I'm getting the bug for a new air combat sim, and although I have a poor track record with "study sims" (F4AF I didn't get too far before the learning curve stopped me in my tracks)I can't quite convince myself not to get A-10C. My computer is an Alienware laptop, M17XR2 with a dual core i7 - 2.66Ghz both cores can clock up to 3 GHZ, 2x ATI 4870M (DX10)1GB each, 4GB ram.

Forget whatever the recommended specs are, we all know how good that usually works out to be. Can anyone give me a realistic expectation if I could run DCS A-10C well on these specs? I'm really on the fence with this one. If it's going to be a stutter fest I'll forego the frustration. But oh boy does this look awesome.

This is what I can tell:

- 4 gig ram is only just enough, so more would be better
- hard disk speed is important for load times; don't know what's in your laptop, but my desktop 7200rpm disk is darn slow to load this game (several minutes)
- can't find much info on your graphics card, but going from the specs alone you should be able to run it on acceptable fps... depending on how well your crossfire scales.
- cpu might be somewhat lacking since a quadcore is recommended or a fast dualcore

Overall I think you'll be able to run it, but not on highest settings. Do note however that this is just an educated guess. Nothing more.

A 64bit OS is highly recommend also.

Nate

I would venture to say that DCS A10 will run on that laptop, but just barely. A laptop video card is in no way comparable to a proper desktop video card so that 4870M will be taxed in a lot of ways. DCS A10 is a beautiful sim in graphics and detail, if you're not bothered by losing graphic quality (and probably play with labels on), give it a try.

Just don't come back whining that DCS A10 made you spend money on a proper rig Lol!

It's plenty enough. DCS won't use it all up.



He does have a fast dual core - but yes, overall as BB says: Don't expect desktop performance from a laptop. You'll definitely be able to run it, but you'll have to turn some options down.

Forgot to mention it's also Win7 64. I don't expect performance on par with a modern desktop, but it does crush my old P4 single core 3.2 Ghz. I wish there was a demo available (there isn't, is there?). I had my reasons for going with a laptop, although this thing is more like a portable desktop, it's freaking huge and weighs like 15 pounds. All metal!

Anyway, I expect I would have to scale it back a bit. I just don't want to find that it's gasping for breath on minimum settings. I'm betting that if I can run it smooth on "medium" it's probably still pretty great. Ah, this is a tough one. At the time I bought it (last fall) for the same price it was either get the fastest mobile dual core available or the slowest mobile quad available. The uber quad core was a $1000 upgrade. No thanks to that, though since the next gen of chips are out I might be able to find the top quad more reasonably. Supposedly it's not hard to swap the processor since it's designed for the quad anyway and I already have the correct power supply. The dual that I have IS hyperthreaded though so depending on how the software recognizes the cores it might actually see it as 4. Not the same, I know.

Problem is, it will occupy almost all ram available, erasing most of your cache. Everything you do when DCS: A10C is loaded (starting game, quitting game, restarting game, quitting to windows, etc....) will involve disk swapping. If you come back to Windows, it is slow as hell... and I mean, really slow, because Windows 'll have to load everything from disk back to the memory.

I currently have 4 gb, so I'm saying this of personal experience. I will be adding 2 gb more tomorrow. I'll let you know what difference it makes.

...concerning ram.

I just added 2 gb more for a total of 6 gb now (coming from 4 gb). The difference is significant. Loading times and fps remain the same - of course - but once in the game everything is smoother:

• overall smoothness during gameplay because more can be loaded in memory, avoiding disk swapping
• alt-tabbing while playing (and going back) is now very snappy
• exiting the game to the main menu is way faster
• restarting a mission is now also much faster
• when quitting to Windows, the programs that were in cache are still there so they'll load as fast as before you ran the game.

I can conclude this ram discussion by saying that 4 gb will do, but will involve lots of disk swapping which _will_ deteriorate overall system performance. Add 2 more gb to a total of 6 gb and everything will be smoothed out. Considering the low ram prices, this is a no brainer.

PS: This was tested on a Windows 7 64 bit system with a base memory load of 1,4 gb (= memory occupied just after booting in Windows).
PS2: With 4 gb ram you can forget running this game with textures on 'HIGH', since it'll eat up _all_ your ram and leave you with a big disk swapping monster; this is kind of annoying, since on 'MEDIUM', cockpit text will look blurred and sometimes unreadable.

A-10C use only two cores, so there's virtually no advantage to running it on a quad core instead of a dual core.

I see all my cores (4) being used in some way. Not fully, but all at 30% or more, and one core at 70% and more.

From the FAQ:

Q: Does DCS: A-10C use all cores on my CPU?
A: Not fully. It does include the new sound engine which operates in a separate thread, and does take advantage of some DirectX threading features when running on Windows Vista or 7.

Well that's kind of interesting, because my dual core supports hyperthreading. In the task manager under CPU it shows 4 graphs, so I wonder if it takes advantage of just multiple threads, or prefers actual cores. Like I said earlier, I know it's not the same as 4 actual cores (plus multi-threads) but maybe it will still help. Anybody know if A-10 supports crossfired graphics cards? Is that a "the game has to be coded to take advantage of it" kind of feature or more on how well the hardware handles it? I've had to disable the 2nd card on some things due to graphical glitches (Looking at you MSFS), but it seems to help on others.

Probably threads, so your dualcore may just be fine.