Fallout 4 Specs?

[gromulos]

Vagrant, you make a lot of sense, that was the main reason why I put the ? there, tyvm :)

[JimboUK]

As long as the damn thing isn't 32 bit again.

[gromulos]

As long as the damn thing isn't 32 bit again.

 

It uses the same engine as Fallout 3, NV, and Skyrim. 32 bit? most likely

[Vagrant0]

 

As long as the damn thing isn't 32 bit again.

 

It uses the same engine as Fallout 3, NV, and Skyrim. 32 bit? most likely

 

From what I've seen, I wouldn't be so quick to assume. They've been working on this game for 4-6 years, it's unlikely they would continue to use the old engine without significantly improving on it within that time. Given how much they built up systems for chargen, customization, ect I doubt they'd try making it work within a 32 bit engine, with the same 4gb system memory limitation.

 

Skyrim, when it was released, was still being made with Vista and XP, as well as Xbox360 in mind. Making it use a 64 bit engine would have been too much of a limitation back then since very few people were using a 64 bit processor, in particular, none of the consoles. Although it may sound like an oversight these days, back then it made perfect sense.

 

They don't have the same situation any more, so unless they were hoping to break into that market of untapped consumers who want to be able to play full games on their office terminals, there is no reason to use a 32 bit engine.

[JimboUK]

Skyrims port was half arsed and lazy, they didn't even bother to make the thing Large Address Aware, an oversight that saw the game crashing for those running high settings, they could have offered both 32bit and 64bit, other games have, the 360 and PS3 both had 64bit CPUs (albeit IBM based ones) so porting that over wouldn't have been impossible. It was DX9 too, even EA offered a DX11 option with Dragon Age 2, a game released around the same time. I'm expecting another poorly optimised port riddled with bugs, hence I'm not going to be buying it until next year when its had a few patches and community fixes.

[obobski]

Skyrims port was half arsed and lazy, they didn't even bother to make the thing Large Address Aware, an oversight that saw the game crashing for those running high settings, they could have offered both 32bit and 64bit, other games have, the 360 and PS3 both had 64bit CPUs (albeit IBM based ones) so porting that over wouldn't have been impossible. It was DX9 too, even EA offered a DX11 option with Dragon Age 2, a game released around the same time. I'm expecting another poorly optimised port riddled with bugs, hence I'm not going to be buying it until next year when its had a few patches and community fixes.

 

You can't really directly compare the PS3/Xbox360 CPUs to an x86 CPU - they're both custom IBM parts derived from the POWER architecture (specifically ISA v2.03), which is a RISC paradigm ISA. PS3 uses Cell, which extends the POWER-based PPE with eight SPEs. The Xbox 360 uses Xenon (also from IBM), that is (essentially) comprised of 3 of Cell's PPE. The closest analog to this in the desktop segment would be the PowerPC 970 (found in a lot of Apple computers, branded as G5 - it is also ISA v2.03 compliant). Porting (efficiently) to and from an x86 CPU (like Pentium 4 or Core 2) with code optimized/written for PowerPC is not trivial, and bringing in the heavily multi-threaded Xenon or SPE-assisted Cell does not help the situation - they're very different machines.

 

As far as the LAA configuration on Skyrim - I don't consider that a "lazy oversight" - it's not done for good reason. Specifically, compatibility. Running LAA on Win32 has no effect, but on Win64 it can cause stability problems if the system has less than 4GB of memory (and yes, there are retail configuration machines running 64-bit Windows with less than 4GB of memory, especially if we rewind back to 2011 when Skyrim came out). Developers don't target the top .5% of machines, so compatibility with the widest range of systems is their goal.

