Dragon Age PC System Requirements Pretty Hefty

[-Seraph-]

meh..I can run the game just fine, now the only question is "will it be good?" One thing I hate about these hefty requirements devs pull out their ass is that it's sometimes a sign of very poor optimization. Seriously I looked at the the trailers of the game and it IS coming out on the xbox so I can't help but smell a Lazy and badly optimized port.

 

[Go on]

Well I have a 9800gts. I hope it can run this at 1400 x 900 at high

 

[calelogan]

I agree 20GB is pretty hefty, but what puzzles me the most is:

DVD ROM (Physical copy)

This item is included in both the Minimum and Recommended requirements and had it only been in the Minimum then I would think "Makes sense. They want you to copy the files to the HD and run the game directly from it because it's faster".

But the truth is I still don't get it. After all it's obvious I need the DVD do run the game!

 

[ILPPendant]

1. Changing the OS.
2. Incompatability of 32bit programs on a 64 bit OS.
3. No games use 4GB RAM. RAM is not like CPU or GPU power - you have either enough, or not enough RAM. Having more than you should have won't change anything, it will be empty, not used. Better CPU and GPU ALWAYS make your PC/games go faster.
4. 4GB costs about $80, which isn't that little for a 17-year old.
5. Did I mention I would have to reinstall both Windows XP and Windows 7 to actually use that 4GB to the max?


edit: $80 in Poland is 230 PLN. That's a bit, considering I get 30-50 PLN a month.

1. A pain but either resize the partition or get a new HDD and put that on.
2. Sounds worse than it is. Keep your 32-bit OS on another drive and run anything that doesn't work on 64-bit there.
3. Games don't necessarily use 4GB but it's better to have a surplus than to run out. When playing modern games I usually use about 80-90% of my 4GB so I don't consider it a waste.
4. I'm assuming you already have 2GB of RAM so that's suddenly dropped to $40. I'm not asking you to build a system from scratch.
5. An XP service pack only lets you see that RAM. I don't know why you'd have to reinstall Windows 7; anything past Vista SP1 will recognise and use 4GB without prompting.

It must be frustrating for you but I can pay for 4GB in about a day and a half of full time work since $80 is roughly £50. I can buy 4GB of Corsair 1066MHz for £60 and 4GB of 667MHz for £40. It's cheap since a year or so ago I'd have probably paid twice the amount for that.

 

[Dectilon]

That sounds like my computer pretty much. Few, I don't need to upgrade yet

 

[Abedeus]

1. Changing the OS.
2. Incompatability of 32bit programs on a 64 bit OS.
3. No games use 4GB RAM. RAM is not like CPU or GPU power - you have either enough, or not enough RAM. Having more than you should have won't change anything, it will be empty, not used. Better CPU and GPU ALWAYS make your PC/games go faster.
4. 4GB costs about $80, which isn't that little for a 17-year old.
5. Did I mention I would have to reinstall both Windows XP and Windows 7 to actually use that 4GB to the max?


edit: $80 in Poland is 230 PLN. That's a bit, considering I get 30-50 PLN a month.

1. A pain but either resize the partition or get a new HDD and put that on.
2. Sounds worse than it is. Keep your 32-bit OS on another drive and run anything that doesn't work on 64-bit there.
3. Games don't necessarily use 4GB but it's better to have a surplus than to run out. When playing modern games I usually use about 80-90% of my 4GB so I don't consider it a waste.
4. I'm assuming you already have 2GB of RAM so that's suddenly dropped to $40. I'm not asking you to build a system from scratch.
5. An XP service pack only lets you see that RAM. I don't know why you'd have to reinstall Windows 7; anything past Vista SP1 will recognise and use 4GB without prompting.

It must be frustrating for you but I can pay for 4GB in about a day and a half of full time work since $80 is roughly £50. I can buy 4GB of Corsair 1066MHz for £60 and 4GB of 667MHz for £40. It's cheap since a year or so ago I'd have probably paid twice the amount for that.

