Valve's computer spec survey

[toadlife 3]

Toadlife: when was this survey?

Is it old?

I installed steam for the first time about 2 weeks ago, and it asked me to participate in a voluntary hardware survey, so I'm assuming that this is the same survey. Only took a few clicks, as it just read most of my hardware specs automatically.

[Baphomet 0]

Quote[/b] ]The Xbox versions will run just fine probably. And hey, it's only two hundred dollars?

Problem with that is

A: The Xbox is a console

B: I refuse to play an FPS with a shitty controller.

Tom's hardware page as far as a lot of people have told me, is slightly biased.

Yes. Radeon as of late has been beating Nividia, however Nividia has supposedly or is going to release a video card that's supposed to smoke even the fastest radeon. Not that I care anyhow. I refuse to pay 600 dollars for a video card. That's ridiculous. The latest radeon costs somewhere in that range.

Gabe newell has something to gain from promoting ati since it seems to be his flagship videocard of choice for Halflife. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some marketing strategy floating around behind all that.

Quote[/b] ]If the video game industry only made games for the average computer, then you'd have a weird effect when people upgraded en masse (For instance, when a new CPU/GPU becomes cheap). Suddenly every single game on the shelves would become obsolete

What're you talking about? That's a pretty shallow observation. A game isn't rendered obsolete if it can still run in my opinion. The fact that I choose OFP which was a game targeted at base system far beneath my own over newer games, EVEN if I went out and bought new hardware disproves this fact. I would just like games to run better on a computer that has been around for four years. I don't think scalability should be that much of a problem. It's a pretty piss poor game if it relies entirely on new technology for an enjoyable experience.

All I'm saying is. Whatever happened to the time when game development was focused on the quality of the game. Not pushing the envelope of a person's budget?

Perhaps I worded all that wrong then. Because I mean't that it's becoming less and less gradual.

This article seems like Gabe was trying to push an ATI agenda. Limited test times, refusing to use Nividia's in progress driver not to mention that ATI is emblazoned everywhere you see HL2 propaganda.

Quote[/b] ] It is not a cheat or an over optimization. Our current drop of Half Life 2 is more than 2 weeks old.

It is not a cheat or an over optimization

This disturbs me greatly

or an over optimization

Is this shit for real? Is it now illegal to make their hardware work as efficiently as possible?

What kind of bullcrap is this?

[ale2999 0]

Quote[/b] ]It's starting to occur to me that most games these days seem to be moving further and further beyond the reach of the average user.

Wow, you just noticed this ? That's how the video game industry works, the games get progressively more complex. If the video game industry only made games for the average computer, then you'd have a weird effect when people upgraded en masse (For instance, when a new CPU/GPU becomes cheap). Suddenly every single game on the shelves would become obsolete as the industry designed games for the new average specs.

Games these days have one massive problem - they are some of the most inefficiently coded programmes commercially available. They can get away with it, however, because the hardware is getting faster at a pace that software can not match at all.

An example would be Halo. The PC version was so inefficient that even the latest hardware was struggling to cope. If game designers spent an extra month or two on making their programmes just a tiny bit more efficient, you would be able to play something like Doom 3 on a 800MHz machine.

Ex Ronin what you say the majority of the time is true. But for half life 2 for example the minimum requirement is a 733 mhz with a directx 6 card (geforce 2). This game is going to he higly scalable. Also I heard that far cry is pretty. (it runs like a dream on my p 2.4 1.25 gig of ram and radeon 9800 pro). But ya most companies dont care as much. Valve took this test once before and that is why they made their engine so scalable, as not every1 has a ninja pc, but they still want to get everybodys money ^^.

Baphomet

Hl2 on xbox will be totally a reality, it might not look as good as the top pcs, but it will run fine. Halo on xbox was such a fine game, and look I am a PC gamer.

Deadmeat

Man those articles are ANCIENT. I got my radeon 9800 pro 7 days after those articles came out, just in time so that I had the card when the game was delayed lol.

I think that was an advertisement stunt, and I felt/feel robbed. I could have stucked all months with a ti 4200 and be as happy as I am now. Ati is not as fast as they want us to believe. Plus I read some article (to lazy to get it) where the next nvidia card pipeline will be 8 * 1 which is better than ati 4 * 2. Btw Nvidia announced that just like a week ago, when it was too late for ati to counter that feature.

