How are System Requirements Determined? 113
May Kasahara asks: "Seeing as how my Unreal Tournament buddies are considering upgrading to UT2004 soon, I thought I'd check out the system requirements ahead of time. I thought that I'd have no problems, seeing as how UT2004 is mostly just UT2003 with new content, but upon looking up the specs online, I found quite a different story. My PC runs on a 733mHz Pentium III, just meeting the minimum system req.'s for UT2003 (which runs very smoothly on my machine, BTW), but UT2004 requires at least a 1gHz processor for the PC version. Curious, I checked out the UT2003 system specs listed on the official site, and found much the same info-- specs that were quite different from those listed on the retail box in my storage closet.
Naturally, I got to thinking about other games and apps, and what I want to know is: what gives? How accurate/trustworthy are system specs listed on a box? Are they artificially inflated to sell more hardware from companies that these publishers are affiliated with (nVidia in UT's case), or is there a more logical explanation?"
First Post (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:First Post (determining system requirements) (Score:1)
Re:First Post (Score:1, Informative)
Your response did not answer the question of "how system requirements" are determined. A satisfactory post would have included factors such as frame rates and the CPU/GPU power needed to sustain enjoyable frame rates.
determining sys requirements (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:determining sys requirements (Score:4, Funny)
That's interesting... it's very similar to the way they measure the load limit on bridges.
Re:determining sys requirements (Score:1, Informative)
Re:determining sys requirements (Score:2)
Tighten it until it breaks, and then back off half a turn.
Re:determining sys requirements (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that there really is no point where it doesn't work, unless virtual memory is completely exhausted (providing RAM limits, at least). The point where perceived speed becomes intolerable is highly subjective. I don't own any GHz+ computers, but I get by every day just fine. It gets to a point, where all a faster CPU does is speed up compiling, ray tracing, and scientific simulations, until application bloatware catches up to renew t
Re:determining sys requirements (Score:2)
For example, Final Cut Pro 4.x and DVD Studio Pro 2 both say they require a Macintosh with AGP graphics, but a simple edit to one file in each, plus one to the same file in Compressor, and they'll run on a PCI-only Mac as well. I've been running them both on my G3 upgraded to a 550 MHz G4 processor, which is also below the processor speed spec of DSP2 (733 MHz).
UT2K3 had nVidia prom
Why requirements are what they are... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first is the actual requirements. These stem from the specific things that are required by libraries and compiled code. These are things like the class of processor, the operating system, or the DirectX generation supported by the graphics drivers.
The other thing accounted for is the presumed requirements. This sets the lower threshold of performance for which the company needs to account. Few things depend on a specific processor speed, but when a company says X requires a 1GHz Pentium, they are disclaiming liability for when someone runs it with a 766MHz chip.
You may be surprised how much software you can technically get to function on a 486 100Mhz running Window95. You won't be surprised by how incredibly poorly it performs. The company is just trying to avoid having to deal with your complaints when you try it.
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:1)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:2)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:1)
The old pentium 100,120,133 and 166 DO NOT support MMX nor will they support Windows 2000/XP
I have tried to install Windows 2000 on a friends non-mmx P133 , but it works fine on my old P 233 (with MMX)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:2)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:1)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:1)
but jesus christ if you have such a slow system why in gods name are you running windows on it? linux will allow you so much more breathing room!
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:1)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:1)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:2)
Win98? (Score:1)
(How are THG getting their specs for 486es and such, with these arbitrary limitations in place? Is it necessary to modify/hack the Windows installer?)
Re:Win98? (Score:2)
Also, it must have been ME, as it requires a 150, whereas Win98 needs a 486DX-2/66.
Re:Win98? (Score:1)
I'm sure the quake3 test used to run on said p133 with a voodoo banshee at about 10-14 frames per second as well. (With windows 95/98 original)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:1)
There's also QA (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, for a game, some QA dude would have to sit down and play the game all the way through on the "minimum" system just to verify that it works. After trudging through on a 1Ghz system, they probably just didn't feel like it was worth the time to test it on a 800Mhz system or whatever.