1. Yeah, new HDD, resizing partition... that's something an average gamer can do, right? WRONG. Average gamer doesn't care about that. As we can see from this thread, where some people don't know what to get from the requirements...
2. Yeah, I already do that. I use Windows 7 and switch to Windows XP when I want to print something from my laptop or do something that doesn't work on W7 (Aion doesn't - ShitGuard gives blue screen of death). And it's troublesome when you are living with family where you are the only tech-savvy person.
3. Like I said, you either have enough, or not enough. Maybe your PC is just clogged with junk, that's why you must use so much RAM.
4. Or I have 2x1GB and I still have to buy for $80.
5. You sure? Still, I would have to reinstall Windows XP, which is my main OS. I use Windows 7 because Prototype works flawlessly on it and some games look prettier.

 

[ILPPendant]

1. Yeah, new HDD, resizing partition... that's something an average gamer can do, right? WRONG. Average gamer doesn't care about that. As we can see from this thread, where some people don't know what to get from the requirements...
2. Yeah, I already do that. I use Windows 7 and switch to Windows XP when I want to print something from my laptop or do something that doesn't work on W7 (Aion doesn't - ShitGuard gives blue screen of death). And it's troublesome when you are living with family where you are the only tech-savvy person.
3. Like I said, you either have enough, or not enough. Maybe your PC is just clogged with junk, that's why you must use so much RAM.
4. Or I have 2x1GB and I still have to buy for $80.
5. You sure? Still, I would have to reinstall Windows XP, which is my main OS. I use Windows 7 because Prototype works flawlessly on it and some games look prettier.

1. Well, I forget that not every gamer builds their own system but it's not exactly hard to install a new RAM stick or HDD. And there's always Google.
3. By "used" I meant the operating system is actively reserving that amount of RAM. It doesn't mean it's all being used right at that moment. As I type this my readout gives 68% RAM usage but opening the task manager and adding up the memory usage there doesn't even account for 40%. Since I can personally attest that genuinely running out of RAM is a pain in the arse I'm quite happy to pay a little extra (well technically double) to go from 2 to 4.
4. You only have two RAM slots? Ouch.
5. Vanilla versions of XP BSOD'd if you had more than 3GB installed but MS released a hotfix that corrected the problem. Reinstalling XP would actually be counterproductive since you'd have to get that patch all over again. Vista can see 4GB and is quite happy with it. I haven't used Windows 7 but are you telling me it's any different?

 

[Abedeus]

1. Yeah, new HDD, resizing partition... that's something an average gamer can do, right? WRONG. Average gamer doesn't care about that. As we can see from this thread, where some people don't know what to get from the requirements...
2. Yeah, I already do that. I use Windows 7 and switch to Windows XP when I want to print something from my laptop or do something that doesn't work on W7 (Aion doesn't - ShitGuard gives blue screen of death). And it's troublesome when you are living with family where you are the only tech-savvy person.
3. Like I said, you either have enough, or not enough. Maybe your PC is just clogged with junk, that's why you must use so much RAM.
4. Or I have 2x1GB and I still have to buy for $80.
5. You sure? Still, I would have to reinstall Windows XP, which is my main OS. I use Windows 7 because Prototype works flawlessly on it and some games look prettier.

1. Well, I forget that not every gamer builds their own system but it's not exactly hard to install a new RAM stick or HDD. And there's always Google.
3. By "used" I meant the operating system is actively reserving that amount of RAM. It doesn't mean it's all being used right at that moment. As I type this my readout gives 68% RAM usage but opening the task manager and adding up the memory usage there doesn't even account for 40%. Since I can personally attest that genuinely running out of RAM is a pain in the arse I'm quite happy to pay a little extra (well technically double) to go from 2 to 4.
4. You only have two RAM slots? Ouch.
5. Vanilla versions of XP BSOD'd if you had more than 3GB installed but MS released a hotfix that corrected the problem. Reinstalling XP would actually be counterproductive since you'd have to get that patch all over again. Vista can see 4GB and is quite happy with it. I haven't used Windows 7 but are you telling me it's any different?

