Rage Requirements Revealed

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

25 gigs of hard drive space?! This game is gonna be a nightmare to download on Steam. For that much space, the maps should be freaking huge and contain lots of enemies.

Dragon Age had 20GB of memory usage and on average took 8 hours to download. This might be almost a 12 hour download at 512kb/s so if you could get the game on disc I'de recommend it...Unless it plays the Dawn of War 2 card and the disk is useless and you still have to download it from Steam.

holy hell 8 hours?

i feel very sorry for your lots... at one point this past spring i deleted and re installed my whole steam library directly onto my C drive, in which i did 18 games (including dragon age and awakening) in the course of 7-1/2 hours...

Thats only at 512kb/s. DA:O only took me about 3-1/2 hours to download. What internet speed you have?

I have no idea at the moment, when i did that it was back at the dorms and it sometimes would get sketchy, i would do anywhere from 21.1 mb/s to 1.3 mb/s usually, mostly on the lower side but steam confirmed me getting that high a couple times on downloads.

 

[Nexus4]

id is definitely one of the best when it comes to putting out beautifully optimized engines but that video card spec still surprises me. Like Theo Samaritan pointed out, this is literally just a gussied-up 8800 series card as the recommended spec - not minimum, but recommended. That's the baffling part. It's one thing to say that the game will run acceptably on a relatively old card like that, but another thing entirely to say it's the baseline for the "recommended" experience.

It is great from the perspective that gamers with mid-range rigs will be able to handle it no problem, but it also implies that id is abandoning the enthusiast crowd, which isn't all that terribly surprising given its embrace of consoles and mobiles, but still a bit disappointing. Not that I have cutting-edge hardware myself, but I always get a kick out of the way Crysis games are designed to take advantage of the highest-end stuff possible.

And yes, whoever told you that PCs have to be upgraded every six months lied to you, straight up. I bought a used GeForce 7950 back in January 2008 and I'm still using it, although it'll soon be replaced with a GTX 570. The only people who seriously think that PC gaming is more expensive than console gaming are those who just don't have any clue about it.

It's disappointing to me because we have fewer and fewer developers willing to go out of their way to experiment with new technology. Now it seems like it's all business rather than progress. Thankfully we have DICE who are going out of their way to use DX11 to it's full potential with BF3, regardless of the EA shenanigans.

The low requirements is great because that means a lot of people can play it, but the fact that they're not pushing boundaries is disappointing.

Oh, and those people you mention who think PC is more expensive than console, there are a lot of those here... >.>

There is a lot more to PC experimentation than just fancy graphics you know. Why not focus on boundaries in gameplay, rather than visuals? I hate it when people think that all pro's of PC gaming are just visuals.

 

[]DustArma[]

IIRC Carmack himself stated early in RAGE's development that they wanted to make a scalable and easy to develop for third parties engine, he didn't want to focus on tech achievements like they did with all his previous engines, which kind of explains the low system requirements the engine has.

And I'm curious about this, it has been about 8 years since we had a game engine for a major game focused on OpenGL instead of DirectX 9/10/11

And I'm curious about the whole MegaTexture technology being applied to the entire world instead of just the terrain like they did with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

 

[Twilight_guy]

A few people are compiling about how its made for consoles because the specs are low, I bet they are the same people who complain about games not being "optimized" enough and running efficiently.

I don't know why this is news. I don't see this as being ground shaking and I don't see it as being interesting other. Not many people are going to rush out and buy a new PC to play rage. Other people aren't going to be interested in a boring list of specs. I don't know who drools over what the next game's requirements should be but I can't see that being a big enough audience to support this news story.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

To be fair, those cards can still be pretty expensive overseas.

It is great from the perspective that gamers with mid-range rigs will be able to handle it no problem, but it also implies that id is abandoning the enthusiast crowd, which isn't all that terribly surprising given its embrace of consoles and mobiles, but still a bit disappointing. Not that I have cutting-edge hardware myself, but I always get a kick out of the way Crysis games are designed to take advantage of the highest-end stuff possible.

