[bloated]

Hello community, I just bought an Asus 2k display and will be upgrading my gfx from a GTX 450 to something new, I put an offer on an AMD R9 290X (ex miner offered $250) but was wondering before I pull the trigger on it.

do both AMD and Nvidia gpu's run FS maxed out perfectly fine, what's the max resolution I can set FreeSpace to once it's fully updated (the display is 2560 X 1440)

and finally answering this one is optional as I'll be looking for the answer right after I post this anyway but the last time I was here was 2011 or so I found a gloriously wonderully link that offered every FS campaign and update which left me playing FS campaigns for the next 2 years before I got through most of it.

is that still available?  (after browsing I've noticed much discussion on nabbing each manually)

thx in advance.  (ps: to avoid this type of discussion a thread with the name "current system requirements" and game capability might be useful)... (if it's already up nm)

[DahBlount]

The R9 290x is a great card and should power most games on that display just fine. An Nividia equivalent would be either a GTX 780 or GTX 970. Also interesting is that AMD is supposed to be announcing their R9 300 series of cards soon, which show very good performance to power requirement. In that realm, the GTX 900 series of video cards offer the best performance to power requirement afaik (only 500W!), whereas the R9 290x requires 750W. For most people this isn't a problem, but it makes SLI much cheaper because you don't need to spend more on your PSU.

[deathspeed]

you can use the installer to install many mods with just a few clicks.

I'm pretty sure others on here have used that resolution.  Good luck!

[bloated]

1st off thanks for the help, I won't be going Crossfire or SLI, I don't consider them worth the coin and would rather stick with the 550NAXN psu I'm using now as opposed to selling it to get a more spendy one.

the "R9 deal" isn't done yet and if it falls through I'll be going with an R9 280X instead (found one new for $220.00)

also big thanks for the link to the installer although I'm a little worried, my OS is Windows 7 and I'm not sure if my FreeSpace 2 discs are compatible with it.  I'll look into it before I do the install.  I'll assume so long as I don't launch it it'll be fine.

[bloated]

just a thought but now that we are in a world of high speed I'm surprised the installer still needs WinZip to be opened, is it that big?

[deathspeed]

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit, and had absolutely no problems installing FS2 from my 15 year old retail disks.  Hopefully your experience will be the same!

[AdmiralRalwood]

just a thought but now that we are in a world of high speed I'm surprised the installer still needs WinZip to be opened, is it that big?

It... doesn't. It's a runnable Java archive. If you double-click the installer, WinZip isn't supposed to pop up.

[bloated]

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit, and had absolutely no problems installing FS2 from my 15 year old retail disks.  Hopefully your experience will be the same!

It... doesn't. It's a runnable Java archive. If you double-click the installer, WinZip isn't supposed to pop up.

the error I've been getting is that I've got 0 memory despite having 16gb of ram and a 2gb gfx card.

2nd part, I unwrapped FSO, extracted it to my FS2 folder as mentioned but their was no executable in it, I didn't spend much time on it, started late and had to get up early much like right now but if I find time tomorrow I'll look back into it.

[deathspeed]

I think using a FS2_open executable instead of FS2.exe fixes that memory reporting error. 

But like the good admiral said, FreeSpaceOpenInstaller.jar doesn't need to be unzipped/extracted.  If you have java installed, just double clicking it should open the installer.  (I did have an issue where clicking it could not find jre.exe, and I had to re-install Java to get it to work).

You might want to also check out the installer release thread.  It answers and addresses a lot of issues people have encountered.

Good luck!

[bloated]

I can't believe how rusty I am at the controls... even the layouts will be taking me an hour to optimize and then a day or two to get used to.

everything worked except for something to do with my radar, the file didn't download.

I finished the first mission and I can't believe how beautiful the Psamtik looks, it's not just the skin of the ship but the detail put into each cannon, beautiful.

gj, and thx.   Is anything on the web getting this kind of support let alone the quality of the support?  Never noticed it if their was.

[deathspeed]

It took me a while to get back into the controls, also!  I rarely used side and rear views, so I used my hat switch to map some targeting options such as next turret, next subsystem, etc.

[bloated]

I use the top hat for energy allocation and pull back on it to equalize shields.  I was playing the game on insane but was having a hard time on the pursuit of Bosh mission very early in because the game kept making me the favorite.

Once I turned it back to hard it's become almost too easy.... relaxing would apply.

I tried using the 2014 media vp's but they wouldn't launch and kept showing errors, using the previous ones for now.  I really can't get over how beautiful the Psamtik looks.

my new stick has 12 buttons as opposed to my previous MS Sidewinder precision pro which had 10 but the SideWinders layout was vastly superior, it just worked better, drag that one wore out and the other broke.\

still working on the keyboard/joystick layout and sorting out wingmate commands, used to rattle off wingmate orders, cycle my weapons to the way I wanted to use them and target critical points in seconds, now my finger is drifting over the keyboard like "te her her" while I'm getting shot at..... lol.

love this game.

[TwoCables]

Hello community, I just bought an Asus 2k display and will be upgrading my gfx from a GTX 450 to something new, I put an offer on an AMD R9 290X (ex miner offered $250) but was wondering before I pull the trigger on it.)

I have absolutely 100% liquid-smooth performance with FSO completely maxed out all the way. To be specific, I'm seeing a constant 60 FPS with extremely low frametimes of 17ms (the time it takes to render one frame).

