Regarding NWN2, Mr Sawyer says....

[Sae]

Edit: Nevermind.

 

[Jed]

The epic flames on these boards when we all discovered how shitty the first game was.

 

[obediah]

a 2.4 ghz processor? a 3.0+ ghz processor? The days of that being meaningful are long over. Especially in gaming, where all the branchless fp-crazy ghz-munching stuff is in the GPU.

 

[FrancoTAU]

There's some shit to complain about with NWN2, but the specs? No offense, but if you can't handle that min spec than you probably couldn't afford the game anyways.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

If you want it to run reasonably well, you should probably have a 3.0+ ghz processor with 1 gig + of RAM and a 7800GT card or better.

Fuck off.

 

[Baphomet]

I think the 7800 is for optimal experience. They're under $300 on Newegg, btw.

My box meets the maximum specs but jesus christ is it loud. I need to work on that. You can tell whether it's turned on when you walk into the house.

 

[Ladonna]

Well Franko, I have other things in life than forking over 500 bucks (or more) for a fucking video card. You know, house repayments and things like that. :shock:

And when I do fork that money over, I like to think the game warrents it. Looking at the screenshots and knowing what NWN1 was like, it seems optimisation is in serious doubt in this game.

I am starting to suspect there is a kickback with the big publishers and the graphics card people going on somewhere...

 

[denizsi]

An old post from official The Witcher forum:

The current version of the game runs smoothly on 2.0Ghz CPU machines with GeForce4 class video card, and at least 256 MB RAM. Of course, the requirements will change during the whole process of development.

It may have well changed but it's something.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I think the 7800 is for optimal experience. They're under $300 on Newegg, btw.

I'd need a PCI-E motherboard... and stuff tends to be a hell of a lot more expensive in places other than Ahmerika.
Given that my computer's done nothing but fuck up in a variety of never-before-seen ways since last Christmas, I think I'm just going to... "retire" it.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Edit: Nevermind.

Okay.

 

[VenomByte]

7800GT for optimal performance? Jeez... that's high.

I have an X2 4400, 2GB ram, and a 7800GTX on a rig I built about 6 months or so ago, and I STILL couldn't max out the options on Oblivion without noticable slowdown in quite a few places.... what were the requirements on that?

Can't be far off what NWN2 is touting. I expect the performance will probably be similar, but if we're lucky so will the optimisations possible with .ini tweaks.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

I also have a x2 4400, 2gb ram and a 7800gtx and i was able to max out Oblivion without any problems. My gtx is factory overclocked, and the ram is high end but you still shouldn't have had any problem.

 

[leavemethehellalone]

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=43178&st=30

"If you want to play NWN2, you'll need a 2.4 ghz processor with 512 megs of RAM and a video card that supports shader model 2.0. If you want it to run reasonably well, you should probably have a 3.0+ ghz processor with 1 gig + of RAM and a 7800GT card or better.

If you're below those specs, you're going to have to belly up or skip the game. It winds up being a lot of money. To run NWN2 on my home machine, I had to make about $800 in upgrades. I think PCs have much worse upgrading problems than consoles and, in general, I find using consoles a lot more straightforward. I put in the game, turn on the console and TV, and I can get started."

Hmm. He loves his consoles doesn't he?

Perhaps he doesn't realise that devs like Obsidian are the reason he had to upgrade his home computer? After all, without Shader 2.0 and whatever other fluff they put in, how can you be expected to enjoy an RPG?

Where would the immersion be?

Either that, or their rendering engine is bogus as hell. Half the effects they're drawing could be rendered with the NetImmerse engine easily.

I still don't understand why PC devs don't start developing like console devs do. With a PS2, development is usually started from the ground and up. The most basic graphics are compiled to a framerate of 60FPS solid. Then, from there, they add effect by effect, seeing the framerate hit of each one, until it's at 30FPS, which is when they stop adding effects.

Half the time it seems to me that these PC developers just throw alot of shit together and tell everyone what machines they made it on...