I wouldn't say the specs say that. Maybe they're using the word "Recommended" as it should be used, to list what's needed for a medium settings experience. Seriously, I think all devs should list "Minimum," "Recommended," and "Optimum." It would probably solve problems for everyone.

 

[Metalrocks]

25GB is huge. i sure have enough space but still...
i guess my card is under the min requirement. i have a radeon 3850. but i have a Q6600 intel chip, win 7 32bit version, 3.2 GB ram (even when i have 2x 2GB ram sticks in it. i know, 32bit version of win).
but the thing was also with mass effect 2. my card was under the min, according the requirements, but i still can play this game with everything on high, no lagging or long loading times.

so the rest of my system would be alright but i ma still thinking about to get this game. it looks alright and sounds alright too but not sure. regenerating health....again. getting sick of it.
serious sam 3 is at the moment the game im looking forward to.

 

[Smooth Operator]

25G... that's rather extreme, I guess all files are extracted to full size with the install so the game loads quicker.
Hopefully it's also an indication of the games length

 

[MajorDolphin]

The minimum spec is about what you'd expect but does anyone else think that the recommend requirements seem a tad low? Quad-core CPU and 4 GB of RAM aren't much beyond baseline these days and a 25 GB install is beefy but hardly a deal-breaker in the era of terabyte hard drives, but it's the video card that really surprises me. The 9800 series of GeForce cards have been kicking around for three years, while the HD 5550 is a seriously sub-$100 card. These are really the "recommended" hardware for id's latest and greatest?

*Mutters something about consoles strangling PC gaming development*

Still, these requirements are another thing in the long list of things to not persuade me to not get the game. I'm getting it, the damn thing had better be totally awesome.

Its not the consoles, its Microsofts policy towards cross platform and cross console games.

 

[silverbullet1989]

The minimum spec is about what you'd expect but does anyone else think that the recommend requirements seem a tad low? Quad-core CPU and 4 GB of RAM aren't much beyond baseline these days and a 25 GB install is beefy but hardly a deal-breaker in the era of terabyte hard drives, but it's the video card that really surprises me. The 9800 series of GeForce cards have been kicking around for three years, while the HD 5550 is a seriously sub-$100 card. These are really the "recommended" hardware for id's latest and greatest?

*Mutters something about consoles strangling PC gaming development*

lol rather you say it then me, but couldnt agree more

 

[EHKOS]

Good to hear it's optimized. Gonna run it on my HD 4550. BUT HOLY SHIT 25 GIGS?! That's more than the 18 for Dead Space 2!

 

[Jake Martinez]

ID games are optimized to the max.

Carmack got the game to run on a damn iPhone, after all.

And besides, are low requirements really that bad? Lower requirements mean more people can run it, which means more will buy it. The game also looks damn amazing.

I really don't see how this is a bad thing.

Came here to say this. Basically Carmack is a freaking genius. I'm really not worried about the technical quality of this game's graphics.

 

[onewheeled]

...I only have a Radeon HD 3600 graphics card...

I really need to upgrade that soon, anyway. It came standard with this computer like four years ago. Come to think of it, we haven't tweaked ANYTHING about this computer since we got it. Off to Newegg!

 

[CrystalShadow]

Considering how Rage works, I can't say I'm surprised.

Although... A 4200 minimum specs? Did I miss something? And how is it possible that that equates to an Nvidia 8800?

I mean, a 4200 is pretty much bottom of the barrel from that hardware generation. At what point did that become viable for running anything at all?

Eh. Whatever.

Anyway, considering how Rage works, (I saw quite lengthy videos discussing it not too long ago) it doesn't really surprise me that it isn't a huge strain on the GPU.

Megatextures as a concept aren't particularly GPU intensive, because there's not too many dynamic graphical effects. Performance is almost entirely related to memory bandwidth, because you're trying to load huge textures constantly.

