New to Sim Racing - Hardware Requirements

[tacticiam]

Hi guys,

Getting into sim racing after a long time!

I'm starting to get all my ducks in a line, and am sorting decent hardware to run on. I'll be looking at running various sims, including iracing, automobilista, rfactor 2 and assetto corsa.

The following is a second-hand PC I have access to. I'm not at all an IT guy, hoping if you guys could give me some insight as to whether it would be a capable-enough machine, or whether I'm better off investing in a whole new system?

Windows 10 Home 64 BIT
CPU- intel core i6 4590 @3.30 GHz Haswell 22mm technology
MEMORY: 8.00GB RAM Dual Channel DDR3
MOTHERBOARD- MSI B85-G43 GAMING
GRAPHICS- 3072MB ATI AMD Radeon R9 200 series (3 spare slots) **I believe this to be a 280X)**
STORAGE- 1TB SEAGATE HDD

I'm not looking for any crazy performance to begin with, but would like to run with reasonably high performance.

Really appreciate your guidance!

 

[Jeremy Ford]

It's a decent midrange setup, perfectly good for 1080p racing.

 

[tacticiam]

Fantastic Jeremy, just what I wanted to hear!
Midrange, 1080p is just what I was looking for.

I would assume it would be tough to run a triple monitor setup from this PC without a future upgrade?

 

[Jeremy Ford]

Mainly that 280X will hold back the triples screen performance. Triples are doable on that GPU by sacrificing in-game visual settings, no game is the same so mileage varies. We're talking about reflections, shadows, lighting effects, antialiasing and lowering texture quality. Depends if you don't mind the game looking less impressive.

Back in the day sim racers would have run triples on the 280X. Of course as newer games arrive with more advanced graphics the goalposts widen and those older cards struggle more. On your list of titles, Assetto Corsa will be the most demanding of the games.

 

[Emery]

On your list of titles, Assetto Corsa will be the most demanding of the games.

Agree with everything except this statement. rF2 is the most demanding, particularly so with the current DX11 Beta... typically less than half the fps of AC if you make use of the full graphics options.