In short I regret getting my $ 600 ati (cant even use AA or AF in OFP!!!!!). Thanks be to the Lord that I got a plan with which I can exchange it no question asked whenever I want, which I am gonna do with the next nvidia card

[Ex-RoNiN 0]

In short I regret getting my $ 600 ati (cant even use AA or AF in OFP!!!!!).

I have a 9800Pro, and I have 4xAA and 8xAF in OFP

[m21man 0]

Quote[/b] ]All I'm saying is. Whatever happened to the time when game development was focused on the quality of the game. Not pushing the envelope of a person's budget?

Quality almost always means higher performance requirements, though game programmers should make more of an effort to make coding more efficient. Still, it's basic common sense that higher quality will always come with a higher price, unless you're expecting people to sprinkle magic performance-enchancing pixie dust over games.

Quote[/b] ]I would just like games to run better on a computer that has been around for four years.

You're talking about a computer. In computer years, your machine is over the hill, its Golden Years are over.

[Baphomet 0]

Quote[/b] ]You're talking about a computer. In computer years, your machine is over the hill, its Golden Years are over.

In contrast to how quickly hardware manufacturers can churn out new technology. Yes. The average person does not have the same purchasing power as a huge corporation.

Which means the ball is in the developer's court. And it's obvious that many of them are going to try to seduce impulse purchases with fancy visuals. Haven't we learned something already about the value of such things? The graphics seem to change so frequently now that any game you played a year ago is considered old. Yet people still play them. So what does that say about the importance of visuals? Not much.

Quote[/b] ]Quality almost always means higher performance requirements, though game programmers should make more of an effort to make coding more efficient. Still, it's basic common sense that higher quality will always come with a higher price

The system requirements would be a lot less if each gaming company weren't trying to out-do one another in terms of graphical complexity.

Again. I would be more than happy with a game that focused less on that and more on the core (and IMO the important things) elements such as gameplay. You could probably incorporate twice as much gameplay wise if there wasn't such a ridiculous emphasis on how it looks. That sort of thing I can do without.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

Quote[/b] ]You're talking about a computer. In computer years, your machine is over the hill, its Golden Years are over.

In contrast to how quickly hardware manufacturers can churn out new technology. Yes. The average person does not have the same purchasing power as a huge corporation.

But it's fair to accept that in a hobby there has to exist a certain technology curve, right? I'm guessing by your RDRAM that you've got an early P4 in the low 1+Ghz range, right? That puts you three years behind the curve- I had a similar machine up to about September. Using some old components, I went from where you are to where I am currently for under  $900 USD, building a new system from scratch. I'm not especially techie-inclined, and I pooled together the money from a 7-dollar an hour part time job. But I digress- the point I'm trying to make is that even by the most generous timescales, your computer's time is up as far as gaming goes. In your case it isn't a matter of unreasonable technology advances or planned obsolescence, it's just a matter of old hardware being unable to run new software. Hell, even on a game console timescale, your system isn't too far from replacement. Yes, companies could spend an extra 6 months optimizing software for a three year old machine, but it would be extremely uneconomical in terms of their already demanding dev cycles.

As for my earlier comment, look at it from this perspective: the survey was conducted on a voluntary basis by Valve, a company that has yet to release a game that isn't based on technology from 1998. What that means, especially when you take into account the all-encompassing nature of Half-Life's mods, is you're going to have a disproportionately large number of gamers who never had to upgrade, because they never moved past Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat. In not so many words: these people stayed low-tech not because of money or know-how restraints, but simply because their gaming tastes never required them to apply an upgrade to that Pentium III / GeForce 1 system

[Baphomet 0]

1.8ghz So upper 1ghz range. Still.

I find the concept of purchasing a new computer every year utterly repellent.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

1.8ghz So upper 1ghz range. Still.

I find the concept of purchasing a new computer every year utterly repellent.