1. Never said it's hard for me, but a lot of people I know wouldn't know even how to connect a new HDD to computer. Really.
3. Yeah... You must have a ton of junk on your PC. My Windows 7 uses at the moment only 33% of RAM. That's ~600MB RAM out of 2048MB. And XP uses only 400MB. So you really have too much stuff opened at once.
4. Yes, because not many people buy motherboards for 4 slots or more. Because they would have little use to me - what, 8GB? 4x1GB? 4x512MB? Pointless.
5. Uhm. What? XP just doesn't see more than 4. Never heard about BSOD'ing, only that it could see about 3.25GB, wasting 0.75GB of the rest. And more if your GPU has more RAM than 256 (I'm sure it has).

You are missing the point - no game REQUIRES 4GB, even Crysis, a well-known resource hog. I know it's for Vista, which shouldn't be used by anyone, so Windows 7 will probably have lower requirements, but still that's a lot.

 

[ILPPendant]

1. Never said it's hard for me, but a lot of people I know wouldn't know even how to connect a new HDD to computer. Really.
3. Yeah... You must have a ton of junk on your PC. My Windows 7 uses at the moment only 33% of RAM. That's ~600MB RAM out of 2048MB. And XP uses only 400MB. So you really have too much stuff opened at once.
4. Yes, because not many people buy motherboards for 4 slots or more. Because they would have little use to me - what, 8GB? 4x1GB? 4x512MB? Pointless.
5. Uhm. What? XP just doesn't see more than 4. Never heard about BSOD'ing, only that it could see about 3.25GB, wasting 0.75GB of the rest. And more if your GPU has more RAM than 256 (I'm sure it has).

You are missing the point - no game REQUIRES 4GB, even Crysis, a well-known resource hog. I know it's for Vista, which shouldn't be used by anyone, so Windows 7 will probably have lower requirements, but still that's a lot.

1. (This is getting a bit silly isn't it?) Sorry, that was my bad phrasing. I know such people too. I also know they aren't stupid and if they took the time to actually understand the inner workings of a computer they'd be able to install an HDD within an hour.
3. I don't. Reserved =/= used. If I have tons of junk using up my RAM why doesn't it show in the task manager?
4. When I built my first computer I used 4x512MB because they were basically all I could afford.
5. If you try to run unpatched XP with more than 3.2GB of memory (including GPU as you say) then it'll BSOD. (This caused me no end of grief when I was rebuilding my system after a power surge.) They fixed that in a patch. Later versions allow it to see the extra RAM, but it still can't use it.

I'm well aware that no game requires 4GB, but we aren't supplying RAM to just the game, we need to support the operating system and other programmes like a firewall and antivirus. That can total up to be worryingly close to (possibly even above) 3GB and it certainly exceeds 2. No game is larger than 20GB but that doesn't stop people selling 1TB hard drives, does it?

You know what I think is wasteful? The 6GB that you see on the new i7 boards. Supposedly DDR3 is being sold in blocks of 3GB but it's really just a gimmick designed to charge people for 2GB they will never conceivably need in their computer's lifetime (unless they use their computers for real work and not just dicking around... and that real work involves painting the Sistine Chapel 1:1 in Photoshop).

 

[odisious15]

For $850.00 I was able to build a system with;
-8 gigs of DDR3
-AMD Phenom II x4 955 3.2 ghz.
-640GB HDD
-Nvidia 9800GT 1024MB

Plus a really nice modular PSU and an aftermarket heat-sink along with a host of other fixins.

It's really not hard to build a PC that can take anything you can throw at it. I built my first PC when World of Warcraft was released, for about $780 and it could barely run the game at 1024x768 without constant hitching, but now the cost to performance ratio has completely changed with parts delivering far more power than ever before and yet also manage to be cheaper than past generations of hardware that were many times more expensive when they had been top of the line.

