Mirror's Edge Catalyst PC Specs Are a Little Steep

[Metalrocks]

i dont get it why so many make a fuss about the RAM. yes, we do get crappy ports, i have my fair share of them as well. but it clearly says "recommended". which means thats what they suggest you should have to run the game smoothly. it doesnt say "you MUST have". thats how i see the specs.
minimum: to be able to play the game on low settings.
recommended: to be able to play on max settings.

hell, i still remember on my old rig when mass effect 2 came out. the GPU they have mentioned in the minimum was exactly the one i had, and i was still able to play the game on max settings with surprisingly fast loading times and smooth gameplay.
so dont take these specs too seriously. when i think of it, i guess i worry over nothing that they suggest that win 10 is recommended to play. im sure i can play just well on win 7.

 

[Something Amyss]

A 4-5 year old low-mid range card and low end 4 core cpu on the minimum requirements is steep?

Yeeeeeeeeeah...that's the thing. I'm running an old processor and a better graphics card and I've been thinking how badly I need to upgrade.

And then I see this as "steep" and I'm like "wait, what?"

If this is considered demanding, I'm concerned about the state of PC gaming, honestly.

Honestly, I think it's freaking great.

 

[CrystalShadow]

A 4-5 year old low-mid range card and low end 4 core cpu on the minimum requirements is steep?

Yeeeeeeeeeah...that's the thing. I'm running an old processor and a better graphics card and I've been thinking how badly I need to upgrade.

And then I see this as "steep" and I'm like "wait, what?"

If this is considered demanding, I'm concerned about the state of PC gaming, honestly.

Honestly, I think it's freaking great.

Meh. Depends on what you want from it.
The upside is old computers can keep up with stuff for a long time.

The downside is it kinda means people aren't trying to push any boundaries with anything.
Which implies a degree of technological stagnation.

Sure, technology isn't everything, but if no-one even tries, nothing ever changes, and we might as well stop making new hardware designs, because what's the point?

 

[Remus]

... Eh?

Spoiler: stuff

My now 6 year old desktop system, while probably unable to run this still comes surprisingly close to those specs.
If this is considered demanding, I'm concerned about the state of PC gaming, honestly.

Then again, only about 1 in 100 games no longer seem to run on that same 6 year old system.
And before you ask, no it wasn't a top of the line most expensive parts available kind of build either.
Core i5, and 5770 is hardly high end parts. It's the upper bounds of mid-range for that era.
But the thing is, past that point you easily double or triple the cost, (or worse)

In any event, PC gaming has always been expensive if you want to keep up with the mainstream AAA titles.
Or at least, that was absolutely the case from about 1995 to 2005 or so.
After that... Things got a little less predictable, especially since consoles started dictating what high end games looked like, which really wasn't the case before then...

Welcome to the club. The old OCed ATI 5770 is STILL playing games. I played Witcher 3 on it.

PC Gaming is cheaper than console gaming.

To be fair, it IS basically the best graphics card of that generation. XD
Right when the AMD/ATI merger had just happened, and they were still messing with the name. (my card mentions both AMD and ATI).

Best Price/performance, and best performance/watt of the era.

Also makes me laugh watching fanboy arguments about AMD using too much power.
Not because it isn't true at the moment, but because it's presented as though it's some kind of truism that is a permanent fact of life.
(Eg. They imply that it's something that always has been, and always will be, when I have explicit evidence of that not being true in the system I'm using right this second. XD)

Well, yeah. Anyway, the fact that I had a midrange system and basically only feel like I need to upgrade 6 years later...
Just shows it doesn't it.
For that matter it's really only VR that is making me give major thought to an upgrade...

Yeah. PC gaming is just so crazy expensive, huh. XD

The power usage in comparison to the price differential is largely why I decided to go AMD this gen. I looked at the titans then at similarly powered AMD cards. My AMD card was $500 cheaper. I doubt I'll ever make that difference back as a loss from power expenditures. And even if I did, how would I know?

 

[Something Amyss]

Sure, technology isn't everything, but if no-one even tries, nothing ever changes, and we might as well stop making new hardware designs, because what's the point?

I'm just not into dick-waving contests. This isn't about nobody trying, it's about no need for absurd requirements. The hardware wars do more to benefit those fanboys you hate talking to than they do the actual advancement of gaming technology in any meaningful sense. They advance hardware for hardware's sake, not for the actual benefit of gaming.

