Hi all,

as in title, a friend of mine was wondering if a desktop pc with CPU i7 2600K, RAM 8GB and GPU Nvidia RTX 580 3GB would be enough to use FS2020 with minimum settings. Is there anyone who has experienced FS2020 with such low hardware?

Thanks!

Unfortunately... No.

Not even close to minimum requirements 

It might be able to play YouTube videos of MSFS, but that's about it unfortunately!  

The bottleneck is the GPU. The 2600K would still do the job, I guess. 8GB could probably be upgraded.

But it really doesn't make sense to touch the system. No future for it.

Karl

People have reported that the simulator plays fine on a GTX 580 right now, however it is not guaranteed that it will do so for much longer, due to the incoming DirectX 12 update. The developers have confirmed that, over time, the minimum system requirements will be shifting due to the continued development.

I would recommend telling your friend to subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass for one month, which only costs $1, and try it out. With only 8GB RAM, and especially if they do not have an SSD, there will be stutters in larger cities, but anywhere else it should run fine at lower settings. Just warn them that, after this summer, it might not be playable until they upgrade.

I have a better CPU and more ram.  i have the i7 6700HQ, about 20% higher performance than the 2600. I also have 32GB of ram.  However, I have a GTX 965M video card with 2GB ram.  A bit slower than your friend if benchmarks are to be believed.  I am playing on low settings for most things and get anywhere from 15-25fps when running 1080p at 80% scaling. Playable.... sort of. Ideal? far from it. 

As I am GPU limited with my CPU hovering around 60% you should expect similar performance though may be surprised with a few frames more than I have. 

I actually did see an increase in performance by upgrading from 24 to 32 GB of RAM and putting the game on a dedicated M.2 Nvme WD Black SSD. 

As you can see, my CPU, RAM, and HDD are all fairly decent with only the GPU being significantly underpowered.  Your friend seems to have much older hardware.  While 'on paper' the CPU and GPU are in the same ballpark as me his results may vary dramatically. Especially when considering the speed of the RAM and quality of the internet connection.  

A 3060ti is the current MSFS baseline.  Go ahead and try to buy one - 👻

cheers

bs

1 hour ago, kaha said:

The bottleneck is the GPU. The 2600K would still do the job, I guess. 8GB could probably be upgraded.

But it really doesn't make sense to touch the system. No future for it.

Karl

Yep. See my signature. No HD simming and ultra settings but the fbw neo mod is very smooth

37 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

I would recommend telling your friend to subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass for one month, which only costs $1, and try it out. With only 8GB RAM, and especially if they do not have an SSD, there will be stutters in larger cities, but anywhere else it should run fine at lower settings. Just warn them that, after this summer, it might not be playable until they upgrade.

What he said! 🙂 Even people with other systems can find out, IF it runs good enough for them, if they are new to MSFS. It's what I did before I bought the version I decided on. I even paid for a few extra month's ( when it was $4.99 a month for the PC version ), just to make sure. Each person has to decide on their own. You might expect your system to run it on Ultra, but then find out, it won't. Worth a buck to find out, IF it runs the way you want or WON'T run at all on your system! Make sure to test it in all kinds of areas, large airports, bush flying, etc... GA aircraft, Airliners, etc... I don't think the majority of us will see anything close to ULTRA until we upgrade our PC's next go around and maybe even after that. Of course the Hard Core gamers/flight simulation folks have already done so. It will be another 2-4 years before I upgrade my PC. Unless some Update completely brings my current PC to it's knees 🙂

Forget about it.