to switch or not to switch

[clmooring]

I have been considering switching from fix to p3d. But I have a couple of concerns....

How will it run on my pc. I use my dell pc with with 2.4 gh dual processor and 8 gigabytes of ram. It runs fsx fine with real air and a2a products. Not only am I not sure how P3D will run on it, I don't know if it will run v2 or if it would only run v1.

My other concern are my add on planes. Originally I thought I could just reinstall them in the p3d directory. But now it looks like the new RealAIR, carenado and planes have to be purchased specifically for p3d?

Do I have it right?

[flaviossa]

Well, i´ll be true with you: with this hardware you told, p3d will be veeeeery slow. You need a good video card, maybe a gtx 600 series to up. And a processor running at least, i say ... 3.5ghz. 8gb memory is just fine because p3d is a 32bit program and don´t pass the 4gb limit. Only if you fly with many other programs open. For your addons you have in fsx, well, it´s a hit and miss game. I have TONS of purchase addons for fsx. By now, i managed to get 50% of them working. Some of them because windows 8 not working with them, others because p3d itself.
There was some topics in the net, with addons that work and addons that doesn´t work, but they got old and not up to date.

About addons, for me the worst scenario is when addon developers charge you the FULL price again to get the same plane in p3d. I would happily pay a fee for the conversion to p3d. A fee that corresponds to the conversion work. But the full price again ... well, just if you want the plane really bad. (Just my opinion)

Good luck!

[falcon409]

Flaviossa has mentioned the PC side and as he states a better processor would be a start as well as your video card which I don't see mentioned. His suggestion of at least a 600series Nvidia card is spot on and add to that "at least" 2gig on the card. With V2.4, which I would highly recommend if you seriously want to get into the P3D realm, all of the texture loading has been moved to the GPU for processing, hence the need for more memory on the GPU than you're used to. P3D will not be 64bit for a long time yet. . .that's been mentioned many, many times by the LM folks on their website http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/
As for addons. . .again for V2.4. . .forget anything FS9 related. For FSX models, if they are recent FSX models, they will more than likely be fine. Earlier versions may not be. . .I have some that are very early native FSX and they look great but nothing in the VC is useable anymore. You'll just have to try them to see what you get. I personally think if you have FSX and think you might want to keep it loaded just in case. . .don't bother with P3D_V1.4, it's nothing more than a glorified version of FSX without any of the advancements in V2.4.

[Snurdley]

I have an i2500 3.3Ghz, GTX460, 4G Ram and am surprised how smooth it is. Granted I don't run any car or air traffic yet, and settings are about middle of the road, but I did turn cloud shadows on. You will have to have a video card that supports DX11 though.

[clmooring]

Thanks for the feedback.

My gpu is an NVIDIA geforce gt 630M and my processor is a i5-3210m CPU @ 2.50ghz.

I understand that the windows 7 performance rating is not real useful, but the memory rating is 7.5 and the graphics performance for windows Aero is 6.8.

Does this give any better insight on how my pc would stack up to P3D v 2?

Pretty slow?

[falcon409]

My gpu is a NVIDIA geforce 630M. How would that stack up to P3D v 2?

Some expectations rely heavily on the amount of RAM on your GPU. If you have at least 2gig and a CPU of at 3.2ghz it should give you decent performance. Important to note again that all texture loading and performance has been taken off the CPU and transferred to the GPU, so now it matters greatly how robust your GPU is and also being sure that you Power Supply can handle whatever you have installed.

[clmooring]

I can't find my the memory available in my gpu. But it sounds like I need more computer for p3d v2

[Daube]

The 630M is a video card for laptop computers. You cannot expect any gaming performance from such GPUs really. :/
Here is a first chart that compares that card with some other PC video cards: http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/g...322.1416760704
Yours is in position 201 today... that is, extremely low.
Running P3Dv2 on such a card is, for me, a very bad idea, because P3D needs more GPU power than CPU power.

So if FSX runs fine, then I would definitely advise you to stay with FSX for the moment. Then, when you change your PC for a more recent/powerful one, you can consider switching to P3D

[clmooring]

I appreciate all of the help. Today FSX runs pretty good for me. So, I will stay there until I purchase a newer pc. Thanks guys