[Renegade 13]

Atrocities said:
Well I am most upset. Despite having the latest drivers for my Geforce FX5700 Ultra video card... a card mind you that cost me $200.00 a year ago, Quake 4 runs like crap.

Well I must now uninstall the game and send it back to Amazon saying that it won't work with my system despite the fact that it claims it can.

Unfortunately, even if a video card is listed as meeting the minimum requirements, often all that means is that the game will run. Not that the game will look good or run at a decent FPS. What should be done is to state minimum requirements that would make the game run AND be playable. Say, >=15 FPS. But I suppose that would result in lost sales since people would actually know what worked and what didn't...

Then again, you have to remember that there's so many possible combinations of hardware that it's impossible to test the game on every single possibility. So even though the game might run just find on someone else's 5700, they may have different hardware than you, and some difference there may be the problem. It's really tough to say.

On a side note, if you're looking for a new card you can get a 6600GT for $200 Canadian (about $160 American), or a 6800 for a decent price, especially since the 7800GTX 512MB card came out recently. All other lesser cards will of course fall in price somewhat soon. Then again, 160 bucks isn't exactly pocket change. Suppose it depends on your financial situation.

Whew, that ended up long. Sorry.