok, you did say "or better" but......

🙂

Edited August 6, 20205 yr by Brandon01110

Similar situation.

i7 3770k
GTX 960
16 GB DDR3 ram
256GB SATAIII SSD for flight sim/addons
over 200GB free 512GB "system " SATA SSD.
1080p monitors (2 of them, main for sim, other for additional apps/charts/etc).

p3d v4 running decently (don't konw the FPS but it feels smooth to me at medium/high"ish" settings)

Will get 1$ test GP subscription few days before the 18th to see how it handles and then decide if spend 1-2 hundreds euros for an upgrade (GPU I guess) or just waiting a few more months when budget will allow for a brand new up to date PC.

What a lot of people are forgetting here is that one thing about flight simulators of the kind MS have always knocked out, is that they are intended amongst other things, to democratise flying. Aeroplanes are expensive and so is learning to fly, and even if you can afford it, you might not be in a position to fly a real plane anyway for any number of reasons.

If you can afford to drop four to five grand on a PC to play flight sims at 'ludicrous speed', you can also afford to buy this and go flying for real. But again, you might not be able to, or want to. Of course not everyone can afford this kind of cash, or maybe don't want to spend it on a PC in order to run a game which costs sixty quid. 

Companies such as MS are well aware that if they make a flight sim which requires a four grand computer to run it well, they'll probably not sell too many copies and certainly not as many as they would if it can also run on a PC which costs five hundred quid. This is why there are option sliders.

Keep in mind too that MS chose Asobo to make the sim; a games company. Games companies know how to develop stuff which plays on a massive variety of hardware and that's often hardware which kids have; kids who are not usually in possession of massive amounts of disposable income of the kind necessary to drop a grand on a GPU or whatever.

It's all very well people being critical of Asobo and saying they are not skilled and experienced in making planes (as some people have), but they appear to have learned how to be so, and along the way they have brought the chops necessary to be able to make stuff which can run without the benefit of a supercomputer.

Half the reason obsessive simmers have those supercomputers is because the sims they were used to were badly optimised and based on CPU architecture. Try this: see if your lower-specced PC can run Skyrim on full throttle. If it can, it can run the sort of stuff a 'games company' bangs out.

Edited August 6, 20205 yr by Chock

3 hours ago, Chock said:

In terms of the potential for simulating flight, yes. Even if you turn the graphics down to the point where it looks like FS98 on the lowest settings, it is still going to be simulating flight and the effect of the air movement better than any other flight sim. This is more important than pretty graphics.

I agree.

2 hours ago, Marco Manieri said:

Similar situation.

i7 3770k
GTX 960
16 GB DDR3 ram
256GB SATAIII SSD for flight sim/addons
over 200GB free 512GB "system " SATA SSD.
1080p monitors (2 of them, main for sim, other for additional apps/charts/etc).

p3d v4 running decently (don't konw the FPS but it feels smooth to me at medium/high"ish" settings)

Will get 1$ test GP subscription few days before the 18th to see how it handles and then decide if spend 1-2 hundreds euros for an upgrade (GPU I guess) or just waiting a few more months when budget will allow for a brand new up to date PC.

uhh your not exactly in the same situation - he is Well Under min spec - you are above minimum spec across the board (barely but still in the usable level)
so i would easily venture to guess you can run msfs at a reasonable fps with lowish settings
edit: comparison of your gpu and cpu vs the minimum and recommended hardware
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/GeForce-GTX-770-vs-GeForce-GTX-960-vs-GeForce-GTX-970/2531vs3114vs2954
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i5-4460-vs-Intel-i7-3770K-vs-Intel-i5-8400/2230vs2vs3097

but still there is nothing better than to use GamePass to make sure 🙂

Edited August 6, 20205 yr by AirWayMan

Well gtx 960 is available only under 100$ (include my country tax)range so thats impressive if this vga card can handle triple a+ simulation like mfs 2020.

11 minutes ago, naqozucker said:

Well gtx 960 is available only under 100$ (include my country tax)range so thats impressive if this vga card can handle triple a+ simulation like mfs 2020.

The GTX 960 was an exceptionally good card for it's time. It is quite a bit faster than the much newer 1050ti .

On 8/6/2020 at 4:17 PM, ludekbrno said:

Your CPU is very slow too. So you can try it, but i'm sure, that you will be disapointed. It will be not playable with a good experience.

 

On 8/6/2020 at 1:08 PM, G-RFRY said:

Your GPU ... In my opinion you need 8MB or better. This should be in the hardware forum.

Stuff and nonsense above. I run MFS very nicely (by which I mean 1440p at High settings) on a second generation i5 (2500K) and 4 GB VRAM. Yes, 8GB VRAM and a modern faster processor would be much better but they are by no means essential for a reasonable experience. However, I do agree an RX550 is well under spec and if OP has a poor experience, that will be the main cause. A second hand GPU might be the way to go for a cost effective upgrade until they're ready to build a new system.

On 8/6/2020 at 5:07 PM, Marco Manieri said:

Similar situation. i7 3770k. GTX 960. 16 GB DDR3 ram. 1080p... p3d v4 running decently (don't konw the FPS but it feels smooth to me at medium/high"ish" settings)

Will get 1$ test GP subscription few days before the 18th to see how it handles and then decide if spend 1-2 hundreds euros for an upgrade (GPU I guess) or just waiting a few more months when budget will allow for a brand new up to date PC.

