How will my computer run FS2004?

[sierpinski]

I have a dell with:

3.06 GHz Pentium IV
512 MB RAM
64 MB nVidea GeForce 5200

I know upgrades will make it run better, but how will it run as is?

Thanks for the help!!!

[Kimber]

It should run fine at mid settings!! You need more ram to run
it at higher settings, 1gb is good 2 is great!!

The 64mb card is the big blocker!!

[noell]

I've carefully evaluated FS9 performance with 512MB, 1GB and 2GB of RAM. Moving from 512MB to 1GB will help a little. Moving from 1GB to 2GB does absolutely nothing (unless you are mutli-tasking while running FS9 but that is unlikely). You can easily check RAM usage yourself by running XP's performance monitor.

IMO, you won't even be able to run FS9 satisfactorily at mid-settings with a 5200 video card and only 64MB of video RAM because:

1 - FS9 can quickly chew up 64MB of video RAM. When that happens, texture loads start using the slower system RAM which impacts performance.

2 - The 5200 is a slow card and isn't known to be a great performer when it comes to running games/simulations. It would be considered a very, very low-end video card when it comes to running FS9.


IMO, the two things you need to do (in order of importance) are:

1 - Intall a more capable video card. I am assuming your system is AGP based if you have a 5200 card. That being the case, you need to move up to something like a 6800 AGP card with 256MB of video RAM (or even a 7800 AGP card if your budget can handle it).

2 - Increase system RAM from 512MB to 1GB.


....Noell

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