righty folks. The problem with the PC version of FF7 is that it takes a lot more RAM that you might actually think. It can play all the movie sequences, sure, but putting the sound effects with the movie sequences take up a lot of ram. Secondly, the music timing slows down depending on how much ram you have. The main thing you have to worry about though. Is the swirling effect of when you get into a battle, for instance, the gold saucer demo. That takes up the most RAM in the whole game. So personally, I just switch off that effect, in the FFconfiguration files. So it doesn't display special effects. Don't worry, you still have magic, limits, and everything else, just that the swirling effect doesn't happen, so you're instantly in a battle. I'd recommend around 2GB for FF7, to play rather smoothly...
O.O Two Gigabytes of RAM!
...........Nnnnnno. Trust me; it only needs a fraction of that amount to run smoothly. The problem is… the game’s 10 years old now and was written to take advantage of computer hardware and software that is now ancient in terms of today’s computers.
133 MHz Pentium Processor (166-200 MHz Recommended)
4 MB Video Card (8 MB Recommended for 3D accelerator)
32 MB of RAM (64 MB Recommended)
4X CD-ROM drive
DirectX 5.0 compatible sound and video card (DirectX 5.0 is included)
260 MB minimum of free hard drive space (minimum installation)
Basically, it’s a backwards compatibility issue with the newer hardware, not a lack of RAM issue. In short, the newer hardware will do it’s best to run it, but not without problems.
There are patches available for the newer hardware, but I doubt you’ll find anything for today’s newer equipment… You may, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
You've got to understand the computer has the capability to play FF7, but that its got system processes, MSN, winamp, internet updates, limewire and bitorrent to do at the same time, which obviously takes up memory.
Those aren’t “Windows” system processes, those are crap applications that shouldn’t be running in the background if you intend on playing any game, new or old!