[zcal]

Hello, all.  I'm wondering if anyone has experience with FSO on low-end hardware?  I've never played any of the Freespace games/mods and have become quite interested in them and the SCP, but am worried that my laptop doesn't have enough horsepower.  I'd be okay with really low graphics settings as long as the framerate's acceptable.

I have:
AMD Turion Neo X2 @ 1.6 ghz
AMD Mobility Radeon HD3200 (radeon drivers on Linux, not catalyst)
2 gb RAM

I realize that these technically meet the system requirements, but I'd like to know what I'm in for in terms of performance before I make a purchase at GOG.  Any feedback would be much appreciated!

[Mongoose]

I definitely wouldn't go near MV_Advanced with that rig, but you could probably get away with the majority of the SCP's graphical enhancements and still maintain a playable framerate.  At the bare minimum, simply running the updated engine itself without any of the graphical enhancements cranked up doesn't really require substantially more power than the original retail FS2 did.

[zcal]

Thanks for the reply, Mongoose.  I'll stick to the basics in the graphics department, then, and give it a go.  Will I be able to run the mods/standalones on the base engine, or are any of them dependent on the graphics packs?

[Mongoose]

There are some mods that require the MediaVPs, or have their own model/texture work that's comparable in graphical quality to them, but I can't think of any off the top of my head that would necessarily require the Advanced pack.  Mods which have a few super-intensive graphical elements sometimes have a more slimmed-down version available, too.