For something like MS Windows, there's a vast array of hardware that needs to be tested, and they can save significant amounts of money by obsoleting a generation or two of hardware. Win2000 came with a bunch of "unsupported" Pentium-era SCSI drivers, and WinXP basically dropped anything that was common before the PII days.
Re:There's also QA (Score:1)
Re:Why requirements are what they are... (Score:1)
They'd rather overestimate (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They'd rather overestimate (Score:3, Interesting)
This is an interesting question ... (Score:4, Informative)
I think you could help answer your own question by trying the experiment of buying the game and checking out how well it works on your system. Then let us know, since you've made us curious
That being said, the odds are pretty good that more features mean more code bloat, which mean the need for faster processors and more memory. But since game performance has to be high, and since game customers are likely to complain about poor performance, the fudge factors used to determine performance specifications are probably a lot different from what Microsoft uses for Windows.
To put this in perspective, consider Windows 2000, which ran fine on a 500mhz Celeron with 64MB RAM. Windows XP struggles on a 1.2ghz Celeron with 128MB RAM, and I know this because we have several of both systems. The 500mhz Windows 2000 system will actually outperform the XP box on a clean installation.
What's strange about this, of course, is that there are few substantiative differences between 2000 and XP. There's more eye candy in XP and that's about it. So think about this: A little extra eye candy and you've worse than halved the performance.
Since games are all about eye candy nowadays, that might be a good start at explaining the situation.
Hope that helps.
D
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that so? Just to check how much system requirements really matter, I put XP Pro on my Latitude CP, which at the time was a Pentium 233, 64 meg ram, and a 2 gig hard drive.
It ran perfectly fine. Hardly any noticeable lag, booted up in about a minute. Worked perfectly for me as a desktop machine for the better part of 2 weeks, at which point I got a larger hard drive, and put on Slack and 2k pro.
Point being - I don't know what was wrong with y
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:1)
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2)
That's fine for a system with 128MB of ram.. a web browser or two and an email client without massive swapping but I can't see it working well with just 64MB ram.
Btw, xp was using 122MB of ram after a clean reboot right after the installation. It's amazing how many useless services (and exploitable ones) ar
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2)
When I was in high school, they bought some Celeron 400 systems with 64MB of RAM. They ran either Windows 98 or NT4, and were reasonably fast for regular school stuff like writing essays and web browsing. Shortly after they bought them, they "upgraded" every one of them to Win2K and from that day forward they were dog-as
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:1)
Adriaan Renting.
On a side note, everything except windows XP runs fine on my HP Brio P200/64 MB, Windows XP won't even install. With NT or 2000, you should not try to use more than one program though. (I use it for testin
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:1)
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2)
Of course, there are several services running that I can't disable, and Lotus Notes isn't exactly light on memory either...
--RJ
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2)
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2, Interesting)
They tweaked the hell out NT4 to get it to run in 8MB, and you could really notice how "swap happy" it was even with 512MB or so. W2000 seems to be tweaked for 64MB, and WinXP seems to like 256MB.
Another example of this is Linux 2.6, which is really tuned for 128MB minimum, according to the lkml.
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2)
(glad i never took those mcse tests...)
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2, Insightful)
RAM being the key here - I run Windows XP Pro on an old Sony PIII 450 laptop with 512MB of RAM. It runs fine.
Truly, 128MB is Win98 territory. XP will feel constrained on that, better on 256 and great on 512. Given how cheap RAM is these days I can't think of a reason to havea 128MB box anymore.
If the choice is between a few hundred MHz and a few hundreg MB, always go with the RAM.
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:1)
I havent gotten it to hit the disk for swap either. I have the default XP themes turned off (i.e. running in classic mode), and ram usage is fairly light, around 80 megs or so.
It seems that it automaticly figured that hey, i dont got a great system so lets lighten the RAM usage a bit.