This means the only real thing the GPU has to do is be able to texture fairly simply geometry as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, you need a lot of RAM, and the ability to read data from the hard disk quickly.

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if upgrading your hard disk had more impact on this game than upgrading other parts of your system.

 

[ryo02]

is the eliste pc master race raging at this yet? how dare they make it easy for people to play how else are they goign to make sure they get to feel like they are some how better than everyone else?.

oh well not buying this new anyway going to get it used you dont cut single player content EVER.

 

[General Vagueness]

Maybe they simplified it or it's low-detail or something, or maybe they, you know, actually coded it efficiently, or coded it more for speed than anything else. I'm not up on graphics cards, is there anything of note the recommended ones and their equivalents (if any) can't do that newer ones can?
At any rate I wouldn't be so fast to call this console-centered (or more extreme versions of that), the PC is iD's old stomping ground and if anyone knows the market it should be them. Also those of us that have played their older games, especially recently (there are people playing the original Doom-- still!), will probably not care about the graphics that much.

 

[Still Life]

Also those of us that have played their older games, especially recently (there are people playing the original Doom-- still!), will probably not care about the graphics that much.

Here's the thing: Rage is easily one of the best looking games in the pipeline. The amount of detail in the environments is astounding and it manages to keep the game at a smooth 60 fps on all platforms. ID Tech 5 has also been to designed to be upgradable, so it isn't a stretch to predict DX11 features in future updates.

 

[UnravThreads]

Probably DX 9, which equals console port.

Uh, no. Batman: Arkham Asylum has DX10, Far Cry 2 has DX10, Just Cause 2 *requires* DX 10.

Plenty of non-console ports use just DX9, and plenty of console ports use DX10.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

try picking the last 30 AAA games to come out in the past year that weren't mmo related, see the sizes of those games versus how much stuff they had in them, most AAA games run in the 10-15 gig range

Funny fact: Star Wars TFU I was around 20 GB; from that, 15 GB were cutscenes...

God, I remember that. It was quite a shock to me that it was that large. And then I played the damn thing and was even more baffled. But I guess it makes sense if a lot of it was the cut scenes because heaven knows it wasn't the amazing high res textures that did it. A bad game all round.

What a shame.

Edit: I looked in Steam. It's 25,4 gigs. So even worse.

 

[ph0b0s123]

Probably DX 9, which equals console port.

Uh, no. Batman: Arkham Asylum has DX10, Far Cry 2 has DX10, Just Cause 2 *requires* DX 10.

Plenty of non-console ports use just DX9, and plenty of console ports use DX10.

You have missed the point of what people colloquially refer to as 'console ports'. So let me explain it to you.

If the game has had extra work put in to tailor it for the PC, like higher levels of DirectX support (and Physx for Batman), then the game is not a 'console port', but just a good multi-format game, made to take advantage of what each platform is good at.

And yes there are some games that are PC only but only use DX9. Those to are obviously not console ports due to being PC only.

A game that is multi-format but only uses the same level of features, like DX version the same as the console versions (i.e DX 9) and adds nothing extra to the PC version, is referred to as a 'console port'. And from the requirements above Rage fits that profile.

So Assassins Creed 1 with DX 10 on PC was a multi-format game, but the sequels have been 'console ports'.

There now you know why people only refer to certain multi-format games as 'console ports' and what criteria they use.

 

[Waaghpowa]

There is a lot more to PC experimentation than just fancy graphics you know. Why not focus on boundaries in gameplay, rather than visuals? I hate it when people think that all pro's of PC gaming are just visuals.

I'm well aware that there's more than fancy graphics, I am a PC gamer as well. The funny thing is that all the experimentations with gameplay always end up flat or they don't bother at all. My thing is that developers aren't taking advantage of technology available to them. It's possible for them to create something great gameplay wise while still using the tech. Now if it's a resource issue, then they have an excuse, but this is Id we're talking about. Pretty sure they don't have resource issues.