 

[CrystalShadow]

... Eh?

Spoiler: stuff

My now 6 year old desktop system, while probably unable to run this still comes surprisingly close to those specs.
If this is considered demanding, I'm concerned about the state of PC gaming, honestly.

Then again, only about 1 in 100 games no longer seem to run on that same 6 year old system.
And before you ask, no it wasn't a top of the line most expensive parts available kind of build either.
Core i5, and 5770 is hardly high end parts. It's the upper bounds of mid-range for that era.
But the thing is, past that point you easily double or triple the cost, (or worse)

In any event, PC gaming has always been expensive if you want to keep up with the mainstream AAA titles.
Or at least, that was absolutely the case from about 1995 to 2005 or so.
After that... Things got a little less predictable, especially since consoles started dictating what high end games looked like, which really wasn't the case before then...

Welcome to the club. The old OCed ATI 5770 is STILL playing games. I played Witcher 3 on it.

PC Gaming is cheaper than console gaming.

To be fair, it IS basically the best graphics card of that generation. XD
Right when the AMD/ATI merger had just happened, and they were still messing with the name. (my card mentions both AMD and ATI).

Best Price/performance, and best performance/watt of the era.

Also makes me laugh watching fanboy arguments about AMD using too much power.
Not because it isn't true at the moment, but because it's presented as though it's some kind of truism that is a permanent fact of life.
(Eg. They imply that it's something that always has been, and always will be, when I have explicit evidence of that not being true in the system I'm using right this second. XD)

Well, yeah. Anyway, the fact that I had a midrange system and basically only feel like I need to upgrade 6 years later...
Just shows it doesn't it.
For that matter it's really only VR that is making me give major thought to an upgrade...

Yeah. PC gaming is just so crazy expensive, huh. XD

The power usage in comparison to the price differential is largely why I decided to go AMD this gen. I looked at the titans then at similarly powered AMD cards. My AMD card was $500 cheaper. I doubt I'll ever make that difference back as a loss from power expenditures. And even if I did, how would I know?

Yeah, pretty big gap huh. XD

I mean, $500...

Even if your electricity is $0.40 per kwh, which would be atrocious, the power difference surely can't be much more than 200 watts at the upper limit.
So... That's what, running your GPU at maxed out capacity for 6250 hours? Well, give or take quite a lot given how rough I'm being with the calculations, but that's kind of an upper end estimate of how long it'd take with especially expensive electricity, and a rather extreme estimate for the difference in power used...

260 days of using your GPU at max power, 24/7

And if the electricity cost is halved it's double that. If the power difference is halved it's also double that.
In a more likely appraisal it pushes closer to 3 years of continuous max-power usage.
So... 2-5 years of more typical use maybe, to make up the difference?
Possibly?

Yeah... That's not really worth worrying about too much really, is it. XD

 

[CrystalShadow]

Sure, technology isn't everything, but if no-one even tries, nothing ever changes, and we might as well stop making new hardware designs, because what's the point?

I'm just not into dick-waving contests. This isn't about nobody trying, it's about no need for absurd requirements. The hardware wars do more to benefit those fanboys you hate talking to than they do the actual advancement of gaming technology in any meaningful sense. They advance hardware for hardware's sake, not for the actual benefit of gaming.

That's debatable. I mean, yes, in the short term that's absolutely true.
But games didn't get where they are with nobody trying to push technological limits.

Someone occasionally has to push the boundaries or the whole thing stagnates. - that may seem silly now that your average game is throwing around millions of polygons with tons of textures and a whole heap of graphical effects...

But remember that sprites, and scrolling 2d backgrounds and parallax effects were once so difficult to get running on the available hardware it was considered a miracle if you could implement them.

Getting a 3d environment to work at all even if you were faking it strained PC's to breaking point when Doom was released.
(and doing it properly later when quake happened was the same story).

What is taken for granted 10 years later, was a monumental effort of software design and ever more powerful hardware at the time it was first seen...

If it didn't matter whether anyone was trying to push at the limits of what's possible, we'd all still be playing pong.

The hardware that makes this possible may seem like a pointless 'dickwaving' exercise at the time, and the actual games that pioneer the new stuff everyone copies might be completely terrible, especially in hindsight...
But it still matters long term.

