How well will this run P3D?

[malibu43]

Folks,

I'm looking at this for a new laptop:

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8651-clevo-p650se-p-7690.html

It's quite an improvement over my current laptop that I use for FSX (3.6ghz vs 2.9ghz, 3GB GTX970M vs 1GB HD6770M). My current laptop runs FSX "OK" but not great.

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts of experiences that would help me determine how well the new one could run P3D. Could I enable cockpit shadows? Cloud shadows? Fog?

I know it may be hard to answer, but any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

[Daube]

The main concern with P3D is the video card.
According to this website: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+970M
... your video card appears to be comparable to a GTX 670.
A GTX 670 is more powerfull than my previous video card, which was a GTX 480. That old video card was running P3D 2.4 quite ok, with almost all shadows activated, excepted the autogen tree shadows. So I'd say your laptop should run P3D with nice performance, as long as you stay away from big airports (P3D doesn't like the complex sceneries at all).

Fog and other weather effect will not have any impact, as long as you set your antialiasing settings correctly (which means, you don't use transparency antialiasing ever).

[Dumonceau]

What a monster. For fun I ran the configurator tool and came up with 1558.01 € for the laptop with 16 Gb of Kingston Hyper and two SSD's.

And they look nice too!

*drool mode off*

[CanadaKen]

I think for a laptop it will run P3D quite well but nowhere near as good as a desktop.
That's the thing people have to remember when coming from FSX. P3D actually uses
your GPU. LM has done a great job of using CPU cores and farming off graphic
processes to the GPU.

CK

[malibu43]

Dumonceau,

I'm just curious what motivated you to make those additions? Do you think the default selections for RAM and HD will hold the system back? How would you utilize the SSDs to install the OS and/or P3D?

[Dumonceau]

Dumonceau,

I'm just curious what motivated you to make those additions? Do you think the default selections for RAM and HD will hold the system back? How would you utilize the SSDs to install the OS and/or P3D?

Well, I just made the additions to see what the effect on the cost would be. BUT:

- I chose two SSD's for speed and because I like to have my sims on another dedicated drive, normal HDD's are good for storage IMHO, but that's it.
- one small SSD for the OS (boot up speed) and the other for flightsims (texture loading)
- 16 GB's of RAM I chose because of the fact that my next rig will have that much.

8 GB's of RAM is somewhat of a standard now, but it will soon be 16 Gb.

But hey, even the base configuration of that laptop will do very very nicely! You have to remember though that laptops will NEVER run any sim as good as a desktop. Mainly because of the cooling and the power of CPU and GPU.

Dumonceau

[KellyB]

The main concern with P3D is the video card.
According to this website: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+970M
... your video card appears to be comparable to a GTX 670.
A GTX 670 is more powerfull than my previous video card, which was a GTX 480. That old video card was running P3D 2.4 quite ok, with almost all shadows activated, excepted the autogen tree shadows. So I'd say your laptop should run P3D with nice performance, as long as you stay away from big airports (P3D doesn't like the complex sceneries at all).

Fog and other weather effect will not have any impact, as long as you set your antialiasing settings correctly (which means, you don't use transparency antialiasing ever).

can you elaborate on why p3d doesn't like complex sceneries? I thought that was one of its selling points, since it uses the video card to good effect.

THanks

[Daube]

The 3D engine of P3D is indeed more efficient than the FSX one when it comes to fighting the blurries of the ground textures while you fly.
The smoothness is also greater, even though the FPS are not always higher than FSX. But the FPS in P3D are much more stable.

But, there are some cases where the P3D performance drops down dramatically. This mainly happens with sceneries which are made with a lot of custom and detailled objects. This could be a big airport in a big city, or some parts of some specific sceneries.
Here are two examples:
- flying next to Seattle with OrbX PNW
- flying next to Strasbourg with France VFR Alsace with the 3DAutomation special autogen.
In both cases, the scenery is quite "heavy", with a lot of custom objects, and in both cases, the performance of P3D becomes simply catastrophic. The FPS also drops with FSX in these areas, but it drops less.

That means that P3D might not be the best choice for a liner pilot.
Personnaly, I fly only VFR, with GA airplanes and military airplanes, both modern and vintage. So I always stay away from the biggest cities. And in that case, I can fully enjoy the excellent P3D performance and new graphic features (shadows, fog and HDR). I can finally fly jets at low altitude over photoscenery. I couldn't do that on FSX (blurries everywhere) because of my limited CPU power (i7 960 @ 3.7 GHz), so P3D is a nice change for me, and I really hope LM can fix the performance issues due to heavy sceneries in the next versions :)

[KellyB]

The 3D engine of P3D is indeed more efficient than the FSX one when it comes to fighting the blurries of the ground textures while you fly.
The smoothness is also greater, even though the FPS are not always higher than FSX. But the FPS in P3D are much more stable.

But, there are some cases where the P3D performance drops down dramatically. This mainly happens with sceneries which are made with a lot of custom and detailled objects. This could be a big airport in a big city, or some parts of some specific sceneries.
Here are two examples:
- flying next to Seattle with OrbX PNW
- flying next to Strasbourg with France VFR Alsace with the 3DAutomation special autogen.
In both cases, the scenery is quite "heavy", with a lot of custom objects, and in both cases, the performance of P3D becomes simply catastrophic. The FPS also drops with FSX in these areas, but it drops less.

That means that P3D might not be the best choice for a liner pilot.
Personnaly, I fly only VFR, with GA airplanes and military airplanes, both modern and vintage. So I always stay away from the biggest cities. And in that case, I can fully enjoy the excellent P3D performance and new graphic features (shadows, fog and HDR). I can finally fly jets at low altitude over photoscenery. I couldn't do that on FSX (blurries everywhere) because of my limited CPU power (i7 960 @ 3.7 GHz), so P3D is a nice change for me, and I really hope LM can fix the performance issues due to heavy sceneries in the next versions :)

Thanks for the explanation. That may be a deal killer for me, then. I gather 2.5 hasn't improved on that very much.

[Daube]

You're welcome.
If your plan is to fly with liners over major airports, then I would NOT recommend P3D to you.

That being said, you could give it a try with the one-month developper licence. That would cost you only 10$, and it would allow you to make your own tests and performance measurements ! Worth a try, I think.

[malibu43]

Just ordered!

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8671-clevo-p670se-p-7799.html

I went with the 17" version. I'll continue researching P3D vs FSX while I wait for it to arrive. I'm leaning toward P3D, but have to wait and try it once the laptop arrives. They still have a 60 day money back guarantee, right?

[bpfowler]

Hi all,
Wondering how theis clevo worked out for p3d 2.5?

Configuring a laptop now.
any input appreciated, particularly regarding sata m2

Thanks!