What video game has the most difficult technichal requirements to meet?

[Gamerlord]

Wanted to know, so I can figure out just how many years it will be before I need to get a replacement for my new computer coming soon.

[Ogremindes]

Dunno. Seems that most PC games these days are either Xbox 360 ports or from traditionally not particularly demanding genres.

[Neftren]

Metro 2033. No contest.

[Elder Tsofu]

I've heard that Crysis demand a decent system to run on max.

[Crow]

X3 will tax the hell out of your system in sectors with large complexes. It's even worse on high video settings.

[Frankelshtein]

Dwarf Fortress. No contest.


But really, I think Crysis is typically the standard for measuring these things. But I have heard that Metro 2033 is pretty tough too.

[Talkkno]

Just try to play Victoria 2 past 1910, it'll eat your CPU alive.

[Cheesegear]

The mission in Dawn of War II called Angel's Gate, when set on high settings, has been known to crash pretty much everybody's system due to the massive amounts of units that get spawned on that map.

[Morph Bark]

The mission in Dawn of War called Angel's Gate, when set on high settings, has been known to crash pretty much everybody's system due to the massive amounts of units that get spawned on that map.

Is that from any of the expansions? Because I've played through all of the normal Dawn of War on good settings and no crashes happened ever.

[Cheesegear]

Is that from any of the expansions? Because I've played through all of the normal Dawn of War on good settings and no crashes happened ever.

Dawn of War II. Sorry.

[Brother Oni]

The mission in Dawn of War called Angel's Gate, when set on high settings, has been known to crash pretty much everybody's system due to the massive amounts of units that get spawned on that map.

The campaign mission Angel's Gate in the original DoW2?

I've recently played through the whole campaign and expansion on high settings and I don't remember any ingame crashing.

For reference, my system is a quad core AMD, ATI 5700 with 4 gigs RAM.

Edit: Unless you meant with anti-aliasing on, but that has a tendancy to crashes my system while loading as I've got an ATI card. :smallsigh:
If I can get in game, everything's fine.

[Cheesegear]

For reference, my system is a quad core AMD, ATI 5700 with 4 gigs RAM.

That'd do it. Still, its a shock for most people who are running the game quite comfortably on high, then to crash for no reason on the one map, then be fine for the rest of the game, back on high settings. I think it was also fixed in a patch, if you played it recently.

Either that, or maybe it had something to do with the difficulty you were playing on where you were able to kill the units faster than they can repeatedly spawn - which usually isn't the case.

[Brother Oni]

To actually answer the OP's questions:

My system is currently 6 months and it wasn't top of the range when I built it, so I reckon you could get something matching or exceeding my specs for about the same price or cheaper.

As for how long the system will last, well a quad core should last you a good few years and since RAM is upgradable, getting 4 gig now, then going to 8 later will last you about the same amount of time.
The main issue is the graphics card - if you're a fan of state of the art FPS with a desire to run them on maximum settings and expect them to run at a smooth 60+fps, even my card will suffer a bit, so if you want to keep up, expect to upgrade that every 1-2 years.

If your eyecandy desires aren't quite that extreme, then your card should last you a bit longer.

As an example, my previous computer, which was a single core Athlon 64, 2gb RAM, 256mb X800 Sapphire lasted about 5 years, with only a 1gb RAM upgrade and single graphics card change.
I've still got it now and am using it as a second computer to run non-SM3 games like League of Legends.


That'd do it. Still, its a shock for most people who are running the game quite comfortably on high, then to crash for no reason on the one map, then be fine for the rest of the game, back on high settings. I think it was also fixed in a patch, if you played it recently.


Given how my system's been performing recently, I reckon it was the patch rather than any particular heft my system has. :smallsigh:



Either that, or maybe it had something to do with the difficulty you were playing on where you were able to kill the units faster than they can repeatedly spawn - which usually isn't the case.

Possibly, but I was under the impression that harder difficulty levels resulted in tougher bad guys, rather than more bad guys.

