System requirements for Beta?
#21
Woo, my new video card arrived by FedEx last night, an ATI 9600XT.

Installation went ok. I had two extra installs and reboots more than necessary, but that was
my fault. BTW, if you've never replaced one before, it's not that hard, even for a relatively
inexperienced hardware person (like me). Remove the old driver, install card physically (the easy part),
install new driver that came with the card and reboot. (There may be an AGP driver/chipset driver update)
Optionally: i) download a newer driver from your card manufacturer's site (I did, was easy) , ii) use overclocking utility to get even more punch from your system (I'll play with this a little).

It was either MongoJerry or Thenryb who was asking how this went - and so far I'm quite pleased with the card and the installation process (frankly, I expected it to be harder, especially given the problems ATI used to have with drivers, but it went without a hitch)

Results from limited testing last night, going from a 7200 32mb card to 128MB 9600XT:
- "Benchmark" using 3DMarks2003 - I went up from 106 to 3443 (wowza!)
- "Call of Duty" demo went from slideshow to "OMG! Now I see why this game is considered to cool. The immersion is now amazing!"
- A few other games/demos of not-quite-new games was similarly VERY impressive
- World of Warcraft... a little better. Things looked nicer, my FPS doubled or tripled (even though I pumped effects to max), but really, the game was the same. It was like getting your old glasses prescription renewed and going from 20/30 or 20/40 back to 20/20, but NOT like a 20/200 person getting glasses. That FPS increase would have been far higher but I was able to pump all the settings up to maximum and increase resolution.

While you might say that's disappointing, this is excellent news! (?!) Well, if I bought the card just for
WoW I would be disappointed, but what this means is that the game 'degrades' for slower cards/systems VERY WELL. My 1.3Ghz P4 and the old card PLAYS JUST FINE, smooth, and looks good, and the new video card plays fine, smoother, and looks better. That's good for people with systems ~2 years old - they should be fine (unless their original video was 'integrated', perhaps).

On another note, I'll echo the comments of other folks on the nVidia cards. The FX low end introduces a NEW level of budget that bang-for-buck is quite nice... just don't expect it to be as good as a card 3x-4x as expensive. The FX5200 and 5600 are underperformers, 5700 Ultra a step up, and the 5900/5950 solid. If you're looking to get a new nVidia, the FX line is a better choice than the MX line. If you're on a budget and can find an old TI4200 that's cheap, it's still a good card.

Charis
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#22
I just thought you should know that you can now get a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro for $172 on newegg.com. I'm pretty sure this is new, because last time I checked (which was only a day or two ago), the same card was $204.
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#23
Pete,May 17 2004, 12:26 PM Wrote:Hi,

I think you missed the point.  The beta is being distributed strictly over the net.  Thus no CD or DVD involved at all.  Thus no requirement for a CD or DVD player, 16X or otherwise.

If they gave that little thought to that one line, why assume the rest is any more meaningful.

--Pete
Actually, according to the EQ2 website ( http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/boa...76514&jump=true ):

Quote:We are not releasing information regarding how the Beta will be disseminated (CD or download) or the file size, as this has not yet been decided

so the CD/DVD specs could be relevant to the EQ2 beta. (Check your facts, don't assume, unless there's something else I missed. ;) )

I'm a little mixed about the issue of low vs. high system specs -- Bliz has always minimized the system requirements, which is good in principle, but IMO D2 with its horribly unresolved and mushy graphics would have been much better off with somewhat higher video requirements from the start.
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#24
Charis,

Thanks for the reply. One of the funniest things that I can see is that my laptop's video card and most recent drivers, have a 3D compatability issue with DirectX. That's right. EVERY driver BUT the 3D driver has a WRL signature. (A driver with a WRL signature merely means that Microsoft has tested and approved the driver for use with DirectX.)

I have yet to go and hit up Microsoft's website to see if they have a version of the driver that may have the WRL, but I'm not going to be holding my breath at all. The worst think that can happen is that my system will blue screen when I'm in the middle of a fight, reboot, I log back on, and hope that I'm still alive. Regardless though, I'm still able to have fun, and I don't blue screen that often.

Glad that you have what sounds like a butt-kicking video card now. Enjoy it.

-SaxyCorp
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#25
My machine:

Pentium M 1.3
512 MB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon, 16MB

It runs very smoothly normally (feels like 15+ fps, though I haven't actually checked). If I enter an area with lots of players (stormwind, undercity, etc) it starts to chug (disk load/vm mostly, but there's probably a gfx component too), and performance is thereafter kinda sucky (memory leak, probably be fixed by release, but not sure what, if anything, they'll do about performance hit when there's a lot of players). It's kind of hard to play with a touchpad, but I'm getting the hang of it.

Water graphics are messed up, whenever I go near water, random polys start flying around all over my screen.

Everything is turned off, or set to lowest, except for clip plane, which is set 2 ticks from the bottom.

I have a friend whos performance was absolutely atrocious with 256 MB (<1 fps when in large cities). This was fixed by putting in 512 MB more RAM.
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