[T-Man]

Question directed mostly at the coders and testers of Open:

If a user was looking to put together a computer (peice-by-peice in my case) that he wanted to run the latest FSOpen with all its features, would there be any particular components (like certain motherboards, graphics cards etc) and/or specifications that you would recommend getting or avoiding for that machine?

This is mostly for myself, as i'm planning a huge upgrade to replace my recently deceased desktop (motherboard decided to fry), but i thought the coders might like to put up a general guide here for any user on what the best specs/parts to have are.

EDIT: Forgot to say, something i am especially interested in is getting HTL models working. My desktop prior to frying could run everything in FSOpen (even adv effects) with a decent frame rate, but i so much as went near an HTL model (even with everything else switched off) and it slowed to 2-4 frames. I could never understand since it wasn't a weak PC.

[Herra Tohtori]

Avoid Radeon 1600 through 1950 cards, IIRC. They (or rather the latest drivers for them) have issues running OpenGL properly so the latest shader stuff doesn't work properly on them.

They are pretty old cards anyway so that likely isn't an issue, but as far as I know, those are pretty much the most recent hardware issues with FS2_Open. Otherwise, as long as you get a dedicated GPU, the PC will handle FS2_Open remarkably well with almost any processor sold these days.

Perhaps the best general advice is that you should get as much video ram as you can get your hands on. Same with system ram, actually, but video ram is probably what makes the most difference these days. There are a lot of textures to use, so 1024 MB of video card memory might not be exaggerating, though in most cases 512 MB will be very sufficient. Buying a GPU with only 256 MB of ram would be folly anyway these days.

[Aardwolf]

Don't get a ****ty Intel Integrated GPU... they suck.

[JVLK]

Here's a pretty cheap config which should run most games at good fps...best bang for buck

CPU: Intel Pentium Dualcore E5200
Mobo: MSI P43 NEO-F
Some cheap DDR2 4GB Kingston Value ram if your on vista, on XP 2 GB would be plenty
For VGA I would take a HD4850 if you have the cash for it, because it will be future proof and is a very fast card...otherwise if your on a thight budget I would sugest to look at a HD4670 512MB.

I don't know what your budget is but if you give me a figure I can help you better with advice on what parts to get.

[Dilmah G]

General Recommendations

- 4 GBs of general system RAM (This will Vista proof it, if you're planning on upgrading. If you're XP-ing, max you want to go is 2 to 2.5 GB, over that you won't notice a peformance difference)
-At least 256 mbs of Graphics RAM, recommend either late nVidia 6 series, late 7 series, or anything in the 8 series and you'll get some use out of it (I'm using an nVidia GeForce 7600 GS atm with 256mbs of g-ram, does fine for fs2_open)
-For a HDD (I'm not an expert on specific brands) I'd say you go for something over 300 GBS, and if you do some heavy editing or have a lot of work you want to accomplish on the comp, think 500 GB- 1TB
-For a Moniter, I recommend you stick with an orthodox aspect ratio and res (I'm using an ratio of 16:10, which is a slightly taller widescreen ratio, with a res of 1440x900, I run into problems with some older apps because of the odd ratio/res, so I think you should go for 16:9, your typical widescreen ratio, and something over 1024x768

[Herra Tohtori]

General Recommendations

- 4 GBs of general system RAM (This will Vista proof it, if you're planning on upgrading. If you're XP-ing, max you want to go is 2 to 2.5 GB, over that you won't notice a peformance difference)

Actually, you need a 64-bit OS to take advantage of the additional memory. I believe XP Pro 64bit could do that as well. For any 32-bit system - even Vista - you'll still be able to utilize about 3-3.5 GB at max, for software memory consumption at least. Unfortunately, 64-bit operating systems have other problems - driver issues et al - so you might want to just keep to 32-bit for now...

-At least 256 mbs of Graphics RAM, recommend either late nVidia 6 series, late 7 series, or anything in the 8 series and you'll get some use out of it (I'm using an nVidia GeForce 7600 GS atm with 256mbs of g-ram, does fine for fs2_open)

Well 256 MB is a very minimal requirement, and buying such a small card these days would be silly to be honest. I would say minimum acceptable is 512 MB, and anything over that is still very welcome.
 
Personally I would recommend getting anything up from GeForce 8800 GT (which uses the G92 core and is thus actually more related to 9 series than the 8 series...) and if you have the monies, go for the new 2xx series cards. Of ATi cards, I don't know much at all.

-For a HDD (I'm not an expert on specific brands) I'd say you go for something over 300 GBS, and if you do some heavy editing or have a lot of work you want to accomplish on the comp, think 500 GB- 1TB

Yeah, for size that's pretty much sensible  Actually I think it's no use getting smaller than 500 GB these days...

-For a Moniter, I recommend you stick with an orthodox aspect ratio and res (I'm using an ratio of 16:10, which is a slightly taller widescreen ratio, with a res of 1440x900, I run into problems with some older apps because of the odd ratio/res, so I think you should go for 16:9, your typical widescreen ratio, and something over 1024x768

I would recommend getting a full HD ready (1920x1080) monitor... FreeSpace2 Open works very well in widescreen. And other non-widescreen applications you can use by disabling the GPU scaling. At least on NVidia GPU's.

[Fenrir]

Actually, you need a 64-bit OS to take advantage of the additional memory. I believe XP Pro 64bit could do that as well. For any 32-bit system - even Vista - you'll still be able to utilize about 3-3.5 GB at max, for software memory consumption at least. Unfortunately, 64-bit operating systems have other problems - driver issues et al - so you might want to just keep to 32-bit for now...

It's not 64-bit OS's in general that have problems, it's 64-bit XP. Vista x64 is a drastic improvement.

[T-Man]

Just to give a heads up; i purchased earlier today a PC my father and i found on a website called SCAN he goes to for components (he builds PCs for his office , so he gave me a hand finding components). It easily hits all of the requirements people have been putting up (his eyes pratically bulged out of their sockets when he read how low the price was too!). Wanted to pass on a thank you though to everyone for your specs advice; they were really handy for working out what i needed for it.

I encourage everyone to keep the topic going; maybe others will find this information useful for when they are upgrading their PCs.

[Nuke]

high end nvidia cards seem pretty cheap these days. id consider getting one