 

As far as the "system requirements are lower than FONV" - my launch-day box says:

 

- 2.0GHz Dual Core (does not specify type)

- Windows 7/Vista/XP

- 2GB RAM

- 10GB Hard-Drive Space

- nVidia GeForce 6 Series/Radeon X1300XT series Minimum

 

Fallout 3 lists a Pentium 4, and you can find videos on YouTube of both games running on fantastic things like AthlonXP or Pentium 4 systems, as long as the GPU supports SM3.0 (Fallout 3 has a SM2.0 path that will run on Radeon X (and in theory Radeon 9 as a result); NV afaik requires 3.0 like Skyrim). VRAM requirements are not really that high (even for Skyrim, which lists 512MB as the minimum) - but again, we're not talking about the top .5% of configurations that demand full max ultra at 8K at 12,000 FPS in 3D with all 32K textures in 30-bit color with 128x SSAA and 7300 mods loaded.

 

As far as "just a lazy port" - I'm guessing that era is (thankfully) largely behind us now, because the Xbox One and PS4 are extremely similar to a modern PC (both are x86-64 CPUs with eight cores and GCN graphics), so multi-platform development shouldn't be as problematic. Going off of using Xbox One and PS4 as a meter-stick for system requirements, their CPUs are going to be equivalent to some of AMD's mobile parts (they're AMD Jaguar based), and the GPUs are similar to Radeon HD 7700/7800 series graphics cards. Now that doesn't mean that becomes the "floor" for all games, but it also seems reasonable to say a PC that is similar to that should be able to run games that are running on XB1/PS4. The Core 2 Duo as the minimum requirement also makes sense in light of that, but the GT 240 seems misplaced. I did a bit of Googling and I suspect the 240 is a typo - here's what GameDebate has:

http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=5013&game=Fallout%204

 

Same Core 2 Duo, but notice: GT 740.

 

As far as requiring Windows 10 - that seems very unlikely. It doesn't have 100% market penetration and it wouldn't make sense to constrain yourself like that, from the developer's POV. If the game required DX12 it would require Win10 though, but I haven't seen anything that says DX12 is overtly required.

[Vagrant0]

 

As far as requiring Windows 10 - that seems very unlikely. It doesn't have 100% market penetration and it wouldn't make sense to constrain yourself like that, from the developer's POV. If the game required DX12 it would require Win10 though, but I haven't seen anything that says DX12 is overtly required.

 

My fears envision something closer to a backroom deal than something the developer decided upon. Microsoft is potentially taking a risk and leading to more expenses by opening itself to modding on the Xbone, That kind of modding will naturally need it's own service through Live, will need staff to run it, servers to host it, ect. Microsoft as a company stands to gain little from this other than slightly more Live subscribers. Their tradeoff could be in using FO4 as a means to push more gamers into participating in the data mining service known as Windows 10. A service which is currently free to everyone who owns Windows 7 or 8, and which promises to earn Microsoft continual income by selling personal details to 3rd parties.

[bchick1]

Probably minimum specs and the game might run but look like crap.

A recent post quoted Bethesda as saying that they will publish the FINAL specs about 30 days out from the launch.

[obobski]

 

 

My fears envision something closer to a backroom deal than something the developer decided upon. Microsoft is potentially taking a risk and leading to more expenses by opening itself to modding on the Xbone, That kind of modding will naturally need it's own service through Live, will need staff to run it, servers to host it, ect. Microsoft as a company stands to gain little from this other than slightly more Live subscribers. Their tradeoff could be in using FO4 as a means to push more gamers into participating in the data mining service known as Windows 10. A service which is currently free to everyone who owns Windows 7 or 8, and which promises to earn Microsoft continual income by selling personal details to 3rd parties.

 

 

We've gone back and forth on this before - and again we'll have to agree to disagree on Windows 10 being the Anti-Christ. As far as modding on the Xbox One, I see it as more of Microsoft trying to gain traction against Sony - they've presented a number of features recently that don't directly earn them money, but also don't likely cost them much (if anything) to implement, which they can hold over Sony/PS4 as "exclusives" (and I would guess their ultimate goal is to increase hardware sales, which does directly improve their bottom line).