Slashdot Mirror
How are System Requirements Determined?
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?"
They make an application, then try loading it on progessively lower spec'd machines. When they finally get to a machine that it doesn't work on they back up to the last one and call that the requirements.
Companies usually take into account two things when setting requirements.
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.
They'd rather set the requirements higher than necessary because there are so many variables involved. Slow video card/fast processor, fast video card/slow processor, different speed disks, memory, etc. So, they set them at a somewhat reasonable level so that not too many people will complain when they find it too slow on their computer.
Ocham's razor: The simplest explanation is probably correct. (ie yes, they are trying to flog more hardware).
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Henry Ford
I've got an amd athlon 750mhz with 512ram a 128 geforce4ti4200 video card and i haven't found a game that won't run fine on it. point: compter reqs are higher because they don't want a million people calling in on why their box doesn't run smoothly.
-green is the color of the rainbow
Performance for a game like UT really comes down to the video card. If you've got a video card that's significantly more powerful than what the average 733MHz (or 1GHz) system does, you'll be fine. ...and if you aren't, get with the times; you could replace the mobo/cpu/ram for $200 and get something far nicer anyways.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
For younger audience games there is usually a threshold spec that marketing determines that most kids have access to, say that it is a 233 MHz machine. Then the developers have to simply make sure that the game runs on that. I don't think that's how UT games determine the minimum spec though, but they would test the game on a large number of PC configurations to look for compatibility bugs so they probably get their spec from that.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It could be higher polygon count models are used in the new version.
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.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The last time I did much in the way of gaming, it was Quake I on a 486. It claimed to require a Pentium, but no speed minimum was given. My 40MHz 486 had a full speed bus, whereas all the Pentia were clock-multiplied. Hence, bandwidth to the VLB video card was faster than any Pentium you could find. The game ran perfectly.
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.
As far as I can figure, minimum specs are a bunch of bollocks, made up by marketers in collusion with hardware manufacturers. This goes for operating systems as well as games. Case in point:
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
Lier! Everyone knows that nothing runs Halo just fine!
At least it doesn't run as bad as Deus Ex: Invisible War.
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.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo