Shader 3.0 required?

Undead Clown

<div class="IPBDescription">Can't seem to find system requirements....</div>Is shader 3.0 required for this game? I just picked it up, and my PC will run it. I am asking for a friend though, he has a dual core, 3 gigs of ram, but an older ATI card with only shader 2.0 or 2.5 support.

I did a search and couldn't find anything.

Soylent_green

Cards that do not have shader model 3 are very, very old. The last ati card that did not support SM3 was AFAIK x800 series, which was released 7 years ago(or put differently, this card was new 2 years after the original NS was released!)

While it might work, and while it may be powerful enough to run the game acceptably at some low-ish resolution with some things turned off(as my 6 year old x1900 was, which did have SM3), chances are that if he has a card that old, he also has an old CPU.

NS2 needs a very powerful CPU to play acceptably. CPU requirements may come down a lot towards release, but this is where things are today. GPU requirements could also conceiably trend upwards, because there's a lot of "leg room left to spare" when the game is so utterly CPU bound on even semi-modern cards.

Undead Clown

I guess I'll just have to install it on his PC to check before he purchases a copy. He has a dual boot mac, the card is the only thing thats low-end, he has a dual core (2.4 ghz I think), so hopefully the processor won't be an issue.

Kouji_San

Hmm, my guess is that is an e6600 or a q6600 C2D? You're see the following FPS if you're computer is running smooth and optimised as it is quite comparable with the e6420 (a bit faster on stock speeds, I think you could add about 1 or 2 FPS to these values)

E6420@ 2.13/2.14Ghz: (12) 15 - 25 (33)

Overclocked speeds for my CPU
3.2Ghz: (18) 25 - 30 (60)
3.4Ghz ;(21) 28 - 34 (65)


Readyroom, 2.13/2.14Ghz (76FPS), 3.2Ghz (85FPS), 3.4Ghz (92FPS) <-- Take this with a grain of salt, it's just there for reference. You won't see these FPS in combat or walking around the map (see, now you guys can't rant about me posting the RR FPS)

Wheeee

you can run it on a shader 2.0 board. anything that can run dx 9.0c graphics will run it.

however, with an old card, you're not going to be getting more than like, 5 fps. ever.

Codeine

intel released a Pentium dual core before c2d also, so its possible it could be one of those, which is very weak/

Soylent_green

Undead clown, if you do install it on his computer and test, I'd be pretty interested to know the results.

<!--quoteo(post=1925495:date=Apr 14 2012, 08:47 PM:name=Wheeee)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wheeee @ Apr 14 2012, 08:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1925495"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->however, with an old card, you're not going to be getting more than like, 5 fps. ever.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I actually doubt that. I have played NS2 with an x1900 and it was almost totally CPU bound at 1024x768 medium quality; high quality took a hit because of texture not fitting into video memory. Increasing the resolution did not seem to have much effect on performance.

NS2 does not stress the GPU much at all and I think it's pretty likely he'd still be CPU bound if had like an x800xt or something.