Of course. But an upgrade now and then can't hurt (although in your case the only way to upgrade would be to spring for a new mobo, and at that point it's almost like buying a new PC)

[Baphomet 0]

Quote[/b] ]Of course. But an upgrade now and then can't hurt (although in your case the only way to upgrade would be to spring for a new mobo, and at that point it's almost like buying a new PC)

Precisely since the newer Pentiums (HT, et al) don't utilize socket 7.

There wouldn't be much point in selling off my old junk either. And there's no way I'm going with RDRAM again since it's just really expensive and it's not stable. Nice as it was to have really fast ram, I'd rather buy a whole shitload of the most speedy (and significantly cheaper) DDR I can find. And have some bread and butter for something else.

I'm in the process of shopping around for something as of recent.

I'm not sure if I should hold off. It seems like it's about time for Intel to spawn a new generation of Pentium pretty soon here. That 64 bit thing is not going to take off until Windows makes the switch to a 64 bit operating system so I'm not even considering that. AMD's as I've known them... tend to cop out on you a lot more than intel processors do. So I'm not even looking at those unless they're super cheap.

I wonder if I might as well wait until then or get something in the meantime. There's probably nothing worse than buying the last incarnation of a processor line that is going to be defunct. Like those guys who bought pentium 3 900mhz machines.

[toadlife 3]

I'm not sure if I should hold off. It seems like it's about time for Intel to spawn a new generation of Pentium pretty soon here. That 64 bit thing is not going to take off until Windows makes the switch to a 64 bit operating system so I'm not even considering that.

Forget about 64bit for a second. What you should be considering when you look at the AMD64 is the integrated memory controller on the chip - which gives fantastic performance - especially in the case of OFP.

Have a look at the OFPMark thread and you'll see that the highest scoring systems don't run Intel chips - they run AMD64's or Athlon XP3200 with a 400 FSB.

Quote[/b] ]AMD's as I've known them... tend to cop out on you a lot more than intel processors do. So I'm not even looking at those unless they're super cheap.

Ahh yes the old AMD unreliability myth - perpetuated by Intel Stockholders and home builders who can't install a heatsink properly.

[ale2999 0]

sure 64 bits from amd chips are cool. but with no competition, I am not gonna purchase any. History has thought us that w/o competition, companies, just do the bare minimum and in some months after they market what they were to market in precedence lol. Just remember how quickly the cpu speeds went from 1 gz to 2gz, as amd and intel where neck to neck to be speed king.

[S_Z 0]

I think its funny that some of you still believe that nVidia’s drivers are so much better than ATI’s. Its time to wake up, that’s not how it is anymore!

I don’t have anymore trouble with my 9700P than I had with my old GF2. There is a reason why ATI has passed nVidia in the graphic card market you know. ATI simply made the best DX9 generation cards.

What will happen next, who knows, maybe NV40 will give the “throne†back to nVidia again. We just have to wait and see. I think its stupid to say something like “I will buy nVidia/ATI next†when you don’t have a clue on how good the next generation cards from ATI/nVidia are. Personally I will decide on what to buy next when I have seen both cards in action, not because I like ATI/nVidia better as a company.

To ale2999: I never had any problem with AA/AF in OFP and I have not heard any other ATI user complain about that either.

If a game has problem with AA (like Halo for example) it doesn’t matter if you run it on a nVidia or ATI card, they both have the same problem cause they both use MSAA (multisampling AA).

[Baphomet 0]

Quote[/b] ] think its stupid to say something like “I will buy nVidia/ATI next†when you don’t have a clue on how good the next generation cards from ATI/nVidia are.

You're assuming that everyone is going to be buying the absolute newest next gen card. When you have new cards coming out that are $600 that's not going to be the majority of people. I'll probably end up getting an FX 5600 because they're relatively decent in performance (better than my geforce 3) and they're not too old. You can also pick one up for around 200 bucks.

[S_Z 0]

Quote[/b] ] think its stupid to say something like “I will buy nVidia/ATI next†when you don’t have a clue on how good the next generation cards from ATI/nVidia are.

You're assuming that everyone is going to be buying the absolute newest next gen card. When you have new cards coming out that are $600 that's not going to be the majority of people. I'll probably end up getting an FX 5600 because they're relatively decent in performance (better than my geforce 3) and they're not too old. You can also pick one up for around 200 bucks.

