Horizons Running Horizons on a low-end PC

[Bennyworld]

I would really really love to buy horizons, but I recently checked the system specifications and saw that my PC did not look powerful enough.This surprised me, because I can run the base game really smoothly and at medium seconds. I'm wondering if anyone with a rig similar to mine has tried running it yet, and it would be fantastic if I could hear about your experiences. My Rig:

Intel i5 @ 2.5 Ghz
6GB ram
Nvidia Geforce GT650m 1GB VRAM

Thanks for your help!

 

[tomalus]

Im playing on

amd athlon II X3 (three cores) 3.0.ghz
sapphire radeon 6670 1mb (ddr5) gpu
4gb ddr2 ram
win7 64bit

Everything low on graphics, it runs smoothly most of the time even on surface.

If you got dual core that might be a problem, but then again you are using intel and nvidia Im using amd so amd is slower/cheaper.

 

[Bennyworld]

Thanks a lot!

 

[=Phoenix=]

The really important part before purchasing Horizons is to make sure your graphics card is directx 11 compatible. And by this I mean NOT just checking your dxdiag.exe output to see if windows has directx11, but your graphics card really is directx11/12 compatible. This allows you to land on planets and do the stuff this addon brings to the base game. Otherwise you horizons addon will be severely gimped.

 

[who?]

My setup is similar, but with 2GB more RAM and a 1GB 750m instead of 650m. I probably have most things on medium settings, but dialled down the terrain settings a little. Getting 17-20fps on the surface and it still looks good, about 25fps flying over planets, and 30+ in space.

Having several issues with only low resolution textures loading, but considering the machine is well below minimum specs I'm quite happy so far.

 

[Sentenza]

Hey, I now have a 3GHz i3 with 16GB and a 4G R9 290X - all fine on High settings at constant 60 fps, 55 on planets. The card is what really matters.

But I still want my i7 back

 

[Bennyworld]

It looks like my graphics card supports DirextX 11 and I have a quad-core, so that should be fine too. Should I be concerned about whether, even if I can run it now, I will be able to run it when you can land on more densely populated planets? Thanks for all the responses by the way.

 

[galenhammond]

My setup (before and after a GPU upgrade):
.
Before: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T, 2.8 GHz (up to 3.3 GHz turbo) 6-core processor, 8gb DDR3-1333 RAM, AMD Radeon HD6570 1 GB GPU. Ran base Elite just fine on medium/high settings, but barely. During Horizons Beta I had tons of lag around planets and got the BSOD twice when either landing and/or during orbital cruise around a planet.
.
Now: All the same, except I updated the GPU to a 4GB ASUS R9 380 Strix GPU. Everything runs smooth as butter now, and even fixed issues I had previously chalked up to internet (i.e. really long transitions from SC to regular space on station approach, and long loading times when accessing starport services). EDIT: I also now run all settings on high/ultra, and while I do not have a FPS meter I have not noticed any lag issues.
.
That being said, the minimum card mentioned by FDEV to run Horizons (I don't recall the model number off hand) was priced at about $80 USD at the store I bought my new GPU from (Fry's Electronics in California, USA). For reference the R9 380 I purchased was $239 USD plus I had to upgrade my PSU to handle it. So it shouldn't be too much of an issue to upgrade to at least minimum spec GPU (just make sure your current PSU can handle the card).