Game News Oblivion sysreqs revealed

[Whipporowill]

I can't really get the new processors not going up in mhz anymore. What's the secret? How do I compare what I have to what I should be getting? How much better is an AMD 64 3.800 than my P4 2.66, considering the mentioned cpu was at 2.8 ghz when overlocked?

I'm feeling old.

 

[aweigh]

It's very simple... an A64 rated "3000" is the equivalente to a P4 3.0GHz, although in reality, that A64 "3000" performs even better than its P4 equivalent in games. Generally A64 CPU's perform equivalent to a P4 with 1GHz more. For example, my A64 "2800", which is 1.8GHz, performs on par with a P4 2.8GHz, which is why my A64 is rated "2800". Get it now?

 

[Whipporowill]

Get it now?

Sure thing, but there's not much logic to it. Especially when sticking to terms that mean different things depending on others. Annoying.

 

[dongle]

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/half%20life%202%20cpu%20scaling_01260560148/6035.png

I still find it amazing that an A64 @ 2G can be faster than the top P4 @ 3.8G. I understand why, it's just amazing.

I wonder where a dual Xeon 2.8 box would fit in that chart?

 

[dongle]

You may begin your "IF THE DEVS DON'T SAY IT, IT AIN'T SO!!!" shouting down now.

What's ironic is despite that being the war-cry on the TES forums 99% of the new info gets mentioned in some magazine or preview first. Only after 20 "official" threads and countless locked ones does a dev pop in and say "um, yeah, that's true".

 

[aweigh]

Get it now?

Sure thing, but there's not much logic to it. Especially when sticking to terms that mean different things depending on others. Annoying.

Well AMD does this because if they advertised their A64 as "1.8GHz!!" then people would assume that it is inferior to the P4, because they're all the way up to 10GHz or whatever. It's the same reason MS titled their new Xbox "360", and didn't go with Xbox 2, because they didn't want people to think it was numerologically inferior to the PS3.

 

[Whipporowill]

Get it now?

Sure thing, but there's not much logic to it. Especially when sticking to terms that mean different things depending on others. Annoying.

because they're all the way up to 10GHz or whatever.

Then why not just fucking say 10 Ghz, instead of a lot of other meaningless garbage?

 

[aweigh]

Get it now?

Sure thing, but there's not much logic to it. Especially when sticking to terms that mean different things depending on others. Annoying.

because they're all the way up to 10GHz or whatever.

Then why not just fucking say 10 Ghz, instead of a lot of other meaningless garbage?

Because it wouldn't make any sense to sell an A64 1.8GHz as "2.8GHz!", so they came up with the PR number (Pentium Rating). So they sell the A64 with 1.8GHz as "PR 2800+", the plus sign, I assume, meaning it's even bettah!!11omg

 

[Hamanu]

If you think that cpu nomenclature is bad, just take a look at gpus. I mean at least AMD's naming scheme makes some sort of sense when viewed in marketing terms, but Radeon X1900XTX? Come on. Or 7800GTX, It started with the 9600XT, which was bad enough, then graduated to the X800 pro, then X800XT and 6800GT. I thought going from 7800GT to 7800GTX was stupid, but ATI's latest offering takes the crown. Next up I imagine we're going to see the XX2800GTXTX(PE)^2.

No doubt it will offer ground breaking performance.

 

[foneco]

Ot, but i found that i need to run all the games I had with a batch file as exec.
That way I disable all background programs while playing any game, therefore not having any cdt's.
I discover that with Morrowind, being playing lately Mtw and Rtw with same solution and probably will do same with any other game.
That and using Non cd's, lol.
It's a simple process, to create and adapt one to a game.
Just copy/past to notepad, change the name of start /w .\medieval_tw.exe by the one You need and run it instead of reg exec.
Ps, I didnt invented any of this so dont assume Im taking any credit I just want to share something that really helped Me playing on My comp.

@ECHO OFF
echo.
echo Stopping all unnescarry processes and services...
echo.
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
taskkill /F /im mysqld-nt.exe
taskkill /im ctfmon.exe
NET STOP "Alerter"
NET STOP "Automatic Updates"
NET STOP "ClipBook"
NET STOP "Fast User Switching Compatibility"
NET STOP "Indexing Service"
NET STOP "Messenger"
NET STOP "MS Sofware Shadow Copy Provider"
NET STOP "Help and Support"
NET STOP "Volume Shadow Copy"
NET STOP "QoS RSVP"
NET STOP "MySQL"
NET STOP "Cryptographic Services"
NET STOP "Network Connections"
NET STOP "Norton AntiVirus Auto Protect Service"
NET STOP "Print Spooler"
NET STOP "Protected Storage"
NET STOP "Remote Access Auto Connection Manager"
NET STOP "Shell Hardware Detection
NET STOP "Symantec Event Manager"
NET STOP "Task Scheduler"
NET STOP "Themes"
NET STOP "Windows Management Instrumentation"
NET STOP "Windows Time"
echo.
echo Starting Mtw...
start /w .\medieval_tw.exe
echo.
echo Mtw...
echo.
echo Re-starting applications...
pause
echo.
START explorer.exe
START"C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 4.1\bin\mysqld-nt.exe"
START ctfmon.exe
NET START "Alerter"
NET START "Automatic Updates"
NET START "ClipBook"
NET START "Fast User Switching Compatibility"
NET START "Indexing Service"
NET START "Messenger"
NET START "MS Sofware Shadow Copy Provider"
NET START "Help and Support"
NET START "Volume Shadow Copy"
NET START "QoS RSVP"
NET START "MySQL"
NET START "Cryptographic Services"
NET START "Network Connections"
NET START "Norton AntiVirus Auto Protect Service"
NET START "Print Spooler"
NET START "Protected Storage"
NET START "Remote Access Auto Connection Manager"
NET START "Shell Hardware Detection
NET START "Symantec Event Manager"
NET START "Task Scheduler"
NET START "Themes"
NET START "Windows Management Instrumentation"
NET START "Windows Time"
echo.
echo Finished re-loading Windows,
pause
exit

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Well, I've already got the Gig of RAM and I could've had the 3 Ghz chip if I'd ditched the TV Tuner card and all the other shit I decided to put in...

