Specs required for smooth gameplay?

[Ion Silverbolt]

Ok, I been running the demo with an Athlon 64 4000, 2 gigs of RAM, and a Geforce 7900GT OC, and the demo still is not completely smooth unless some detail settings are set to low while running in 1280X1024. Using the latest beta nvidia drivers.

To not sound too harsh, the game is playable with details set to high, but I can tell i'm not getting enough fps to keep the screen looking fluid. Towns are especially bad.

Anyway, does anyone have some advice on what might improve my fps while keeping details at least to medium? Could it just be the demo isn't as optimized as the final game is? Or is this game really that taxing on hardware?

[Gorkk]

I would suggest looking toward page file, and set it to a fixed size of 3 GB (1.5 times your RAM). A defrag of your disks might help if you didn't do any recently.

Apart from that, there's optimizations done between the demo and final release, we'll know how much on release. However, the demo is absolutely smooth on 1280 settings on medium on my comp, nearly perfect with all high, still quite good (except at night and for in/out caverns), and my comp is far from being as high end as yours (P4 2.8c, 1.5 GB RAM, Radeon 9600 XT).

[Ion Silverbolt]

I double checked my BIOS settings and noticed my memory was downclocked. Upped it to its max and that helped out a ton. Seems that memory speed is a big helper in this game. Probably because of the no level loading.

Still an occasional hiccup now and then, but it's smooth most the way with everything on high. Thanks.

[rah_pillage]

...the demo is absolutely smooth on 1280 settings on medium on my comp, nearly perfect with all high
That's duplicated on my systems also Gorkk, if I crank my resolution down to 1280x1040, and absolutely rock-solid smooth on medium settings with Detail Level set to high on 1680x1050, but with everything set to high on 1680 I start to experience slight stuttering and lag in fights.

So it's 1680x1050 with Texture Detail and Detail Level High and all others to medium for me. I also noticed that reducing the antialias to low gives a substantial increase in fps allowing me to run all others at high at 1680 without noticeable lag. And the kicker is (and I have screenshots... I'll be adding to my review later) I see no significant difference in graphics quality between low, med, and high antialias settings. Go figure... maybe it's how my system processes the game, dunno? I'll have to do more investigating.

[Craig321]

Don't forget for this type of game you need a good hard drive. A nice 10,000 or even 15,000 RPM hard drive would handle it nicely, or even better, a nice RAID setup using 10,000 or 15,000RPM drives.

[flaeli]

I can get it pretty smooth on a Geforce 5200 at 640 x 480 with everything on high except AA and shadows. Yeah, laugh at my comp all you want. It works, except for the cave bug.

[frankenparrot]

I run mine on the low settings too...but, I know that I have to because my comp is not a gaming maching....:)

[S U N D U]

And the kicker is (and I have screenshots... I'll be adding to my review later) I see no significant difference in graphics quality between low, med, and high antialias settings. Go figure... maybe it's how my system processes the game, dunno? I'll have to do more investigating.

The higher the resolution is, the less you notice the anti-aliasing settings. I run on 1280x1024, so anti-aliasing settings are somewhat noticeable. If you turn your resolution down to 800x600 and turn off AA and then turn it back on, you will notice those jagged lines around the countours of the models.

[pepejeria]

I really hope a new demo is released matching the final release. Since the current demo put me off to buy this game. It was simply choppy on all resolutions (when many enemies apperad or where u simply moved into new areas), even though i have the following:

. P4, 3,2 Ghz
. 3 Gig RAM
. ATi Radeon X850XT (Latest drivers)
. Windows XP, SP2 (Up-to-date)

[frankenparrot]

Hello...and welcome to the forum.

I doubt they put out another demo since the final game is being sent tomorrow. I have no idea why your computer would be having problems. Mine is significantly lower than yours, and I have had no problems whatsoever. Good luck...maybe another member with more computer expertise can chime in here.

[pepejeria]

Seems like the final release also have the chopiness. Gamespot reviewed and pointed this out, that it even happends on lower resolutions :cry:

[mist3r_q]

The DEMO ran buttery smooth on my rig, I can't wait to pick up the final DVD version today. I have a eVGA 7900GT KO w/Zalman VF900-Cu, OCZ Platinum 2GB RAM (1024x2), & an AMD Athlon 3700+ CPU. I'm using the latest NGOHQ nVIDIA ForceWare driver, version 91.31, and have a custom nHancer Profile I made. If anyone needs it, let me know, I sqeezed quite a few more FPS using it without sacrificing image quality, plus I don't have the "cave bug" that everyone seems to be having.

[pepejeria]

Good for you :)

[spajdr]

as i said before :-) game just preloads only few chunks of data, not like Sacred, which loads alot of more data at once (not really in cities), but its not that choppy ... Why we need slow virtual memory, when you got 2GB RAM and game only take 500MB at that time? Make option to preload more data in memory please! AA makes game really slowish even with 2x1900XT cards at 1680x1050 starting with AA2x. I bet people want to wait few more seconds at start, then only few and ingame see how HDD loads frequently every few steps.

[neilsouth]

Seems like the final release also have the chopiness. Gamespot reviewed and pointed this out, that it even happends on lower resolutions :cry:

Doesnt supprise me :(

[flaeli]

I thought they claimed that the game was optimised?