[freespacefanatic73]

I have been away from Freespace for several years, and just revisited hardlight a few days ago. Holy crap! The mods! The graphical enhancements! Oh my! I had no idea what I have been missing over the years! Ok i'm done screaming like a teenie-bopper at a Justin Beiber concert. What I need to know is how boss of a pc will I need to build to run Freespace Open with every single bell, whistle, and tweak running? I plan on building big but I want to make sure all bases are covered.

A big thanks, and keep up the good work.
Kevin

[Bob-san]

I have been away from Freespace for several years, and just revisited hardlight a few days ago. Holy crap! The mods! The graphical enhancements! Oh my! I had no idea what I have been missing over the years! Ok i'm done screaming like a teenie-bopper at a Justin Beiber concert. What I need to know is how boss of a pc will I need to build to run Freespace Open with every single bell, whistle, and tweak running? I plan on building big but I want to make sure all bases are covered.

A big thanks, and keep up the good work.
Kevin

4GB RAM
Dual-core processor (fastest clock)
1GB+ graphics card (GTX 460 or better)

[LordPomposity]

That should do the trick provided no Karunas are in the mission. If there are, nothing will save you.

[MatthTheGeek]

Lies. My rig is 900€ worth and runs anything at 60 fps without any issues.

To be honest, any decent, recent gaming rig will do the job for FS.

[Mongoose]

Seriously, those stats are massive overkill.  I have an old P4 processor and a Radeon HD4670 card, and just about everything is as smooth as butter.

[The E]

For basic, no mediavps use, minimal system requirements would be something like a Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM, and an OpenGL 1.2-capable GPU.

With basic mediavps, I would suggest a Pentium 4 or better, 1 GB of RAM (2 if using Win Vista/7), and a GPU capable of handling OpenGL 2.1 or better.

Advanced mediavps would need more RAM, and a GPU capable of handling OpenGL 3, with at least 512 MB of dedicated video RAM.

[headdie]

2 requests in the same week lould it be a good idea to have a locked stickied thread in FreeSpace & FreeSpace Open Support listing minimum and recommended spec for FS2, FSO and the current Media VPs?

[Spoon]

4GB RAM
Dual-core processor (fastest clock)
1GB+ graphics card (GTX 460 or better)

Dude, that's false information

Spoiler:

You need at least 2 460's or better in a crossfire/sli configuration.

[LoneKnight]

4GB RAM
Dual-core processor (fastest clock)
1GB+ graphics card (GTX 460 or better)

Recommand and Minimum are entirely different things.

[Damage]

I'm running a 2.3g single-core processor with 1 gig of RAM and 256MB graphics.  I've been completely fine up until I started playing Blue Planet.  Those ultra-high poly models are killing me.

[MatthTheGeek]

They're not higher poly that what you have in the MVPs. They're just terribly mapped and as unoptimized as you can nightmare of.

[roaddog_665]

I keep reading these "minimum requirement" posts and then wonder how in the world my old dinosaur of a machine manages to run FSO as well as it does.

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ ( which, until yesterday, was underclocked to 1.15 Ghz, FSB was set to 100Mhz, now set to 133)
1 gig RAM
GeForce 7800GS AGP

I'm using the Advanced MVP'S, and usually get 50-60 FPS, once in awhile it drops to around 30. I've only had a couple times that it dropped enough to affect gameplay....WiH, I'm looking at you

[Drogoth]

My computer just likes to be a problem child.

I've never lagged with Karunas, but i play on low settings. Lag with the first mission in WiH? You bet. Lag during the assassination of the Elder? Check. Lag during random points of AoA? roger that.

It was weird. On one play through, the final mission in AoA (with the Dante and all) Was unplayable lag. Nothing I could do would fix it. Restart campaign, get back to mission, lag gone.

My computer likes to do that though, on various games. I swear to god the thing is spawning gremlins.

[Trivial Psychic]

Perhaps you switched to a newer and faster build for the latter attempt.

[Drogoth]

All I did was quit the mission and clicked restart campaign in the campaign room.

[Bob-san]

4GB RAM
Dual-core processor (fastest clock)
1GB+ graphics card (GTX 460 or better)

Recommand and Minimum are entirely different things.

Considering that the OP posted "recommended system requirements", I was inclined to post what I recommend. I'm unaware of any official requirements (other than a Pentium II 266, 64MB RAM, and Glide/DirectX graphics card).

[Jeff Vader]

Considering

What I need to know is how boss of a pc will I need to build to run Freespace Open with every single bell, whistle, and tweak running?

giving some bare minimum specs would be quite misleading. Never mind the retail FS2 (minimum) specs.

[freespacefanatic73]

Thanks for all the input guys. I'm looking to build a quad-core machine most likely using an i7 2600k processor and a 2GB GeForce GTS 460 video card.  I just wanted to make sure all my bases were covered. I basically fix PC's and do tech support for a paycheck, but I haven't built one to truly enjoy for myself in a few years and it's so well overdue. 

[Dragon]

Just to not, FS doesn't support multithreading, so while dual core would improve performance by running system and FS on different cores (doable with an external program), on a quadcore you'd have 2 cores doing absolutely nothing.

[The E]

Wrong. On such a system, you have 2 cores doing everything else. Meaning more net power available for FSO.