I'll tell you this much. If some kid on a 3DFX fan forum with a bizzare collection of voodoo FX chips can get a game like Serious Sam: the Second Encounter to run on an 8MB video card smoothly, you get the freaking point.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Actually, I think NWN2 will work just fine with a 2.0ghz AMD Athlon XP, 1GB of RAM, and a Nvida GeForce 6600.

Those are my specs if anyone really cares.

 

[VenomByte]

I also have a x2 4400, 2gb ram and a 7800gtx and i was able to max out Oblivion without any problems. My gtx is factory overclocked, and the ram is high end but you still shouldn't have had any problem.

My memory is ultra-high performance 2-3-2-5 latency.

It's not that there were any serious problems, but if the grass distance & density were maxed, all shadows & bloom etc turned on, everything else cranked up to the max, the framerate would drop to (IIRC) around 20 or so if I had a few creatures attacking me out in the open. No slowdown indoors or in cities, but noticable in some of the open landscape areas.

 

[Data4]

I still don't understand why PC devs don't start developing like console devs do. With a PS2, development is usually started from the ground and up. The most basic graphics are compiled to a framerate of 60FPS solid. Then, from there, they add effect by effect, seeing the framerate hit of each one, until it's at 30FPS, which is when they stop adding effects.

I agree totally with this, and will take it a step further. This is the one area where console game developers have one over on PC developers: Efficient coding, and maximizing the capabilities as the system matures. A good example would be the difference between Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 9. Regardless of what anyone thinks of the FF series, the appearance and polish of the latter beats the former in all sorts of ways. If PC developers could focus on getting the most out of a particular generation of hardware before moving on to the next big bling, game quality would rise while keeping hardware requirements reasonable across the board.

-D4

 

[Ladonna]

I agree totally. I am guessing that is the way they had to do things back on the C64 and Amiga as well.

Origin used to do what these guys are doing now. Remember back in the early/mid 90's they loved to release games that needed a PC from the future to run it well?

Ooops, forgot Ultima 9....

 

[obediah]

If PC developers could focus on getting the most out of a particular generation of hardware before moving on to the next big bling, game quality would rise while keeping hardware requirements reasonable across the board.

-D4

D4 has a dream! The ludicrosity (wow!) of it amazes me, but it is seductive in it's own little way.

 

[Voss]

Is it? Do they want reviewers to blast them for using the same tired old graphics? I'm sure he'll be able to sell that dream to an industry thats obsessed with the cutting edge.

 

[Sentenza]

and it's annoying that even shitty games are demanding such requirements.

The more shitty a game is, the more it must shine; otherwise how many would buy it? (look at Oblivion! )

Shader 2.0 is ANCIENT.

So tell me, what's wrong with SM2.0 ? Uh? Besides that Ati and nVidia couldn't sell you their latest ultimate ultraexpensive graphix cards...

Sorry mate, but there is no game in hell or heaven worth a 600$ graphics card, even worst if the game graphics is shitty no matter what

Those recomended specs are low considering other games that have come out recently.

No, are the same (or higher in the minimun req.)

But I suppose you guys want every RPG to run on machines you put together in 98, my bad.

Besides that is clearly an exageration, what's wrong with that? Do you sell PC?

 

[Data4]

Is it? Do they want reviewers to blast them for using the same tired old graphics? I'm sure he'll be able to sell that dream to an industry thats obsessed with the cutting edge.

Once again, look at the difference between Final Fantasy 7 and 9. Hell, for that matter, compare just about any later game for a system with the initial releases. Due to the static nature of console hardware, programmers have to figure out ways of making games look better and better without requiring an upgrade. All I'm saying is that it would be nice if PC hardware wasn't so disposable. It's too easy, it seems, to rely on that new video card chipset that uses shader model whatever to make teh shineez when a little programming ingenuity could do it for lower end cards.

I'll even go so far as to say that I bet Oblivion--maxed out-- would be possible on an AMD 2500XP and same generation video card if the programming was as tight as late stage console programming.

-D4