Kensuke_Aida wrote:

But compare it to Quake IIs though. And indeed, that 24-bit color might have been the problem since it has often been said (criticized?) that Quake II's optimization came from its dithered palette.

Quake2 has no dithered palette. Its optimization is primarily in the surfacecache system, where it caches tiles of mipmaps with lightmaps blended so the light blending operation's not repeated, and just fed directly to the span driver. They also have optimized model animation interpolation with the fixed 10hz rate.

and i'm someone who attempted to put colored lighting into Quake2's software renderer once 😀 and I think doing this process in pure 24-bit color would be faster than beating the CPU cache with lookup tables to do it in 8-bit color

sliderider wrote:

ODwilly wrote:

All of these reported issues with Doom 3's hardware requirements make me really appreciate how good it looked and how well it ran on my original Xbox back in the day 🤣

And considering the XBox only used a 733mhz P3, 512mb RAM and a hybrid GF 3/4 video chip, it's funny how so many people with fast Pentium 4's, more memory and more powerful video cards can't run it smoothly.

Not even 512MB of ram, the original Xbox only had 64MB of DDR. 😳 A fair amount for a console of its time, but a tiny amount by PC standards, especially considering what the rest of the machine's specs are.

You'd also have to consider consoles typically support even further various compressed texture methods to compensate for the weak cache, most commonly textures that just use only 16 color palettes. Same for sound, it's 4-bit ADPCM or bust.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Not even 512MB of ram, the original Xbox only had 64MB of DDR. 😳 A fair amount for a console of its time, but a tiny amount by PC standards, especially considering what the rest of the machine's specs are.

And even this 64MB are shared with the GPU.

Wow. Interesting. Thanks.

So why was Quake II's software rendering requirements more reasonable than Unreal's?

Because Unreal did not have Michael Abrash. The software rendering driver was programmed by Tim Sweeney and I still think that performs decent relative to the provided Glide driver in an older computer. There's other big overheads in Unreal that aren't directly related to rendering, like the whole Unrealscript system and fractal buffer fire.

Quake2 emphasized more on native machine code for extra speed with its game module, it's theoretically faster than Quake overall, although the higher asset demand (large amounts of frames in MD2s, multiple skins, 22khz 16bit sounds) negates those gains.

Kensuke_Aida wrote:

It would be interesting to hear examples of crazy in the opposite. That is to say, games that ran well on systems that had no business being on. Wolfenstein 3D ran remarkably well on my 282 12Mhz, for example.

Hm, i've played Left4Dead 2 a week ago online with a Pentium 4 1.7Ghz socket 423, a Geforce 6800 and 768mb Rambus memory. All i can say is that zombies liked me better!

Well, this would make another interesting thread!

UnrealTournament 2003 has a software render plugin.
http://www.fileplanet.com/124098/120000/filei … ftware-Renderer
Its actually pretty hard to find the download for it anymore, but its still hidden on the remnants of fileplanet.

That also ships with UT2004 and Abrash did actually program that one.

Hey, keep this thread going! I like reading specs pr0n! 😀

Anyway, just saw this on Tom's. An interesting "no minimum specs" policy...

The company also revealed the recommended system specification for the PC version. The list includes a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or Windows 8, an Intel Core i7 processor with four cores or more, 4 GB of RAM and 50 GB of hard drive space. The game also needs an Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 or equivalent with 4 GB of VRAM, a high speed Internet connection and a Steam account for activation.

According to the blog, the company is not producing minimal system requirements. Bethesda warned that it cannot guarantee optimal performance if customers attempt to run the game below the recommended specs. The company also stressed that gamers will need 4 GB of VRAM whether they meet the recommended requirements or not.

source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/evil-within- … rror,27765.html

These Bethesda products... 😵

Wolfenstein3D normally runs only with a 286/VGA or better machine. It runs OK on my 286/12/VGA.
There is a hacked-Version that runs with an XT-Class machine.
The original Development-Version was for EGA-Graphics. Later they changed it to VGA.

I think the EGA-Version should run much better on old 286 or XT-Class machines.

Does anyone have the developmentversion that supports EGA ?

Somewhat related, I have been playing Space Engineers on a P4 system lately. 3.8ghz p4 OC'd to 4.3, 4gb of DDR2 667 and a Geforce 8800GT 512mb. This system makes me regret ever building a multi core rig.

What kind of cooling system do you employ? I mean, that must be like a miniature nuclear reactor. 🤣

A cheapo $15 Coolermaster 92mm HSF from Newegg, Dual 80mm Arctic fans for exhaust and quad 80mm intakes in the front hooked up to a free zalmann fan controller. The hard drive is a 80gb 10k raptor, so the noise level of this thing is amazingly stupid. All things considered it runs at pretty dang low temps.

Did u try an ssd in that pc?

That p4 has one of the worst performance per watt

Nope, only have a single 120gb SSD in my possesion. The Raptor was free and WAY faster than any of the crusty ide and sata drives I have laying around. Despite the high wattage the speed is awesome. If my 8 core system died or was stolen there would not be any rush to replace it with this p4 laying around. Sorry to get off topic, I shall have to post this system at some point haha.

The company also revealed the recommended system specification for the PC version. The list includes a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or Windows 8, an Intel Core i7 processor with four cores or more, 4 GB of RAM and 50 GB of hard drive space. The game also needs an Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 or equivalent with 4 GB of VRAM, a high speed Internet connection and a Steam account for activation.

According to the blog, the company is not producing minimal system requirements. Bethesda warned that it cannot guarantee optimal performance if customers attempt to run the game below the recommended specs. The company also stressed that gamers will need 4 GB of VRAM whether they meet the recommended requirements or not.

Heheh, you think THAT's bad. Check out what it takes to run the new Assassin's Creed game:

64-bit operating system Required […]
Show full quote

64-bit operating system
Required

Supported OS
Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8/8.1 (64bit versions only)

Processor
Minimum
Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.3 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz or AMD Phenom II x4 940 @ 3.0 GHz

Recommended
Intel Core i7-3770 @ 3.4 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz or better

RAM
Minimum
6 GB

Recommended
8GB

Video Card
Minimum
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 or AMD Radeon HD 7970 (2 GB VRAM)

Recommended
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 or AMD Radeon R9 290X (3 GB VRAM)

DirectX
Version 11

Sound Card
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card with latest drivers

Hard Drive Space
50 GB available space

Peripherals Supported
Windows-compatible keyboard and mouse required, optional controller

Multiplayer
256 kbps or faster broadband connection

Supported Video Cards at Time of Release
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 or better, GeForce GTX 700 series; AMD Radeon HD7970 or better, Radeon R9 200 series
Note: Laptop versions of these cards may work but are NOT officially supported.

Yup. That's straight from Ubisoft's own page (http://blog.ubi.com/assassins-creed-unity-pc-specs/).

not exactly crazy when the 2500k was 5 years ago

What the hell are they using 50GB for? For me that's the craziest part of modern day games' system requirements.