Here's my system (I built it myself), which was actually built for Crysis 3 (and performs like a dream for it):

CPU: i5-2500K at 4.5 GHz
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 EVO
Memory: 8 GB G.SKILL Ripjaws X (F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL)
Video Card: GTX 780 (ASUS DirectCU II) overclocked to 1228 MHz core, 6300 MHz memory (1575 MHz x 4)
Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD
Monitor: Samsung 2253BW (1680 x 1050 native resolution, which is the only resolution I use for everything, including FSO)

There's more to my system, but these are the relevant parts. I overclocked my GTX 780 specifically for Crysis 3; the stock clocks are still way more than good enough for FSO. The CPU is only overclocked because hey, I paid for parts to be able to overclock (including a very good air cooler, of course), and so I'm going to do it. To be honest, I don't need the 2500K to be overclocked - not even for Crysis 3. To anyone who might say, "Well then you should go back to stock so that you get the longest life out of your CPU". There's no need to because by the time this CPU reaches a point where it can no longer be stable while overclocked, the 2500K will be completely obsolete by at least 5 generations of Intel CPUs. Like I said, even at stock, this thing is more than enough for me.

Anyway, based on my performance in FSO, I would say that even something like the R9 270 or the GTX 760 (both are equivalent to each other) would be major overkill, especially if you have a decent modern CPU. So, since you can get an ex-miner 290X for $250 (be aware that this card was probably under extremely full load 24/7 for a few months straight), I would say that your performance would be perfectly liquid-smooth as well. The 290X is AMD's equivalent to the GTX 780 Ti. Mind you, these "equivalents" aren't precisely the same as each other in performance, but they're practically the same.

However, I would get a GeForce card because there's a thread on here called "Known Drivers to avoid", and all of the drivers are AMD's. So, that tells me that AMD's GPUs are not as good as NVIDIA's for FSO. Of course, I'd guess that you'd have no problems as long as you avoid those drivers.

Having said all of this, I'm curious about the rest of your system: what do you have for a CPU and memory?

[AdmiralRalwood]

However, I would get a GeForce card because there's a thread on here called "Known Drivers to avoid", and all of the drivers are AMD's. So, that tells me that AMD's GPUs are not as good as NVIDIA's for FSO. Of course, I'd guess that you'd have no problems as long as you avoid those drivers.

At the moment, I'm using an R9 290 and have zero problems with FSO while nVidia users are experiencing beam-related crashes, so there's really no handy "this vendor always works with FSO" shortcut.

[TwoCables]

However, I would get a GeForce card because there's a thread on here called "Known Drivers to avoid", and all of the drivers are AMD's. So, that tells me that AMD's GPUs are not as good as NVIDIA's for FSO. Of course, I'd guess that you'd have no problems as long as you avoid those drivers.

At the moment, I'm using an R9 290 and have zero problems with FSO while nVidia users are experiencing beam-related crashes, so there's really no handy "this vendor always works with FSO" shortcut.

Hmm. Perhaps it's due to newer drivers. I'm still using an older driver, version 337.50. When NVIDIA released a few newer versions after 337.50, I tried them, but I had inferior performance in Crysis 3. So, I'm not really willing to try any drivers that are newer than the one I have now.

[bloated]

the R9 290 ex miner owner wouldn't do it for $250 (stopped at $300) so I passed and am now awaiting an R9 285 2gb that I'm getting new for $220 + taxes.

I was always hesitant to buy an ex mining card and wasn't disappointed when he said "no" to $250.00.  His exact response was that he was hoping to get $300 for now and might drop it later if he had too but I wasn't willing to wait.

The GTX 450 isn't good enough for FSO maxed out, while longer FOV images are smooth if more than a little happens up close the framerates drop below10 and stutter until explosions & debris thin out.

nothing horrible but it's time for the card I got for $57.00 2 years ago to go buy buy.... it also won't allow my display to render 2560 X 1440 so it's done.

[TwoCables]

the R9 290 ex miner owner wouldn't do it for $250 (stopped at $300) so I passed and am now awaiting an R9 285 2gb that I'm getting new for $220 + taxes.

I was always hesitant to buy an ex mining card and wasn't disappointed when he said "no" to $250.00.  His exact response was that he was hoping to get $300 for now and might drop it later if he had too but I wasn't willing to wait.

The GTX 450 isn't good enough for FSO maxed out, while longer FOV images are smooth if more than a little happens up close the framerates drop below10 and stutter until explosions & debris thin out.

nothing horrible but it's time for the card I got for $57.00 2 years ago to go buy buy.... it also won't allow my display to render 2560 X 1440 so it's done.

I'm still wondering though: what CPU do you have, and what memory do you have?

[deathspeed]

I was always hesitant to buy an ex mining card and wasn't disappointed when he said "no" to $250.00.  His exact response was that he was hoping to get $300 for now and might drop it later if he had too but I wasn't willing to wait.

If you have access to Newegg, you can get a new Gigabyte R9 290 for $270, and get a $30 rebate.

[bloated]

AMD 6300 running 4500mhz on an Asus SaberTooth mobo with 16gb's of G.Skill RipJaws ram (1600mhz).

If you have access to Newegg, you can get a new Gigabyte R9 290 for $270, and get a $30 rebate.

yep, been looking into it.

if I'm going with that much power consumption and paying new I'll go with the X model but at that price range it's not a much fun.

NCIX.com has the same deal but I think I'm going to go with the 285.

[bloated]

what the hell, I just lost my progress in FS2 and all of my joystick settings are gone, is this a common problem?

hmmm, looks like I waited too long to order, prices on the 285 seem to have jumped $30, the cards that were selling for $210 are gone..... boxing day sale, no biggie.