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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.
since in the case of pretty much every version of Windows, the box requirements are simply to run the operating system, and you'll need a much faster PC with a lot more RAM to actually run today's applications without wincing - and I'm referring to "simple" word processing and spreadsheets, not games.
:-).
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
No, the simplest explanation is that hardly any gamers have processors under 1Ghz, and any game claiming to run on 500MHz or above will be perceived as "old" and "not worth the money" because it doesn't use the capabilities of modern systems.
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A big factor for determining what companies will support is the time+cost involved in QA.
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.
"Hey Sal! The marketing people want to know the minimum system requirements."
"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?"
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.
Goddamn there are a lot of BS'ers on /.
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.