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Ars technica

Minimum System Requirements
• Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
• 2.0+ GHZ Single Core Processor
• 512 Mbytes of System RAM
• NVIDIA 6200+ or ATI Radeon 9600+ Video Card
• 8 GB of Free Hard Drive Space

Somehow, comparisons with Crysis system requirments seem required. Where Crysis was talking about 6800GT as minimum....

Ace Pace wrote:Ars technica

Minimum System Requirements
• Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
• 2.0+ GHZ Single Core Processor
• 512 Mbytes of System RAM
• NVIDIA 6200+ or ATI Radeon 9600+ Video Card
• 8 GB of Free Hard Drive Space

Somehow, comparisons with Crysis system requirments seem required. Where Crysis was talking about 6800GT as minimum....

Compare that to BioShock, which uses the exact same engine, on top of requiring Shader Model 3.0. Sounds like UT3 is going to be a breath of fresh air for those of us not ready to make the Great Step Forwards into the new computing age just yet. I'm pretty alarmed at how fast the power is getting out of hand. My computer is fairly old by now (in computer terms) but I got a midrange graphics card last Christmas. I'm not made of money--and these games have such massive requirements for... what reason? I don't know. Honestly, some of them look pretty nice, but I haven't seem a consummate increase in quality for a while. Now the 'meh' visuals just have more glow, and are crisper.

Thankfully Crysis is using it's engine well, and delivers--and UT3 apparently uses it's engine well, and lets it run on a lower-end system. That's a lot nicer to see.

It's pathetic, but not suprising that Epic can wring more preformance out of their own engine more then anyone else. UT2k4 looking stunning and ran on a Geforce2 on 800x600, which was quite a feat at the time.

Come on now, the 6800gt is 3 going on 4. Graphics cards, like just about every other component, can't be expected to keep up with games for more than 3 years.

InnocentBystander wrote:Come on now, the 6800gt is 3 going on 4. Graphics cards, like just about every other component, can't be expected to keep up with games for more than 3 years.

The graphics component of gaming is really getting crazy though, and the ability to do somethng with that other than have more polys and light specularity isn't yet a tool in most gamedev's boxes. Having full-physics explosions, light bloom, and a zillion polys is just not--to me--an adequate explination in the upswing of computing costs.

Think about it this way: a Wii costs me 300 bucks, is a dedicated gaming computer that all games for it will fit, and can be expectedf to deliver an enjoyable game experience for many years to come. But upgrading a computer can not only be expensive, but difficult on you in other ways, like me needing to get a new motherboard next time I want to get a new graphics card, which means dumping a lot of my other stuff for a while and inconveniencing me in a lot of ways.

I'm all about graphical improvement and such, but I just think that basically giving me Quake all over again, but with realtime raytracing and physics-modelled gibs is not a terribly amazing thing. It's not like they should STOP making games until they come up with the One Game to rule them all, but when I see Bioshock asking for that kind of graphical power--and then seeing what they do with it--I sit back and say "Was that really necessary? Come on now."

If UE3.0 is set on (once again) being super flexible, super capable AND super scalable, I don't think anyone will be surprised.