Actually I would call anyone who bought a FX 5600 stupid too . The only current nVidia card that would be worth buying in my opinion is the 5900XT (the “low†price version of the 5900), a card with great performance/price. Other than that its ATI all the way at the moment.

[toadlife 3]

Actually I would call anyone who bought a FX 5600 stupid too . The only current nVidia card that would be worth buying in my opinion is the 5900XT (the “low†price version of the 5900), a card with great performance/price.

So you assume that people with different needs/wants than you are all stupid? My GeForce4 runs OFP, America's Army and Hidden and Dangeorus 2 splendidly, and I only had to drop $150 for it last summer.

To this day, a lowly GeForce4 isn't a bad buy, especially if you're like me and don't give a rat's ass about halflife2.

[joltan 0]

He's talking about now - not a year ago. Right now you get a decent DX9 Ati card for little money - and that card will kick butt, not like the comparable priced Nvidia cards. The GF4s were great in reference to cost/gfx power at their time, but at the moment ATI is better. As was mentioned before this may change again with the next generation of GFX cards. It's just silly to claim one Company to be better than another in general - you have to compare specific products.

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

Actually I would call anyone who bought a FX 5600 stupid too . The only current nVidia card that would be worth buying in my opinion is the 5900XT (the “low†price version of the 5900), a card with great performance/price.

So you assume that people with different needs/wants than you are all stupid? My GeForce4 runs OFP, America's Army and Hidden and Dangeorus 2 splendidly, and I only had to drop $150 for it last summer.

To this day, a lowly GeForce4 isn't a bad buy, especially if you're like me and don't give a rat's ass about halflife2.

I would go a step further and not buy anything at all. I would rather wait for the PCI cards to come. This should result in a nice price drop of current AGP cards such as radeon 9800 and Nvidia FX5900.

[toadlife 3]

There is one good reason why I will not be buying an ATI card in the future - FreeBSD. Nvidia fully supports FreeBSD (I play Americas Army on FreeBSD). ATI does not support FreeBSD at all, and I've read (but don't know first hand) that their performance under linux blows compared to Nvidia, no matter what card you have.

ON my Alienware laptop I got for work, I had the choice between the Ati mobility 9600 and a GeForce FX 5600 GO. I went with the Ati becuase of the great benchmarking scores it got over the FX5600, and now I'm stuck with a blazing fast laptop that can only use 3D acceleration under windows. The card runs games fine (OFP gives the infamous green screen unless I use 1.96 with -nomap), but I have no BSD support.

I should have gone with my gut feeling and chosen the GeForce.

[Baphomet 0]

Quote[/b] ]Actually I would call anyone who bought a FX 5600 stupid too   . The only current nVidia card that would be worth buying in my opinion is the 5900XT (the “low†price version of the 5900), a card with great performance/price. Other than that its ATI all the way at the moment.

Is the XT like the MX version? MX cards have been known to be notoriously shitty. Did they change the designation as a marketing decision?

I'd look into ATI if they were decently priced and offered the best performance I could get. Same with Athlon so long as I'm getting the same/better performance than an alternative.

Unfortunately I figure those new 64 bit procs with the special memory management feature that OFP likes so much are probably expensive as shite. So I'll probably try to go with a higher-end P4 maybe. I dunno. I need to find some good sources on some relatively decent priced hardware that's not on the cusp of obsolescence. It's almost worth it to pay that extra money just so your damn PC doesn't become ancient in six months.

[ale2999 0]

XTs are the best ati's that you can get in the market

[S_Z 0]

Quote[/b] ]Actually I would call anyone who bought a FX 5600 stupid too   . The only current nVidia card that would be worth buying in my opinion is the 5900XT (the “low†price version of the 5900), a card with great performance/price. Other than that its ATI all the way at the moment.

Is the XT like the MX version? MX cards have been known to be notoriously shitty. Did they change the designation as a marketing decision?

No, the 5900XT is nothing like the old MX cards. It's a great mid-price card, better than ATIs 9600XT.  

Here is a test between a 9600XT(running a bit faster than standard) and a 5900XT: http://www.nordichardware.com/reviews....dex.php