And if people stop trying, everything stagnates...
Which, arguably is somewhat true since these days actually pushing technical boundaries dramatically is too expensive for most developers regardless of the state of the hardware available...

Maybe it doesn't matter, but that almost no games actually even try and push the existing high end hardware all that much is not particularly a good thing in the long term.

Though in the end it seems worse than that, since we almost get the opposite sometimes - exploiting high-end hardware not to push any boundaries, but just so you can be much lazier with optimisation...

Well... Whatever.

 

[RicoADF]

Meh. Depends on what you want from it.
The upside is old computers can keep up with stuff for a long time.

The downside is it kinda means people aren't trying to push any boundaries with anything.
Which implies a degree of technological stagnation.

Sure, technology isn't everything, but if no-one even tries, nothing ever changes, and we might as well stop making new hardware designs, because what's the point?

The problem has been that there has been nowhere they could go. Graphics have basically hit their practical limit. Sure we 'could' make it look more realistic (eg: GTAV and how great it looks) but it eventually gets to the point that the time and costs to do so are so high that it's not practical for anyone other than the big players like EA/Rockstar/Activison etc.

Thats why I'm more interested in VR, while I wont get it yet I do want to grab it eventually as I see it as the next route of progress where even the smaller devs like SCS Software a chance to compete without having to face an unrealistic budget.

That said, my ~4-5 year old PC can take on the recommended specs and has yet to find a game it cannot run on max/ultra. I'm starting to wonder if the system will physically die of old age before games are able to push it to its limits >.>

 

[Zydrate]

This computer is only two or so months old, so I'm probably good to go.
Going to wait for gameplay footage though. I wasn't very good at the first game.

 

[Something Amyss]

But games didn't get where they are with nobody trying to push technological limits.

A point literally nobody is arguing, far as I can see. I'm certainly not. There's a real person typing this right now and you seem more interested in addressing her pasture proxy, Something Strawmyss. I don't get it, but I'm taking it there's no conversation to be had here. This sort of response is in "fanboy" territory, so maybe just think about that the next time you talk about how you despise conversing with them.

 

[CrystalShadow]

But games didn't get where they are with nobody trying to push technological limits.

A point literally nobody is arguing, far as I can see. I'm certainly not. There's a real person typing this right now and you seem more interested in addressing her pasture proxy, Something Strawmyss. I don't get it, but I'm taking it there's no conversation to be had here. This sort of response is in "fanboy" territory, so maybe just think about that the next time you talk about how you despise conversing with them.

Let's not go there OK? XD

'cause, I mean, your prior response wasn't much better than what you're now accusing me of in terms of how it relates to what I said.

So...
No. There isn't that much else to say, especially to that kind of remark.

 

[Something Amyss]

EDIT: never mind. I'm not going to bother.

Ummm...OT: Well, can't say I care whether I can meet the system requirements because the first one made me nauseous, but I was curious.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Spoiler: Sigh. I don't even know anymore. This isn't worth reading, but I didn't quite feel like deleting it was an appropriate response either.

'cause, I mean, your prior response wasn't much better than what you're now accusing me of in terms of how it relates to what I said.

Well, no, I actually addressed what you said. In fact, you repeated the same point again after I already said it wasn't a point being contested. The fact is, you've presented a false dichotomy in which the lack of overall PC requirements (which is what this represents) is opposed by nobody ever pushing boundaries. The two aren't even really related, unless Mirror's Edge represents the sum of gaming development. It doesn't. There are games on the market with "steeper" requirements, so the argument is invalid.

My prior response was on-target. Please don't pretend otherwise in order to indicate we somehow did the same thing. I addressed you. You ignored me, and did so three times now. And that's your right, I guess, and I guess there is nothing more to say (since you appear to only be interested in repeating the same false dichotomoy). But don't misrepresent me in the process. That should be a warning sign. Though, honestly...I don't know what else I expected.

I disagree that your reply addressed anything.

I repeat myself when I feel like I'm being ignored, or having what I've said brushed aside.
So...

What else do you want from me? You brush aside what I say and now claim you didn't, and are accusing me of misrepresenting you to boot.

But I'll re-read the whole thing then shall I?

