Old55
Very good, Greg. I've also got X3 on the HD here. It may be a while before I actually install it though.
Do I need to get the "D" upgrade? Or is the download the latest and greatest?
AFAIK you will need to patch it however you may want to start with the B patch because apparently the C patch introduced some issues (while resolving many others but they were rare). Might want to do the restore point thing for each patch and see what works and what doesn't. Like patch to "b", create a restore point, patch to "c", create a restore point, patch to "d", create a restore point.
Depending on how much disk space you have allotted to restore points and how frequently you update windows on your system (which bumps older restore points of the list) you should be able to access those restore points for a while but if you want to hang onto them for a longer time period you could go into Windows and up the allowed storage for restore points and they remain on your sytem for longer.
Here is what I've gathered. The "a" patch is imperative. Like it was a quickfix for the usual post release issues and absolutely needs to be there but the "b" patch didn't seem to break anything so you might as well just go straight to "b" (which I think is cumulative as are all of them... I think).
The "b" patch had like almost no reports of problems on the forum. There just was hardly any threads complaining about it. There were some obscure things going on that didn't seem to affect most users so to me unless you are being affected by those specific issues it's a safe bet.
The "c" patch is what I'm on now and seems to have generated quite a few threads/problems. Most notably there is the 64bit engine/CE hum issue and some other oddities that seem to pop up. Quite a few more complaint threads after its release BUT it did fix a large list of other issues. I personally have not experienced the 64 bit engine/CE bug since patching to C nor any of the other issues as of yet. One thing I did notice though was that X3 became quite a bit less "snappy". Like it loaded slower and it just generally became a little bit more sluggish. This may be particularly relevant to you because of your system resource concerns and is why I brought up maybe sticking to the "b" patch if you find the "c" patch problematic.
Then there is the "d" patch. I have not as yet upgraded and it is really quite fresh. There are video improvements and I guess some attempts to fix the problems introduced in "c" and obviously other stuff. It was released right before the holidays so although there doesn't seem to be many problem threads at this point that could simply be because everyone has been too busy doing holiday stuff to report issues or even install the patch. It could obviously also be it is just working fine but I'm giving it until the middle of January to form an opinion about how well it has been received.
So... probably more info than you were looking for but perhaps relevant.
The simple answer to your question is, yes. You "need" to patch but if you choose to patch to b, c, or d it will be cumulative.
Cheers and have fun. It is a very nice upgrade.