How are System Requirements Determined?

Posted by Cliff on Friday February 6, 2004 @02:40PM from the picking-numbers-out-of-thin-air dept.

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?"

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fp!!!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-06 14:42 · Score: -1, Offtopic

whee!!!!
Re:First Post by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-06 14:50 · Score: -1, Offtopic

WTF?! OFFTOPIC!! I answered the question directly. How the fuck is that OT?
Re:First Post by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-06 14:56 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Things every poster on Slashdot should know:

1) Moderators are morons like you and me, so what they do is entirely irrational and not worth whining about.

2) Michael 'censorware.org' Simms is an idiot.
IMHO by nsebban · 2004-02-06 22:49 · Score: 0, Offtopic

"How are System Requirements Determined?"

Mostly on drugs :)

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