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:1)
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2)
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:1)
Whoa, have to really disagree here. I ran XP Pro for months with 128MB on a Celeron 300 overclocked to 450. Ran just fine.
Now, it did require lots of tweaking. Turned off all the fat in the system especially animated menus etc, use classic folders and start menu, and so forth. Made sure only the barebones services were running, killed things like system restore, automatic indexing etc.
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:1)
My laptop: P4 2.0g, 512mb ram, 40gb disk. Windows XP runs great, but load any memory intensive app and you'll think it's a frickin' 486. Photoshop takes nearly a minute to load (vs about 4 seconds on my desktop).
I can also lock it up easily if I send files over the 1394 network, because of some retarded network 'enhancement' in WinXP where if the disk can't keep up with the incoming stream of data, rat
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2)
I disabled swap on my desktop system (I'm running windows 2000 and I have 768 megs of RAM) and I notice a performance improvement sometimes. Before, if I left Mozilla sitting around minimized, it would take a couple seconds to restore while my hard drive went crazy. Now, since windows can't put mozilla in swap, it restores instantly.
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2)
Your problem is the inadequate RAM or a truly crappy hard drive, not the CPU. You should properly configure your systems before complaining about performance (256MB and 5400RPM, at least). I've seen Windows XP run perfectly well on a <500MHz CPU with 256MB RAM (even with OpenOffice and Mozilla!).
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:1)
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2, Informative)
XP on anything less than 256mb ram is unusable. 512mb ram is the least needed for comfortable system use.
Re:This is an interesting question ... (Score:2)
simple (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:simple (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:simple (Score:1)
Re:simple (Score:1)
Re:simple (Score:1)
Re:simple (Score:5, Insightful)
The REAL truth is even simpler: Game companies will tend to list the lowest requirements which allow the game to run (in at least a playable, if not pretty, fashion) in a relatively low resolution with many - or most, or all - of the graphical details turned down/off. Why? Because the lower the system requirements listed on the box, the more people who will feel comfortable buying the game. This, of course, also leads to many complaints of frame rate chugging on even higher end systems when all the graphical details are turned on/maxed out. "If the minimum is 700 MHz, then my 1.8 GHz will be friggin' awesome!"
Now, that's not to say that you can't run a game in playable fashion with less powerful systems than the listed minimums. That doesn't mean that the minimums are inflated - instead, it means that the game company is being conservative...and that's a GOOD thing.
All depends (Score:3, Funny)
Re:All depends (Score:1)
Re:All depends (Score:1)
Re:All depends (Score:2)
In Windows XP, it's a tab on the shortcut properties, but in Windows 2000, it's hidden somewhere, and I forget where it is (haven't played with a 2K box in a while, as I switched to Linux).
I'm still smokin' (Score:1, Insightful)
...Because all gaming is video card! (Score:2)
I dare someone to do a 'Quake III' test on a machine with a kickass video card, but vary the
Two approachs (Score:2)
The first uses statistics about how is the computer configuration of the possible consumers and try to make the software to fit that configurations (like reducing some default features) or just pretend it fit that minimum configuration (as we see on some OS boxes).
The other is testing the software against real machines configurations until the tester think it's fine playable.
But they don't say in what software envi
Re:Two approachs (Score:2)
It actually ran OK, you could surf the web in IE 3, play Soltaire and draw crooked smilies in Paintbrush. I even splurged and used the red brick tile wallpaper.
Re:Two approachs (Score:1)
Re:Two approachs (Score:2)
Re:Two approachs (Score:2)
Re:Two approachs (Score:1)
Re:Two approachs (Score:2)
the machines they have (Score:1)
Don't forget about their machines. If they upgrade their machines often, it is quite likely that they don't have a machine slower than 1.0Ghz anymore to test with, so they call their slowest machine the minimun specs.
My guess marketing sets the slowest machine based on what they think everyone has, and the company then throws away slower machines.
The above, or any other factor others have noted could be it. Likely a combonation.
It's the GPU (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's the GPU (Score:1)
At work, I ran the Unreal Tournament on a 450 XEON w/ 256MB RAM in software mode on the crappy onboard card (S3?), and it was actually quite playable. Sure a better card would have done wonders, and I know an equivilant PII 450 would not have kept up in software rendering, but I was suprised as hell it ran so well!
As to the original question, it's really a toss up how they determine the minimum requirments, and it v
"playability" (Score:2)
the "recommended" specs (which i see showing up on boxes more and more) are what they have found to be the best for maintaining a "decent" framerate (about 45 FPS or so).
i don't recall where i saw this, but i think it may have been one of the magazines i subscribe to. maybe not. i don't remembe
Sometimes determined by marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
Read some complete hogwash in the comments. (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically the minimum specs should be read as this. If you absolutly have to play the game and can not afford to upgrade then yes you can at least with luck play it at more then 1 frame per second when the moon is full.
The recommended spec mean that if you pc meets it then you can turn some of the options on and it won't be a slideshow. When the moon is full.
Only if you exceed the recommended spec by a mile do you have any chance of playing the game anywhere near the quality shown in the screen shots and the gameplay videos.
As for bitching about it. Well buy a console. They are supposed to all have the same spec so the game will either run or not run. You know the reviewer is playing it on the same machine as you.
PC means constantly having to upgrade to the latest hardware to play the latest games. Or does it? If you still can stand counter stike then your P3 should be perfect. Or do you really need a higher framerate then refreshrate?
So the answer the question, minimum specs are like the fuel milage in car ads, the prices in holiday ads, playboy women. A work of fiction.
Could be better models (Score:3, Insightful)
Urban Terror (the other UT) has higher requirements then Quake3 even though it is the exaxt same engine. They have higher detailed models and texture and possibly modified physics (I don't know enough about the physics though.
Re:Could be better models (Score:2)
The specs are higher, but it's playable on older systems.
Depends on the User (Score:4, Informative)
I ran UT2K3 on a P3 500 quite smoothly btw.
They're random. (Score:3, Insightful)
A few months ago I was going through some old backups, and I found an installation of Checkit from that very 486, which had the benchmarks saved. I ran them on my K6-2/300 with a PCI video card and sure enough, the raw characters per second into the video buffer was lower than the 486's score. When I put the AGP card back in, of course, it was no contest.
That same 486 with 8 meg also ran X11 with fvwm95 without hesitation, contrary to popular dire predictions. At best, "system requirements" are a very rough guess, but I think most of them are totally random. If you've got 386-enhanced mode, pretty much everything else is extra.
Sig Requirements: this message must be processed on a turing-complete machine.
This old Comp (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This old Comp (Score:3, Insightful)
At least it doesn't run as bad as Deus Ex: Invisible War.
Re:This old Comp (Score:2)
Patch it. I installed the game was almost cried. I installed the patch, and it was all joy.
Well, technically anyway
Re:This old Comp (Score:1)
A mystery to me ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have two boxen in my house at present: Toshiba Tecra 8000 Laptop (PII 233, 128MB, but now has 256), and a celeron 500 originally with 128MB, now with 256MB.
On the laptop, I've played Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate I and II, Quake I and II. They were slow, but playable.
On the Celeron (with 128 ram and a TNT2 with 32MB), I've played all the above games without trouble, plus Q3A and UT2k3 at reasonable (25+) framerates, Age of Mythology, Max Payne (I), Black and White, Deus Ex, NOLF, RTCW, Hitman and Ghost Recon (which was damn slow, I'll admit) and a bunch of others. I'm pretty sure all these games had minimum specs above what this box could offer.
The thing that gets me is how different linux distros determine their minimum specs. Lindows requiring a PIII-800? Fedora requiring 196MB? Even winXP isn't that bad...
L
Re:A mystery to me ... (Score:2)
BTW, Mandrake 9.2, which says 64 in graphical, runs pretty well WITH KDE on 96.
Re:A mystery to me ... (Score:2)
Re:A mystery to me ... (Score:1)
L
Do you really have to ask? (Score:5, Funny)
"Uhh, I dunno. We need a 3D video accelerator, and I dunno what else."