You'll be okay Marco based on my similar rig, the GTX960 will be the biggest hold back as you guessed. A GTX 1660 Super or second hand GTX 1070 would work as a stop gap. If you are planning to build a new system soon though I'd opt for something more modern you can put in the new system and get many years from, the RTX 3060 Ti should be available soon.

Edited November 24, 20205 yr by ckyliu

On 8/6/2020 at 6:35 PM, Chock said:

What a lot of people are forgetting here is that one thing about flight simulators of the kind MS have always knocked out, is that they are intended amongst other things, to democratise flying. Aeroplanes are expensive and so is learning to fly, and even if you can afford it, you might not be in a position to fly a real plane anyway for any number of reasons.

If you can afford to drop four to five grand on a PC to play flight sims at 'ludicrous speed', you can also afford to buy this and go flying for real. But again, you might not be able to, or want to. Of course not everyone can afford this kind of cash, or maybe don't want to spend it on a PC in order to run a game which costs sixty quid. 

Companies such as MS are well aware that if they make a flight sim which requires a four grand computer to run it well, they'll probably not sell too many copies and certainly not as many as they would if it can also run on a PC which costs five hundred quid. This is why there are option sliders.

Keep in mind too that MS chose Asobo to make the sim; a games company. Games companies know how to develop stuff which plays on a massive variety of hardware and that's often hardware which kids have; kids who are not usually in possession of massive amounts of disposable income of the kind necessary to drop a grand on a GPU or whatever.

It's all very well people being critical of Asobo and saying they are not skilled and experienced in making planes (as some people have), but they appear to have learned how to be so, and along the way they have brought the chops necessary to be able to make stuff which can run without the benefit of a supercomputer.

Half the reason obsessive simmers have those supercomputers is because the sims they were used to were badly optimised and based on CPU architecture. Try this: see if your lower-specced PC can run Skyrim on full throttle. If it can, it can run the sort of stuff a 'games company' bangs out.

Agreed. People need to calm down with the "not playable" "you wont enjoy" "you'll be disapointed". 

I also have a potato PC, FX8350, 1050Ti, a minuscule 8Gb of RAM, its not awful, but its old. I got MSFS with NO hope of running it. And guess what, it runs, and quite amazingly well. Ive never had a sim that smooth, fsx or p3d included (and on the same machine). Ok its 1080p (wich was UHD jur'st a few years back 😆), and its all ok medium and some on high. 

 

To be honest i tried everything on Low, it still looks mile ahead of anything else. The only time its goes FSXish is when you turn Bing datas OFF. But then again, why would you do that 😄

Edited November 24, 20205 yr by leprechaunlive

1 hour ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

The GTX 960 was an exceptionally good card for it's time. It is quite a bit faster than the much newer 1050ti .

The entire 900 series was exceptional at the time. I still have my GTX980Ti running MSFS and it is only 13% slower on average FPS in a basket of games, compared to the far more recent RTX 2060 Super. That's something!

Runs MSFS smooth with everything on High. CPU is also important though. Entire system needs to be well balanced.

I don't advise getting a GTX960 though. The older "first gen" Maxwell GPU's on these cards are not working well in the sim after the last update - clouds flashing and other graphical glitches. Asobo themselves have responded saying people need to upgrade cards, that this is not a bug. They are upping the minimum spec on the GPU it seems. The GTX960 has been left behind. Rather look for a 2nd hand GTX1060 or better, or.... a GTX 980Ti as it is way faster than a GTX1060 and beats a GTX1070 by a tiny margin too. Keep in mind, coming from a RX550, you may need to invest in a new PSU.

Source for comparing GPU's as I have stated above here: Compare: Nvidia RTX 2060S (Super) (userbenchmark.com)

Here you can compare just about any two cards to see how they stack up against each other in a multitude of games, applications and other scenarios.

 

Edited November 24, 20205 yr by RaptyrOne

2 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

The GTX 960 was an exceptionally good card for it's time. It is quite a bit faster than the much newer 1050ti .

It was actually not very good for its price back then, definitely the weakest offering of the GeForce 900 series. It is on par with the GTX 1050. The GTX 970 was the value king.

35 minutes ago, RaptyrOne said:

I don't advise getting a GTX960 though. The older "first gen" Maxwell GPU's on these cards are not working well in the sim after the last update - clouds flashing and other graphical glitches. Asobo themselves have responded saying people need to upgrade cards, that this is not a bug. They are upping the minimum spec on the GPU it seems. The GTX960 has been left behind.

The GTX 960 is using Maxwell 2.0 so it's not affected right now. But that doesn't mean it won't become obsolete at some point later. With the upcoming DirectX 12 upgrade I think anything older than Turing or RDNA 2 could be prone to trouble.

Meanwhile the GTX 960M is using Maxwell 1.0, and so does the GTX 950M. Those two laptop variants are the only affected GPUs from the GeForce 900 series.

This is definitely one of those sims where “if you have to ask, the answer is probably no.”