System Requirements... unsure of perfomance

[sundown94]

First of all, I want to say thank you if you're the kind of person that helps out people like me that don't know all the ins and outs. You're kinda like auto mechanics that don't mind taking the extra time to teach people how to keep their truck running more smoothly... thanks from a grateful player!

 

Dragon Age's System Requirements:

CPU for XP: Minimum - Intel Core 2 (1.4 Ghz), Recommended - Intel Core 2 Quad (2.4 Ghz)

Graphics Card: Minimum - NVIDIA 6600, Recommended - NVIDIA 8800

 

My system Has:

CPU: XP, Pentium 4, 3.0 GHz processor

Graphics Card: NVIDIA 8600 (so close!)

 

My question is whether or not the game would run smoothly, given my parameters. Would it run at all?

[Balagor]

Sorry to tell that it will run very poor, even in low settings.

 

Take a look in this thread

http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=178014

 

The difference between your grafic card and for example the 8800 is the amount of streamprocessors. I think only 64 in yours

and 96 in gts8800. Go fo gts/x 9800 wich has even 128 stream processors, or higher if your budget allows

 

As for the pentium 4. Single core is no good anymore. At least go for a dualcore.

[Auntylil]

First of all, I want to say thank you if you're the kind of person that helps out people like me that don't know all the ins and outs. You're kinda like auto mechanics that don't mind taking the extra time to teach people how to keep their truck running more smoothly... thanks from a grateful player!

 

Dragon Age's System Requirements:

CPU for XP: Minimum - Intel Core 2 (1.4 Ghz), Recommended - Intel Core 2 Quad (2.4 Ghz)

Graphics Card: Minimum - NVIDIA 6600, Recommended - NVIDIA 8800

 

My system Has:

CPU: XP, Pentium 4, 3.0 GHz processor

Graphics Card: NVIDIA 8600 (so close!)

 

My question is whether or not the game would run smoothly, given my parameters. Would it run at all?

 

 

I have dual core but the same card and I run the game on mostly high settings ok

[sundown94]

Wow... one says yes and the other says no. Thank you both for your help. I think I'll sit on it and see how badly I want the game in a couple of weeks.

[Balagor]

Notice the difference in your setup and @Auntylil`s setup. He said DUALCORE.

You have a SINGLECORE P4. That´s a big difference.

If you change your CPU, for example Core i7, you will notice a big difference.

[TGBlank]

I agree Balagor, you'll probably need a dual core to run it good. You could probably run it on medium graphic settings and decent-yet-stuttery fps, with possible problems on heavy combat or heavy graphics areas depending on how well configured is your pc, your ram (both capacity and speed) and your harddrive's speed.

[jujdred]

I am running Dragon Age CE at Max settings on all but the AA, which is at 2. It runs great but I know for sure that I need a couple more sticks of RAM to flesh out my system.

 

I have an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ SINGLE core overclocked to 3ghz

geForce 9800gtx, also overclocked and with specially modded "performance" drivers

2gigs of pc3200 RAM-I know this is currently my WEAKEST link, especially since I am using Windows 7 and the whole basis of the Vista/7 improvement concept over XP was that memory is used much more often, which mistakenly leads alot of people that know nothing about how computers actually work thinking that Vista or 7 is a resource hog. My memory is pretty much maxed when I play any game and that leaves little to no overhead for transitions, which can at times get annoying after a marathon game session of 12 hours only to have it freeze up on you (but I got protection for that too)

Still proud owner of a couple of old Ultra ATA hard drives.

 

The benefit of multi cores is hyperthreading and multi tasking. Sure I can play any game at max for days at a time, BUT, that's ALL I can do really. I have a few programs installed that allocate certain "data" here and there to help optimize my shortcomings for now. When I am playing pretty much any newer game, I spend alot of time configuring it for the best performance/eye candy ratio. I know what to expect, and when I do actually have to alt+tab for whatever reason, I have to adjust in game settings significantly and/or save and quit.

 

Thank god I just did my income taxes, core i5 with ATI 5970 here I come!!!!

[Balagor]

The AMD 4000+ has 2000 mhz hypertransport(800 on the Pentium 4 as I recall)

It also has 1mb cache(512kb on the P4)

This explains it.

Reason I always recommend dualcore, is as you say: multitask.

When you game, you will always have something running in background.

Thats why at least 2 cores will help a lot. As will do The improven nano architecture,

the better FSB and cache we have today.

[TGBlank]

Multicore is no longer an enhancement to 'only' using multiple programs. Most heavy modern apps, and yes, that includes games, now can use multiple threads to take advantage of multicore processors.

Multicore processors also come with more cache, which dramatically reduces data exchange with the ram, ergo, more speed.

 

As for xp/win 7, the only mechanical reason i see to go from xp to win 7 is to use 64 bit win 7 to take advantage of 4+ gb of ram.

 

Lastly, don't underestimate hdd usage and transfer speed. Gamebryo (fallout 3/oblivion) engine is a testament to how important it can be.

[Balagor]

Before we start talking over your head, @sundown94,

I will take the liberty of drawing a conclusing:

 

Your grafic card is (nearly) ok. But it can do

Your CPU needs to be replaced.