"Well, marketing wants it 5 minutes ago, they're designing the box right now!"
"Bah, stupid marketing people. Um, hang on a minute. Fred, how fast is your machine?"
For the ram requirements (Score:3, Funny)
Get the demo (Score:1)
Also, why not just get a new processor. You can get a decent one for under $40 [pricewatch.com] these days. and with a motherboard combo you might get away with something under $80.
The real deal (Score:5, Informative)
You wanna know how they pick the specs for UT2003/4? They get a whole buttload of systems, and they run benchmarks on them (probably several times). The systems that average 20fps are deemed "minimum spec", and the ones that hit 40 are "reccomended". Its that simple. They don't pick them out of a hat, nVidia doesn't hand them to Epic, and marketing doesn't have any fucking input.
As for what you'll want for a system, the video card is definitly the most important piece of hardware for a modern game. Performance is almost directly related to your video card. I've got a Radeon 9700 Pro (128mb), and UT2003 runs about 30-60fps on high detail. Personally, the lowest i'd go is a high end GeForce 3, but for what its worth the game did work on a 16mb ATI Rage card for me (albet at 1-5 fps). Don't worry about the processor too much, just as long as its not holding your video card back a whole lot. The only thing you really gain in UT03 by having a fast processor is A) Fancy physics (ragdolls), and B) Snappy load times. As for how much memory, well, 256 is the lowest i'd want. Any less and you'll get into some nasty swapping issues, which is a killer for performance. Contrary to a previous post, most of your memory isn't used for the OS. IIRC, Windows XP will shrink down to as little as 50-70mb, maybe even less (depending on background programs). UT2003 on the other hand, well, at max detail it can load in more than 600mb worth of data (mostly textures) to your RAM. Fortunatly, RAM is relatively cheap, and the more you have the better. The only other thing you'll want is a broadband net connection. Dialup is playable, but Cable/DSL makes a world of difference. (Plus there are tons of cool mods you'll probably want to download)
Oh, and one other thing... I think one of the reasons the minimum specs got bumped up was due to the addition of the Onslaught gametype. Its like a mini version of BF1942. Big battlefields, vehicles, 32 players... its gonna take more iron to run a full scale war than a 6 on 6 bombing run match. But knowing Epic they've jazzed up all their maps and models as well.
Anyways, my advice to May Kasahara is this: Wait for the demo. The UT community is buzzing with activity right now, as last week Epic announced that the demo would be out within two weeks. The deadline is exactly one week from today (Friday the 13th - heh). When that hits - and you'll know it because when the UT2003 demo was released internet performance dropped all around the world - give it a shot. You'll know then weather or not you need to upgrade, or if you can live with reduced quality and questionable performance.
Happy gaming everyone.
Re:The real deal (Score:2)
Either that, or the next big virus/worm :P
Re:The real deal (Score:2)
Good idea. I'm assuming the guys I play with will probably be doing the demo thing anyway until everyone's hooked up with the game (either that, or play Halo?).
As for the system requirements thing, I have a GeForce 2 installed (which shocks the hell out of the game admin) and 256 MB RAM. I've been wanting to upgrade bot
Re:The real deal (Score:2)
Well, true in and of itself...
You wanna know how they pick the specs for UT2003/4? They get a whole buttload of systems, and they run benchmarks on them (probably several times). The systems that average 20fps are deemed "minimum spec", and the ones that hit 40 are "reccomended". Its that simple. They don't pick them out of a hat, nVidia doesn't hand them to Epic, and marketing doesn't have any fucking input.
This may be true for UT, and it may not. I don't know,
It's not very scientific (Score:2, Interesting)
Requirements are crap (Score:1)
No problemo, I just ran it under Windows 3.1 with virtual memory to fill the gap between required and actual RAM.
Sure the game started up really slow but once it was going, it was fine. The biggest problem I had was that it took up around 80% of my hard disk.
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