So really there isn't much reason to hold back on certain software/hardware requirements so long as the game benefits and takes advantage of the increased demand on hardware minimum specs.

 

[The Mess]

Gak.

Where's the love for the old, but rather common (at least according to the valve hard-ware surveys) single-core machines?

Then, I did spend the money I could have used for up-grading on tramping gear.
/shrug

 

[duckfi8]

yikes

 

[EvilMaggot]

meh i can run that game with no problem xD

My system...

CPU Type: AM2+ Phenom II X4 940 3 GHz
Motherboard: AM2+ ASUS M4A79 DELUXE
RAM: 2x2 GB Corsair DDR2 SDRam
Soundcard: Creative SB X-Fi
XtremeMusic/Platinum Sound Card
Graphicscard: NVIDIA GeForce XFX GTX 260 XXX (OC edition) (896 MB )
HDD: 1 TB Barracuda 7200 RPM, 300GB Maxtor 7500 RPM, 320GB Seagate 7200 RPM
OS: Windows XP SP3
Moniter: Hanns-G 22" inch (5 ms) 60Hz - Running games in 1680x1050x32

 

[Azhrarn-101]

Well, at least it is being civilised with the HDD usage. Age of Conan easily hogs 35GB on a fresh install, let alone once you patched the whole thing up.
20GB I can live with, the rest of the system requirements are an issue for my current PC though, I exceed the minimum, but not by a great deal.
Most games these days run horribly at minimum anyway, optimisation seems to have been abandoned for more titles churned out.

 

[HeartAttackBob]

For $850.00 I was able to build a system with;
-8 gigs of DDR3
-AMD Phenom II x4 955 3.2 ghz.
-640GB HDD
-Nvidia 9800GT 1024MB

Plus a really nice modular PSU and an aftermarket heat-sink along with a host of other fixins.

So really there isn't much reason to hold back on certain software/hardware requirements so long as the game benefits and takes advantage of the increased demand on hardware minimum specs.

While I too am a card carrying member of the PC Gaming Master Race, we must remember that one could buy an xbox360 And PS3 for right around that price. For those strange people who don't live in front of their computers, or who have a more limited budget, it can be a tough choice.

It is interesting and a little ironic to me that the "recommended specs" for Dragon's Age are almost exactly the specs of the machine I built in April 08 (spent about $1000). They're not quite pulling a <a href=http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/10/15/ target=self>Crysis on us, but the game still asks for some relatively new hardware.

 

[ThaBenMan]

Aaaaaand that's why I'm getting the Xbox version... well, and also because I always get the Xbox version.

 

[jamesworkshop]

I don't see those specs as being that high

 

[ILPPendant]

While I too am a card carrying member of the PC Gaming Master Race, we must remember that one could buy an xbox360 And PS3 for right around that price. For those strange people who don't live in front of their computers, or who have a more limited budget, it can be a tough choice.

It is interesting and a little ironic to me that the "recommended specs" for Dragon's Age are almost exactly the specs of the machine I built in April 08 (spent about $1000). They're not quite pulling a <a href=http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/10/15/ target=self>Crysis on us, but the game still asks for some relatively new hardware.

I really think a PC can pay for itself over time because it's so much easier to pirate stuff on a PC than a console. Wait, that's a bad standard to apply.

You can run office software on a PC and playing a game is so much easier with a keyboard and mouse. Piracy has nothing to do with it. Erm... yes.

 

[Fightgarr]

Aaaaaand that's why I'm getting the Xbox version... well, and also because I always get the Xbox version.

Yes, and we have to hope that our dependence on our consoles will not lead to a game that doesn't control well. 'Tis my only fear with this game.
That and I'm pretty terrified of orges.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Looking around the internet I'm actually surprised at the "I can run it" to "console version for me" ratio. Looks like more people have beastly machines than I thought.

More people are having trouble with the hard drive space it seems.

I'm even seeing some people call these "modest specs."

They must be looking at the minimum.

Whatever, who cares if we have to run it on "medium"?