[Thrawn183]

I've got an i3-340 (2 cores, 3.06 Ghz), 4 gigs of ram and an HD Radeon 4850 video card. It's a touch older than Brother Oni's, but it can still run anything I've thrown at it.

I've played through DoW II with no problems. I have had to put the settings for Starcraft 2 down a little bit as I play Protoss. The only time the comp has problems is when you have a whole bunch of pylons on the same screen and you're trying to build another. I guess rendering that many layered effects is just a bit too much.

[Erloas]

X3 will tax the hell out of your system in sectors with large complexes. It's even worse on high video settings.

The problem with X3 is that it is not a multithreaded game. So while it might very well slow down on a large number of machines its still not a very good indication of overall computer performance because its limitations are not widely shared with other games. It also isn't a huge graphics demand, which is more often then not the limiting factor in gaming performance.

I don't know anything about Metro 2033, but even so Crysis is at least in the top couple games for system requirements. The only issue with either game in terms of using them to try and judge the longevity of a gaming computer is that neither of them are DX11 and benchmarks tend to show certain cards take a lot bigger hit on certain DX11 features that doesn't really match with how they respond to the same game in DX10.

[nosignal]

Fairly certain that Metro 2033 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-580-gf110-geforce-gtx-480,2781-6.html) supports DX 11 though.

Of course, it's a lot more than just picking which card plays Metro 2033 best, because some games tend to favour one manufacturer over the other, which is why reviewers test cards on a number of games instead of just one.

On a side note, I watched an LP of Metro 2033 and found it thoroughly enjoyable, considering I'm not a fan of survival horror and probably wouldn't play it myself.

[Brother Oni]

Wasn't there a DLC level for Half Life 2 that beat even Crysis for hefty machine requirements?

[warty goblin]

Fairly certain that Metro 2033 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-580-gf110-geforce-gtx-480,2781-6.html) supports DX 11 though.

Of course, it's a lot more than just picking which card plays Metro 2033 best, because some games tend to favour one manufacturer over the other, which is why reviewers test cards on a number of games instead of just one.

On a side note, I watched an LP of Metro 2033 and found it thoroughly enjoyable, considering I'm not a fan of survival horror and probably wouldn't play it myself.

Yeah, Metro 2033 supports DX11, and is also the only game I currently own that my system* can't max out very well. I tried, and the framerate is just a little bit too janky to be enjoyable to play. On the next top setting however it looks exquisite and runs like a dream.

Shattered Horizon is also up there, and honestly looks better. It's a DX10/11 only engine, and it really shows. The lighting is beyond gorgeous, the shadowing accounts for object at phenomenal distances, and most of the textures are absurdly high resolution.

Also I wouldn't really call Metro 2033 survival horror. Maybe survival tragedy, but the horror elements are pretty understated for the most part.


*Intel i7 octo-core CPU @2.8ghz each, 8 gigs ram, NVidia 320.

[warty goblin]

Wasn't there a DLC level for Half Life 2 that beat even Crysis for hefty machine requirements?

Lost Coast might have higher minimum requriements, but I doubt it can do as much with a really powerful machine. Running Crysis on high takes a beast of a rig - and it really does look great if you can pull it of - but it's minimum requirements are fairly reasonable and as long as you can run the physics at medium or so the gameplay remains the same.

[littlebottom]

FFXIV my god is it sick and wrong with its requirements... i have a simmilar computer to warty goblin above, and FFXIV runs only mid well on high settings. everything else my computer seems to rip apart but FFXIV it has to work hard, admittedly, im running it fullscreen on a 23 inch monitor highest resolution it would allow, but i cant run it maxed out. and to be honest, short of overclocking your top of the range super computer, not much can yet...

the reccomended specs (not minimum) basically reel off the best of each component that can be commercially bought. i7 etc.

personally i think crysis is not a good baseline anymore. but thats my opinion.