a laptop for fsx

[wjnorris]

I’m in the market for a laptop that will run FSX, but there are so many models out their that I don’t know which is the best choice. Can you make any recommendations? Thanks for your help.

Bill Norris

[N700MS]

I'm a Dell fanboi myself so I'd get the top XPS gaming laptop. The M1710 is the current on with a 7950GTX that should run FSX with no problems. The new M1730 is supposed to be out anyday now so I'd just wait for that.

[sclincoln]

Personally, I wouldn't like to use FSX on a laptop for a few reasons. The first is that to get a laptop powerful enough, you're going to be spending the big bucks. Probably enough that you could buy a regular laptop for business applications and a pretty good desktop for gaming. Secondly, laptops are not easy to upgrade, so you're pretty much stuck with what you start out with (except RAM). I used to try to run FS on a laptop (back in the FS98 days) and found it a bit frustrating. I started designing my own desktops and then building them myself and was able to start getting pretty tricked out systems for relatively little $$$.

[RFields]

If you buy any computer for FSX - you want a DX-10 video card, or the capacity to replace the video card with a DX-10 model.

I don't know of any laptop yet with DX-10.

I'd never expect to be able to upgrade the video in a laptop.

[loki]

There are laptops with GeForce 8M (mobile) video cards out, though they aren't very common yet.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2984

The latest Apple MacBook Pros have GeForce 8600M video cards for example.

loki

[sirminnyme]

You can definately find a laptop that can run FSX. My problem is the heat that the laptop will give off. I remember when I had a laptop running games like Counter Strike would just put of so much heat I wouldnt play the game for more then an hour.

[alis14]

Heya,
I'm running FSX on a Dell Inspiron 640m.
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66Ghz
1Gb RAM
100Gb HDD
256Mb shared video memory.

and I'm running FSX satisfactorily (IMHO)

I have VFR GENX from Horizon installed for the South of England. From clicking on the FSX icon to actually sitting on the runway takes 5/6mins. All graphics options are cranked all the way to maximum.
I have removed all building from my autogen and disabled default.xml, leaving me with trees and special buildings (this looks best to me in terms of appearance to quality ratio) with scenery complexity at normal and autogen and normal.
The clouds have a tendency to kill my frames so with detailed clouds I have to have the base at around 10000ft so I don't fly close to them (I fly low level VFR) or use simple clouds.
The AI traffic levels are variable but I notice very little problems with upto 50% land and sea traffic and once in the air few problems with 70% aviation traffic. Airport vehicles cause a problem for me though.
This setup gives me an average of 15fps which to my eyes is fluid with minimal stutters. Yes there are alot of tweaks and it isn't going to run with max sliders any time soon but it does run and I have fun with it.
Noteworthy: I have a dual screen setup with this computer, my desktop monitor being primary running FSX in windowed mode and the laptop monitor having charts/maps etc etc. The reason for the desktop screen being primary is it is taller so gives me a better view out the window as well as being able to see the control panel, although just using the Laptop monitor works well as well.

Finally, remember, unplugging a laptop from the mains results in a reduced performace (as CPU speed etc are lowered to conserve battery). This totally confused me initially so thought I would warn you.

Sorry for the long post, got a bit carried away
Best regards
Alistair

edit: P.s. heat hasn't proved a problem for me so far, the whole thing actually remains remarkably cool!