You Learn Something New Every Day.

Wolfman77 · #1 November 22nd, 2005, 01:05 PM

A lot of software used to tell the minimum and the recomended requirements. Still the recomended was usually closer to the minimum in alot of cases. I do have a few programs that I have run succesfully with less than minimum requirements though, but that was several years ago, and I think they were more consevative in there minimum requirements then. Civ III lists a 400 MHz processor and 128 Megs of ram, but runs fine on my 350Mhz with 64 Megs. Might & Magic IX, however was barely playable and only required 64 megs of ram. I guess it depends on the game a bit as well.

kerensky · #2 November 22nd, 2005, 01:54 PM

Well for example, I jsut got a new laptop about a month ago. 3mghz processor, 128mb video card, 1 gb of ram. It exceeds every single game I own but still some of tehm run slow or crash if I set the graphics setting all the way up.

narf poit chez BOOM · #3 November 22nd, 2005, 02:16 PM

Most of the games I've looked at list minimum and recommended - But then, I don't look at very many.

AgentZero · #4 November 22nd, 2005, 02:55 PM

I've yet to see a game that didn't list both, and I look at a good few. Personally though, I always just look at the Recommended spec and take that as the minumum, since I've always figured that the way minimum and recommended specs get onto a box goes something like:
Devs pass minimum specs to Marketing.
Marketing cuts the specs by 25-50% and puts those down for minimum spec.
Devs find out and raise hell.
Marketing 'compromises' by adding the devs minimum spec in as the 'recommended spec.

Either way, I usually just read the review in something like PC Gamer where they tell you what spec they recommend, so you know what you need in order to run it and have it look like it does on the back of the box.

Raging Deadstar · #5 November 23rd, 2005, 08:01 AM

Personally I just give into the giant monsters like Gamespot and IGN for a couple of minutes.

Sure they rarely list niche games but for new/popular games it's rare I can't find the recommended specs on there.

Renegade 13 · #6 November 23rd, 2005, 11:28 PM

Quote:

AgentZero said:
I've yet to see a game that didn't list both, and I look at a good few.

Just bought Doom 3. It only lists Minimum specs.

luke_slovakian · #7 November 24th, 2005, 06:24 AM

LoL...i just got age of empires 3. I CANT PLAY it!!! it requires windows xp, i love that bloody microsoft company. Oh well i guess i can live without it.

But if u want good card get an ati 9800, its cheap 2:-)...i have 9600 xt and i can run doom3 or half life 2 w/ nothing bad, note at high setting. Friend has 512 more ram n runs at full setting.

kerensky · #8 November 24th, 2005, 12:00 PM

I have found that in general, ATI cards are more stable and run better than NVidia cards. I'm not sure if this is true overall, but I have found this true with like eight different cards.

For example, in my old desktop, I used to have a game that should not have run on the ATI card that I had, but it would run on low settings. A few months later I got an NVidia card that more than exceeded the games requirements, but the game would only run well at low or medium settings.

Phoenix-D · #9 November 22nd, 2005, 02:50 PM

Quote:

kerensky said:
Well for example, I jsut got a new laptop about a month ago. 3mghz processor, 128mb video card, 1 gb of ram. It exceeds every single game I own but still some of tehm run slow or crash if I set the graphics setting all the way up.

Minimum requirements are NOT equal to "I can run it with all the graphics settings turned up"

Also, you have a laptop. This isn't a problem with most programs but games tend to be fussy about certain things often don't like laptops (ussually because they have unusual video drivers).