brudgeon Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 When I began simming with FSX I was impressed. Over time I have added numerous FTX scenery regions, aircraft repaints, AI Traffic etc, etc. and my desktop computer is now struggling. Time for an upgrade or a new system I am thinking. As we plunge inexorably into the glorious future it is evident that desktops are becoming passé and notebooks are the way to go. Now FSX plus all the bells and whistles of FTX etc place heavy demands on any system, particularly graphics processing. Who out there has experience, satisfactory or otherwise, of running it on a notebook computer and what basic specifications are deemed necessary? Regards, Brudgeon FTX NA PNW, FSS0105434, 6th April 2011 (plus many others all from FSS) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BionicCrab Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 You can get the graphics you need for just flying around... the downside is you now have 2 heavy duty processors running off the same battery pack. Not ideal and most decent laptops are designated as desktop replacements, due to the fact that portability is restricted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foxbat Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 Well I can relate my experience if it helps. I run FSX on a 2 year old dell studio laptop – mainly because I like having all my stuff on one computer and switching between tasks – simming, reading, surfing or working plus when I am traveling. (At home it’s permanently connected to a 42 Pinch plasma TV along with wireless keyboard, mouse, hotas flight controls, sound system etc) I run REX + OZx + Orbx scenery and it runs fine – even though it’s a 2.1 Ghz Core duo. I don’t have the big detailed Orbx airports though. The only time FPS drops to below 20 is sometimes in the VC of a relatively complex aircraft (Duke, Cheyenne etc). I don’t have the PMDG stuff – which I guess would be even more demanding. So I reckon you’ll be fine with the current breed of powerful laptops as long they are optimized for graphics (lots of RAM, video memory, graphics cards etc). I think studio when I bought it was meant to be like this. There are also gaming laptops – alienware, XPS. Not sure if they are worth the money. But to your main question – a laptop will be fine. My next upgrade to run FSX/Flight will be a laptop again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
berg319k9 Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 I am running FSX, ORBX, REX, and every payware airplane you can think of on my ASUS Laptop. Here are the spec's: Intel core 2 duo P8700 @2.53ghz 6 gigs of RAM 64 bit OS Vista 500 gig hard drive 2 gig NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 260M Graphics card I also have a turbo thing that pops up now and again (sorry cant be more specific) that came with it and I have the overclocking maxed out. If I'm say flying the Carenado Malibu Meridian they just released flying over and around Seattle with ORBX kickin I'll get 20FPS with a no greater drop to 17FPS. I'm even running full Saitek flight controls as well. I can't complain at all about it. I have had this machine close to 3 years now back and forth from traveling overseas for work etc., and it runs like a champ. Downfall- weight and size! It's a desktop replacement to say the least. Has 17 inch wide screem LCD display and the rest is a brick. But it's faithful and reliable. Where Gateway and Dell both failed me ASUS has got the job done. I built a Dell XPS M1710 online 3 years ago and it lasted all the way till one month over the 1 year warranty. It was blowing the graphics card fan and overheating the graphics card and after replacing them both twice that was enough of that. So if anyone wants a 3 year old Dell XPS M1710 that's really only 1 year old for a paper weight look me up. When I finally get home and stop working overseas I plan to build one heck of a desktop with nothing by ASUS parts and create the biggest baddest sim pit ever. Not trying to sell you an ASUS but I have absolutely no issues with mine. I think they started out building computer parts for Dell, Gateway, and all the other computer companies out there that they finally realized.......hey why don't we build our own product! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlad Maly Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Have a look at my sig - runs very nicely... All of it for about $1,200 (but I think in Europe only, didn't see this one here in Canada though). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Mason Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 I have been on laptops the whole time I have used FSX mainly due to my job and needing to use my computer for various roles. I have a toshiba qosmio with an i7 and a 460M card with 8 MB of RAM, I have no issues whatesoever running FTX at max settings no tweaks just like Vlad. Although I got stung and had to pay about $2200 for mine when they were first released lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
picnic Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Has anyone got any real experience of running FSX with a 2nd gen Sandybridge and the on-die Intel HD graphics, especially at lower resolutions like 1280x768? With FSX being so CPU dependant I'm wondering if these later Intel offerings are able to cope reasonably well these days. TIA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Mason Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 My first laptop experience was with a Vaio trying to use FSX and FTX and the experience was not good. I would advise anyone wanting to sim on a laptop to steer well clear of onboard graphics as they just don't have the power needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
picnic Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Generally I'd agree with you but the onboard HD3000/HD4000 solutions in the later Sandybridge chips are are meant to be orders of magnitude better than previous Intel attempts. Trouble is trying to find someone with hands on experience. Was your 1st laptop equipped with one of these latest gen Intel chips? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Meson Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Hi All, I just picked up a new laptop yesterday, ASUS N53SV-2GBGFX16GB Notebook - 16GB RAM - i7 CPU turbo to 3.1 gig - Nvidia 540M 2 GB GPU - 750 GB HD. So far I have Orbx Aus and Coffs Harbour installed. With all sliders full right flying the FSX Baron doing circuits of coffs, Iam getting mostly 40 plus FPS, occasionaly going down to mid 20s. Cost $1096 AU. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Mason Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 Picnic, no that was 5+ years ago now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
picnic Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 @Dave Awesome price, can't find the exact spec here in the UK but starting prices for Asus i7 laptops seem to be around £800 and don't get anywhere near that spec. @Ryan, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjjallen Posted February 12, 2012 Share Posted February 12, 2012 I've been running a SB 27460 lab top with the integrated Intel 3000 HD GPU. The Intel graphics solution does a laudable job with FSX (1600x900) and has VG IQ when setting the driver to 'Quality' but still could benefit from a tool like nVidia Inspector. With all of the sliders maxxed (AG='Normal', mesh='80%') cruise FPS are ~20. BP=0 seems to work best with this GPU. As you would expect FPS tank (unplayable) when the is any cloud buildup. I would give this system a 6-7 out of 10 because even with TurboBoost it really needs to be running at 4ghz+ to do FSX justice IMO. Cheers jja Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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