Aren't System Requirements Just A *****.

[SniperWolf427]

A couple days ago the craving sprang upon me to play some sort of military shooter. Being bored with the ones I currently have, and needing to have it immediately, I ran to Direct2Drive to check out what they might have that would quell said craving. In the top sellers list, Arma2 came to my attention. I was a huge fan of Operation Flashpoint and knew these chaps were part of the development team who made it, so, after a quick glance over of the system requirements, I payed and began my download.

"My computer hasn't been unable to run a game since I upgraded it a couple years ago, why should I need to worry now?" I thought, reassuring myself that I would at least be able to play it, though possibly without fancy post-processing and whatnot.

At around midnight my download had finished and my game was successfully installed. My excitement was unmeasurable, especially considering some of the very exciting YouTube videos of the game showing rather large and intense firefights. I booted up the game and immediately turned off antilasing and changed the resolution down to 1024x768. Oddly enough, I was experiencing a delay between mouse movement and crosshair movement.

After three hours of tinkering, I declared the game unplayable and swiftly crawled up into my bed to have a nice cry. My system was officially outdated again.

If you're curious, my system specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHZ, 2 Gigs of RAM, and an Nvidia 8800GT. On maximum settings, I ran the game at twelve frames per second.

So, the discussion is, has a similar situation happened to you? Do you think that games are increasing technology too quickly for the average consumer to keep up?

 

[walls of cetepedes]

Yeah, I bought this great looking RTS game, 8gb big. Installed it (2 hours) and it said something about pixel shading. So I couldn't play.

 

[YuheJi]

When I first bought Age of Empires 3, it said it required Windows XP (which still wasn't widely adopted yet). I was pretty pissed off, because it could run on Windows 2000, it just wouldn't install on it. People were able to install on an XP machine and move them over to a Windows 2000 machine, but I lacked XP.

 

[Sir Ollie]

Twelve frames per second? christ thats got to hurt.

The only game I remember not running correctly was Vampire The Masquerade but thats because Vista is a pain in the ass.

 

[khaimera]

Yet another reaosn why I prefer consile gaming. That and the cost of having a good rig to run the best games.

 

[sirdanrhodes]

Twelve frames per second? christ thats got to hurt.

That's how I run L4D on minimum at the best of times, I can't even load ARMA II.

 

[Deadpoolsbrain]

Yea my computer is getting so old that I can have one RTS game (currently Empire total war) and I have to put it on the lowest setting it sucks and I definantly can't play online it has a heartattack every once in a while from campaign.

 

[YuheJi]

Yet another reaosn why I prefer consile gaming. That and the cost of having a good rig to run the best games.

It doesn't really cost that much. You could build a computer that can run Crysis with around $400 bucks.

 

[LeeHarveyO]

lucky me i got a new comp last year and so far i havent had any trouble with system requirements though i would still like to upgrade again just to stay ahead.

 

[SniperWolf427]

Yet another reaosn why I prefer consile gaming. That and the cost of having a good rig to run the best games.

It doesn't really cost that much. You could build a computer that can run Crysis with around $400 bucks.

That's another reason why I thought for sure it would work; I can run Crysis at a solid fifty frames on medium settings.

 

[khaimera]

Yet another reaosn why I prefer consile gaming. That and the cost of having a good rig to run the best games.

It doesn't really cost that much. You could build a computer that can run Crysis with around $400 bucks.

hmmm, Its been a while since I looked into the cost of a gaming computer. 400 isn't bad at all. Maybe I will reconsider my stance since there are a lot of compuetr games that I wish I could try. Crysis being one of them.

 

[Arachon]

If you're curious, my system specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHZ, 2 Gigs of RAM, and an Nvidia 8800GT. On maximum settings, I ran the game at twelve frames per second.

That's funny, I have pirdy much the same specs (Intel Core 2: 2.14GHz, 2GB RAM and 8800GT) and I can run the ArmA 2 demo perfectly fine on high specs without any noticeable FPS drop o,O

 

[SniperWolf427]

If you're curious, my system specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHZ, 2 Gigs of RAM, and an Nvidia 8800GT. On maximum settings, I ran the game at twelve frames per second.

That's funny, I have pirdy much the same specs (Intel Core 2: 2.14GHz, 2GB RAM and 8800GT) and I can run the ArmA 2 demo perfectly fine on high specs without any noticeable FPS drop o,O

Yeah, I played the demo afterwards and found it to run considerably better than the actual product.

That's a tad misleading if you ask me, haha.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

If you're curious, my system specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHZ, 2 Gigs of RAM, and an Nvidia 8800GT. On maximum settings, I ran the game at twelve frames per second.

There, I've bolded the problem for you.

The 8800GT (which is what I use) is four generations old. You're either going to have to overclock that puppy (and then be sure it stays cool), turn down those settings so your GPU can handle it better, or get a better card. I'm seeing 9800GTX models on Newegg at around $130, so unless you're really strapped you can at least jump up one generation.

If you're feeling saucy, I'd say spring for a quad-core CPU and another gigabyte of RAM as well.

 

[TaborMallory]

When I bought Half Life 2, my computer wasn't able to handle it without toiling on the verge of the bluescreen. It was a very sad day.

 

[The_Echo]

Mac owner + Looking up system requirements = "Well, fuck."

Because of this, I don't have much say in this. But going from what I know, I'd say it might be a good idea to, at the very least, give options for people who don't have all the requirements.

 

[SniperWolf427]

If you're curious, my system specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHZ, 2 Gigs of RAM, and an Nvidia 8800GT. On maximum settings, I ran the game at twelve frames per second.

There, I've bolded the problem for you.

The 8800GT (which is what I use) is four generations old. You're either going to have to overclock that puppy (and then be sure it stays cool), turn down those settings so your GPU can handle it better, or get a better card. I'm seeing 9800GTX models on Newegg at around $130, so unless you're really strapped you can at least jump up one generation.

If you're feeling saucy, I'd say spring for a quad-core CPU and another gigabyte of RAM as well.

Oh, I assure you I didn't just try it on maximum, I just put that part in as a tidbit of info. No, I tried it on much lower settings as well, however, Arma2 does this very odd thing where it clouds up the screen, almost like you have water in your eyes, in an attempt to make it less graphic intensive on lower settings.

I will point out that this does not work at all and in fact, almost seems to make the problem worse.

 

[Lordmarkus]

I think that technology is developing to fast but I managed to extend my computers life with 2-3 years just to change graphics card. ATI Radeon X850 ---> ATI Radeon HD 3870. Costed me only 100 bucks.

 

[Lukeje]

I see them as a challenge... though if they really won't run then I'll just use my Dad's computer.

Edit: alternatively you can just do this.

Spoiler: xkcd

[http://xkcd.com/606/]

 

[Arachon]

Arma2 does this very odd thing where it clouds up the screen, almost like you have water in your eyes, in an attempt to make it less graphic intensive on lower settings.

I remember having that problem as well... But I got rid of it.. (referring to demo, but I find it hard to imagine that the system specs would have changed from demo to retail), there was some option in the graphics that got rid of the water-blurry effect... It's just that I can't remember which one it was... o,O