- I say I'm concerned about the state of PC gaming if this is considered demanding.
- You state what can only be taken as a complete contradiction of that opinion 'I think it's great'.
- I elaborate about why I think it's a bad thing. (technological stagnation, people not trying to push any technical boundaries)
- You brush aside my point and forward an unrelated point that is neither here nor there in relation to what I said, beyond, again, being flatly dismissive
- I elaborate further, because you seem so dismissive of what I've said.
- You claim it's a point nobody is making except it's the point I WAS MAKING, and one you seem to be trying to dismiss without addressing in the slightest

...

I mean, are you being serious here? Because it's kinda ridiculous that you brush off my argument (the only one you could possibly be responding to in the first place, otherwise you can't meaningfully have been addressing me specifically), and then come up with a pretty much unrelated point as a response, and I'm the one making strawman arguments?

I mean, seriously? I can't even begin to understand how you came to that conclusion.

Well, whatever. This is so far beyond my comprehension I might as well not even pretend I understand it anymore.
Clearly I underestimated the severity of my deficiencies.

I have no idea what's going on anymore.

 

[Weaver]

16 gigs of ram and the install size is 25 gigs lol. What, do they need to load 2/3rds of the game's assets into memory or something?

For the record I meet recommended specs, but it simply doesn't look like a game that demand's that kind of power.

 

[Rednog]

Next gen sprinting vision?

While you're joking, I have a sneaking suspicion that the running aspect of the game might indeed be the culprit, constantly having to draw a bunch of high fidelity objects while moving quickly can be insanely taxing unless one pulls a lot of camera trickery. Having the computer do it raw with no alleviation will just shit on the hardware. Hell it's one of those issues that plagued a lot PC players when it came to Rage, a lot of people had acceptable specs to run it, but it kept redrawing the entire field of view any time the camera moved and it just brought so many systems to their knees.

 

[cikame]

That optimization though.
For a game that looks roughly identical to its previous release, this sure is insane.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I think I see what EA are actually doing with this game, specifically, these specs. When the game is released, and people complain that is runs horribly, EA will say that the gamer's computer doesn't meet reccomended requirements. The idea being that it's our fault. They saw what happened with Arkham City, and this game is their Arkham City.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

It doesn't really say much about the game's optimization. Dishonored recommended a minimum of a GTX 460 but runs fine on an 8800GT. Serious Sam 3 recommended a GTX 580 but I got pretty high settings at 60fps and 1080p on my old GTX 550Ti. Currently, Dark Souls 3 has the same CPU and GPU requirement as this and, though the port does have its issues, you can run it fine with a 960 and an i5 at high and (mostly) 60 fps, 1080p even if you aren't totally maxing it out.

These requirements could be for running it absolutely maxed at 1440p without ever dipping below 60 fps (or even 144) or they could be for getting console performance at console settings or they could just be a bunch of random specs plucked from their arses.

Wait for benchmarks is what I'm saying.

It totally could run like a pile of wank for no reason though.

 

[Callate]

I'm not quite sure how they got from a 6 GB minimum to a 16 GB recommended spec. Usually, these things go up in nice, even intervals.

(Although I'm guessing there's almost no one out there with 12 GB of memory in their computer.)

More to the point, it makes one wonder how the consoles will run such a thing without putting it into a window the size of a postage stamp.

My current computer meets the minimum, except for the OS. My next will meet the recommended spec. They just need to make the case that I should care.

 

[Valiance]

Well.

I'm in the beta and I'm getting a constant 60FPS with a mid-range i5 and a GTX760.

My other PC is a Phenom IIx4 965BE with a Radeon 6850 HD (6+ year old card) and for testing purposes, I tried it on there. ~40-45 fps with the same settings, but with some tweaking of graphics options (specifically, lighting and shadows, and not playing on "ULTRA") it also runs at 60fps at 1920x1080.

I will admit, frostbite 3 engine is much more demanding than the modified Unreal Engine 3 engine that the original ME ran with...

And yes, it's pretty, but it's not pretty enough for me to justify losing the 144fps@144hz that I can play the original with.

Going from 144fps to 60fps is a big difference, but not as bad as going from 60 to 30, haha.

Anyway, yes, the requirements might seem steep, but you really don't need the recommended for the game to be playable and enjoyable (I would suggest 60fps being your goal rather than the highest graphics settings, due to the fast nature of the game)