Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler - Looking for Laptop advice

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | Looking for Laptop advice

DVA10437
Captain, B757-200

Joined on January 11 2012
50 State Club
DVA Five-Year Anniversary
Million Mile Club
Online Quintuple Century Club
B757 100 Club
Millennium Club
Everett 500 Club

"Doors Shut? Good, Let's Roll"
Brighton, NY

1,027 legs, 3,014.3 hours
583 legs, 1,757.2 hours online
978 legs, 2,815.8 hours ACARS
13 legs, 35.4 hours event

Posted onPost created on April 17 2020 00:21 ET by Emerson Senden

All-

I’m very excited to be getting back into Flight Sim. I joined DVA over 8 years ago and have taken a couple of hiatuses here and there, but have always returned. With getting back into FSX, I’m in the market for a new laptop and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations or advice in a selection? I’ve narrowed it down to the Asus TUF Gaming FX705DT which seems like it would have the necessary capabilities to run FSX with addons, but in all honestly, I don’t know the first thing about what a lot of the details mean, which is quite embarrassing considering how long I’ve been using the sim.

Unfortunately a desktop or anything super customized isn’t in the budget for me, so hoping a large screen laptop can do the trick. Thanks in advance!

Emerson Senden (DVA10437)

DVA12617
Chief Pilot, A350-900
OLP, VFRADV
DISPATCHER
E-MAIL

Joined on April 23 2015
B757 100 Club
Eurocap Club
Millennium Club
Toulouse 500 Club
Online Triple Century Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary

"Go Utes!"
Herriman, UT

1,280 legs, 2,967.8 hours
391 legs, 810.3 hours online
1,261 legs, 2,925.6 hours ACARS
25 legs, 78.6 hours event
39 legs dispatched, 174.2 hours

Posted onPost created on April 17 2020 19:50 ET by Joe Burner

Emerson,

One consideration you’ll have to take into account is how is my budget? Another thing are you going to primarily use it for flight simulation or other purposes outside flight simulation?

Asus makes a good brand. I’ve had an asus laptop before. I just purchased an HP laptop but I’m primarily going to use it for college when I start back in a couple of days. I also have my laptop for DVA dispatch as well and for DVA files I work on.

Anyways my two cents. I took a look at the asus you mentioned and it looked good. I’m guessing you’ll be using just fsx or P3D or xplane?

Joe Burner (DVA12617)

DVA13420
Assistant Chief Pilot, B737-800

Joined on February 25 2018
50 State Club
Comrade Club
Winter Olympics Club
DVA Five-Year Anniversary
Millennium Club
Globetrotter
Everett 500 Club

Springfield, MO

1,081 legs, 1,880.1 hours
1,080 legs, 1,878.0 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on April 18 2020 20:02 ET by Adam Magiera

The thing that is tough about laptops is that most of the ones in the budget range have quite limited GPU power and mobility CPU's which both perform at a lower level than they desktop counterparts, in the name of extending battery time. If you are so inclined, you could build a budget desktop yourself that would perform better than a mid-range laptop...aka for the amount you would spend on a mid-range laptop, you could build a more powerful desktop. You can get laptops that will run FS flawlessly, but those are usually the upper end gaming ones that are pretty pricey.

If you are set on a laptop...you want a processor that runs at the highest clock speed possible if you are going to use FSX or P3D as both are very CPU cycle dependent. I cannot speak to X-Plane at all as I have no experience with it. One area that laptop makers save on battery life is to put chips with slower clock speeds in them for example 2-2.8 ghz range, these work fine for most regular applications but for CPU hogs like FSX/P3D it will likely be the biggest bottle neck in a laptop.

Adam Magiera

Assistant Chief Pilot, B737-800

DVA10286
Captain, B777-200

Joined on November 05 2011
50 State Club
Globetrotter
Toulouse 250 Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary
Millennium Club
Two Million Mile Club

"ASEL - Instrument Rated"
San Diego, CA

1,045 legs, 4,493.7 hours
1,042 legs, 4,490.7 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on April 19 2020 00:32 ET by Thomas Weber

It’s definitely possible to have an enjoyable flight sim experience on a laptop (I have for the last 11 years!), but it does take sacrifices. Complex payware, AI aircraft, etc. destroy frame rates. I stuck with the many decent FSX freeware options and turned off AI traffic and managed 25-30 FPS with decent scenery settings.