... 3 years ago. I'm telling you, where's my dual 3 Ghz Parallel Processor Computer? They've just... stopped. The fastest computer you can buy now seems to be a 3.8 Ghz which is a whopping .8 Ghz faster than the fastest computer you could've bought 3 years ago.

What ever happened to that "double in speed every 18 months" rule?

 

[aweigh]

foneco, I can't believe you do that too! I started executing games with batch files when Bloodlines came out, and I did most of what you do, except I left out the services crap since I used registry entries to disable them "permanently". Also, I used to replace the Win98 shell with TaskManager, it freed up a lot of RAM.

 

[Hazelnut]

* Windows XP

What the fuck does it need XP for? Anyone got any clue?

More and more games are starting to require XP these days and it's pissing me off because I'm happy with 98 quite frankly. It's fast and I don't need/want to replace it with XP just to play games. As long as I have DX9 and up to date vid drivers what the hell is the problem? Something I'm missing here.

Doom3 runs on 98 with a simple hex edit of the executable. Quake4 runs on 2k fine. Both are XP only games apparently.

I've been looking forward to playing OB, and although my PC doesn't meet recommended - it's a bit above min, so XP may well be the only problem I have here. Why are publishers doing this? Support costs or something?

H.

 

[FrancoTAU]

I'd guess it has to do with saving a buck or two by not supporting the older versions of Windows. The thinking on their part is probably that anyone who doesn't have XP yet doesn't have a newer computer that could run Oblivion.

 

[aweigh]

Don't worry man! There hasn't an "XP/2000 only" game yet that hasn't hacked to run in Win98. I think it's impossible for them to actually make un-runnable in 98.

 

[ExMonk]

I rather think the "XP only" policy is intended to save them from the compatibility headache later on: "You said the game would run on 98/w2k!" Makes sense from that perspective. There are far more XP machines in the wild.

BTW, I emailed Pete about w2k compatibility, and he said (1) that Beth is not going to speak to the question of non XP compatibility and (2) if your PC does not have the approved OS or components, you should assume it will not run Oblivion. But again, he is just covering himself here.

 

[Sabregirl]

I'd guess it has to do with saving a buck or two by not supporting the older versions of Windows. The thinking on their part is probably that anyone who doesn't have XP yet doesn't have a newer computer that could run Oblivion.

Well that's wrong headed thinking - my comp is only 2 years old and I can easily upgrade to recommended specs - I installed win 2000 because, it takes up less ram, I hate XP and have found 2000 to be quite stable in my situation. If it aint broke don't fix it.

Beth has been slowly eating away at any potential for me buying their game since day one

-S

 

[FrancoTAU]

I'd guess it has to do with saving a buck or two by not supporting the older versions of Windows. The thinking on their part is probably that anyone who doesn't have XP yet doesn't have a newer computer that could run Oblivion.

Well that's wrong headed thinking - my comp is only 2 years old and I can easily upgrade to recommended specs - I installed win 2000 because, it takes up less ram, I hate XP and have found 2000 to be quite stable in my situation. If it aint broke don't fix it.

Beth has been slowly eating away at any potential for me buying their game since day one

-S

Oh, i know there's plenty of people like you. I'm just saying the mass market that Oblivion is marketing themselves too, it makes business sense to not bother with the older Windows. Probably 95% of them that have a good enough PC to run Oblivion have XP installed. They probably figure the rest of ya using older OS are savvy enough to get it running.

 

[Crazy_Vasey]

Feh. If this is indicative of what the upcoming batch of new PC games are gonna be needing then I'll be bowing out of PC gaming for a while because I cannot afford the shedload of upgrades I'll need. Nor do I feel the need to actually catch up like I used to. It would probably be cheaper to just get the new XBox anyway.

That's assuming that minimum specs aren't the usual slideshow style gaming experience anyway.

 

[aweigh]

There we go again... for the price of that new Xbox you "might as well get" you can upgrade your PC to not only exceed the 360 but go beyond it. It's that kind of thinking that always annoys me.

EDIT: Of course this is assuming you know how to upgrade a PC. Otherwise, get a friend to do it. Or learn yourself.

 

[kingcomrade]

Yeah we here at the Codex are nigh-computer illiterate.

 

[aweigh]

Yeah we here at the Codex are nigh-computer illiterate.

Well I don't see how anyone with even a basic level of computer literacy would come to the conclusion it's cheaper to buy a new-fangled console that hasn't dropped in price yet than do an upgrade.

 

[Miral]

requirements high? requirements are freakin 4 yr old system components.... reccommended is high, but that just shows the range of systems supported by this game. have 4 year old hardware? no problem, you can play on minimum settings. have the top of the line gear? hey, we'll let you get the max out of it!
Jeez, some of you here just complain for the sake of complaining

 

[ExMonk]

Yeah we here at the Codex are nigh-computer illiterate.

And poor. Don't forget about poor. :wink:

 

[HardCode]

requirements high? requirements are freakin 4 yr old system components.... reccommended is high, ...

How well do you think the game is going to run on the "minimum" requirements? I am pretty sure anything to be playable will be the recommended specs. Minimum will run the game, but it will be bullshit.