Hello Dan!....welcome to the Sim... ...!

May be OK with FS 2002...

..and perhaps FS 2004, with the sliders, etc, reduced... ...!

Give them a try...nothing to lose!.. ...!

I suspect FSX will be a definite No-No.... ...!

Best of luck... ...!

Paul..G-BPLF..FS 2004...FS Nav... ...!

My FS 2004 runs fantastically, maxed, with an ancient AMD Socket A, Athlon Thoroughbred, 2600+ MMX, 2.1 GHz processor, and a nVidia 7800 GS 256 MB Graphics Card....2 GB RAM.

I never cease to be amazed at just how well my FS 2004 runs with my extremely lowly Hardware system!... ...!

All my sliders are maxed, and all the boxes are ticked, and providing I avoid installing dense add-on Airports, etc, and stick to Autogen, I am a very Happy Bunny with my trusty FS 2004.. ...!

Paul...G-BPLF..FS 2004..FS Nav... ..!

There's nothing quite as happy, as a Happy Bunny!... ...!

The biggest improvement I found with my home-built Computers running FS 2000, FS 2002, and FS 2004 was Graphics Card upgrades, rather than Processor upgrades.

My old Socket A Processor, and various old AGP Graphics Cards, runs them all..(including FSX, within limits!).

FSX is highly Processor dependant, ....apparently?.... ...!

Paul...My Computer: It does exactly what is says on the box... ...!

I haven't found a good-enough reason to upgrade, so far.. ...!

Quote:


I think we should organise a Club for Happy Users of FS 2004, using really old Computers!.... ...!

Paul...with a Really old Computer... ... ...!

Quote:

Chances are, it wouldn't.

The memory shouldn't be of much concern, I doubt FS9 goes anywhere near 2GB RAM to start with. Nearly 1gb of their memory is reserved towards graphics anyway.

As for processors, the clock speed is not a show of performance. 1Ghz just means '1 billion cycles per second' as you probably well know, but that does not mean that each cycle is efficient or does much. A very very vague way of understand it is like this: Which goes faster: A car in 1st gear at 2000RPM, or a car in 5th gear at 1500RPM? (Let's not get too technical, you'd obviously have to get up to speed to be in fifth gear anyway).


So in that example, although the engine was going slower (fewer Hz) the speed of the car would remain higher. Fuel efficiency would probably be higher too.


So a modern, slower, processor can be better because it is more efficient with each cycle. Dual cores means that information can be processed in parallel, so if one core is dealing with a certain task, the other core will handle other tasks at the same time.

It gets complicated, but that's the simple version. The more complex version is like a hopscotch grid where at random you have to go back to the start. A more efficient processor would have a shorter grid (5 steps or so) than an older, less efficient, one (10 steps). There's a better chance that you'd get past the hopscotch sooner if it were 5 steps long than 10 steps. On the 10 steps one you'd have to sprint it across and hope you make it to the end before getting reset to the start. Hence, a faster clock speed and more heat. More efficient = shorter pipelines (hopscotchs) so it can afford to go slower.


Phew. 


TL;DR, just look at a benchmark test to see which processor is 'better' and know that speed is only good if you're doing lots in each cycle.

I forgot to say my Laptop isn't exactly old, I bought it brand new last year, my processor is Intel Celeron Dual-Core T1600, 1.66ghz, I just bought FS2004 and I can play it on maxed settings with no problems at all, looks fantastic.
It uses according to Task manager about 45-50% of my cpu on maxed settings and uses about 200MB ram.

I have a Intel D865PERL mother board a Pentium 4 CPU 3.2Ghz 4 gigs of ram a 7600 AGP video card and Three hard drives.
I have FS2004 maxed out and still get 20 to 30 FPS in bad weather and and high detailed aircraft.
I also use Active Sky for weather It slows down a little when the weather gets what some of us refer as 0/0 Which means GET YOUR BUT ON THE GROUND AND HEAD FOR COVER.