Thomas Weber (DVA10286)

DVA9352
Captain, B777-200

Joined on January 11 2011
50 State Club
Globetrotter
Million Mile Club
Black Pearl Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary
Everett 500 Club
Nine Century Club

"GEAUX TIGERS!!!!!"
Taylor, AR

903 legs, 3,885.0 hours
4 legs, 9.0 hours online
903 legs, 3,885.0 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on April 20 2020 19:12 ET by Michael Martin

I have the Asus Tuf FX505DU laptop now. I needed a mid range laptop for travel and occasional flight sim. I'm getting 15 to 30 FPS on it while in air and 10 to 15 on the ground with the exception of New York. I am currently flying with FSX since I have a 256 gig hard drive and its getting full quick. I'm going to bump the memory to 32 gigs and the m.2 to a 1 Tb later this summer. I have been in pressed with it so far. Processor has the AMD Ryzen 7 3750H and the Vega Mobile GFX 2300 graphics card. I'm building a better desktop for the up coming FS2020 but that will be a month or so before I can do that.

Michael Martin

Captain, B777-200

Posted onPost created on April 21 2020 00:37 ET by Emerson Senden

I appreciate the feedback, everyone! I ended up going with the laptop that I mentioned above and it’ll be delivered later today. I’ve been deliberating for the past week on if I’d want to go back to FSX or try one of the newer sims, and after a lot of thought I decided to take the plunge and go with P3D v4.5. I did see that V5 was just released, but with some of the pay ware companies not sure when comparability will be ready, I’m alright going with the one behind it.

I have one last question for y’all- like I said, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been in the sim. Last, I was using SquawkBox to connect to VATSIM. I was wondering if there were any other more up-to-date programs anyone else may be using? Again, thank you all very much.

Emerson Senden (DVA10437)

DVA9545
Senior Captain, B777-200
OLP, 737-ATP

Joined on March 03 2011
50 State Club
Globetrotter
Quad-Jet Quartermaster
US Coastal Club
US Mountaineer Club
Million Mile Club
Events Double Century Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary
Toulouse 500 Club
Bi-Millennium Club
Online Twenty Century

"YUPIIIII"
Goiás Brazil

2,492 legs, 5,039.3 hours
2,321 legs, 4,760.9 hours online
2,484 legs, 5,009.7 hours ACARS
271 legs, 683.8 hours event

Posted onPost created on April 21 2020 11:21 ET by Thiago Braga

Emerson Senden wrote:

I appreciate the feedback, everyone! I ended up going with the laptop that I mentioned above and it’ll be delivered later today. I’ve been deliberating for the past week on if I’d want to go back to FSX or try one of the newer sims, and after a lot of thought I decided to take the plunge and go with P3D v4.5. I did see that V5 was just released, but with some of the pay ware companies not sure when comparability will be ready, I’m alright going with the one behind it.

I have one last question for y’all- like I said, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been in the sim. Last, I was using SquawkBox to connect to VATSIM. I was wondering if there were any other more up-to-date programs anyone else may be using? Again, thank you all very much.

Hi Emerson;
Is this the exactly specification for your new system? https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ASUS-TUF-Gaming-FX705DD-DT-DU/specifications/
If it is, I just hope it could run good with the CPU from AMD. Also what was the choice of GPU that you got?
Well, regarding the Vatsim connection, I would suggest your get the VPilot. It is a new software easy and simple to use: https://vpilot.metacraft.com/
Now, what are you looking for AITraffic? I would also suggest to get http://flai.bvartcc.com/ for me works great with VPilot
Good luck with all the installation process.

Thiago Braga (DVA9545)

DVA7963
First Officer, ERJ-170

Joined on November 14 2009
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary
50 State Club
Triple Century Club
Empresario 100 Club

"Fly Like an eagle!"
Oklahoma City, OK USA

321 legs, 747.1 hours
1 legs, 2.1 hours online
320 legs, 745.7 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on May 04 2020 08:15 ET by Doyle Edwards

Have you already bought a new laptop? I think anything with Intel Optane Memory would help load up all those images in dds format quicker and it has less latency which is much lower than DDR3 and DDR4 system RAM. its a hardware cache more or less. It needs Intel's Intel Optane software. It's amazing with a SSD drive. My new laptop has it and man it loads things lickity split!

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