System requirements & Q1 2015 release

[Sensuki]

No it wasn't :/

 

Unless you're talking about the absolutely lowest possible budget cards they were (and still are) 1GB cards

 

AMD cards have offered ~1GB more than nVidia on enthusiast cards since about 2011, if you're thinking nVidia cards only then sure, that might be the case I guess.

Edited October 23, 2014 by Sensuki

[AwesomeOcelot]

ram should be a non issue. man, think of how good uncharted 3 looked on ps3 with only 256 meg and 256 meg video memory. These guys are not doing anything that I've seen remotely intensive for your computer to run it. If they are, they're doing a good job of hiding it. Not to sound negative in any way, but I was just stating it didn't seem they're trying to do anything spectacular with the performance of this game to make it demanding at all. But if you're running a computer in 2014 and still only running 4 gig or less of ram then maybe you should get with the times, you can buy 8 gig's for like $60-80.

a) Uncharted 3 didn't look good on the PS3, the game was released in 2011, not 2006. It was developed in 2-3 years with a team anywhere from 60-100 members strong with a budget many times higher than Pillars of Eternity.

 

b) System memory isn't generally used for graphics when you have a discrete GPU it's used for gameplay related functions, and the Uncharted series tends to be on rails as much as possible to free up resources for higher fidelity graphics.

 

c) It takes great effort to develop with such limited resources, Obsidian probably could work really hard to get the game working with 256MB VRAM, sacrificing performance and dedicating many man hours, limiting gameplay and exploration, but that's not really worth it.

 

d) Higher minimums means it's easier to develop the game to take advantage of the PCs that do have 4GB+. Also the minimum might be 4GB, but in total RAM usage on the system might be 3.2GB with the beta. And Windows uses a lot more RAM than a console OS.

[Quantics]

Look at what we've come to, debating over RAM requirements.

 

Come on Obsidian, please release the next patch already

[Lephys]

Okay, I feel a clarification is in order. When I said 4GB isn't that much, I was talking about system ram, as in the OP, where the tentative requirements are listed, the 4GB requirement is in system ram. The video card RAM requirement is only 512, which is much more in-line with video card minimum specs for many other games. 4GB isn't unheard of, but that's still pretty darn high for a minimum requirement. I'm not even sure the latest Crysis game required 4GB (maybe 2?).

 

ram should be a non issue. man, think of how good uncharted 3 looked on ps3 with only 256 meg and 256 meg video memory.

The PS3 had only 256MB of system RAM?! o_O!

 

I knew consoles were compact and efficient, being dedicated (for the most part) gaming machines, but I didn't know they were THAT efficient! I thought for sure it had like... 1GB, maybe 1.5...

[phalzyr]

Quoting truth.  Try to find a "gaming" graphics card released in the last two years with less than 4 gig ram.  There will be some, but for every one you find there will be a 4 gig version of the same card for like 10-20 dollars more.

 

Since the average game player buy a graphic card every other day this shouldn't be a problem then... System ram not video ram... I don't even know how old my video card is... I keep forgetting to get that info when I'm at home. IF the minimum is 4GB of memory, then 32bit OS can't run it. I'm sure they'd lower that or state different minimum for 32 bit system by time it is released.

[Tsuga C]

The Q1 release is just fine and dandy for me. Let it be a St. Patrick's Day present for all of us backers who've been here since the beginning. It'll be a day of corned beef, cabbage, Guinness or single malt scotch, and farting around for hours trying to generate the perfect character with which to attempt our first run through PoE.

[Bartimaeus]

Haha at people saying 4GB of VRAM is "typical". Here, take a glance at Steam hardware demographic figures: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

 

33% of people only have 1GB; a further 20% below that; 30% above, but still below 4GB. Roughly only 2% have 4GB, and finally, the remaining 14%, (well, actually, there should be 15%, but rounding curtailed a single point...), are something else - not sure what, given how uncommon 4GB is, it'd be weird if 6GB was several times greater. But yeah, if your game requires, at minimum, 4GB of VRAM, you'd be cutting out at least 83% of the potential market, (assuming these stats are good, which they probably are). Not the greatest idea, I would warrant. There's a reason minimum specs are typically low.

Edited October 24, 2014 by Bartimaeus

[Quantics]

Haha at people saying 4GB of VRAM is "typical". Here, take a glance at Steam hardware demographic figures: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

 

33% of people only have 1GB; a further 20% below that; 30% above, but still below 4GB. Roughly only 2% have 4GB, and finally, the remaining 14%, (well, actually, there should be 15%, but rounding curtailed a single point...), are something else - not sure what, given how uncommon 4GB is, it'd be weird if 6GB was several times greater. But yeah, if your game requires, at minimum, 4GB of VRAM, you'd be cutting out at least 83% of the potential market, (assuming these stats are good, which they probably are). Not the greatest idea, I would warrant. There's a reason minimum specs are typically low.

 

Thank you I was starting to feel marginalised.

[Lephys]

Yeah, pretty sure the type of RAM being discussed became rather nebulous for a little bit there. 8P

 

Also, I think what was being intentionally said about VRAM was that most gaming cards now have 3-4GB. I mean, my laptop has a 3GB card, and it's not even brand new, nor was it the top of the line one.

 

So, it wasn't so much "If you're a living human, you probably have 4GB of VRAM." But more, "If you want a gaming graphics card, it's not exactly hard to find 3-4GB of VRAM."

 

*Shrug*. It could be that this is incorrect, and I completely misunderstood.

[Flayeriv]

I just get concerned when I see graphics cards that are more powerful than my entire laptop.

Which just goes to show how sh*t my laptop is.

[phalzyr]

2048 MB 3.23% -0.02%

3071 MB 2.48% +0.07%

4095 MB 1.82% +0.18%

 

Now I don't feel so bad... 

[Silent Winter]

I just get concerned when I see graphics cards that are more powerful than my entire laptop.

 

Which just goes to show how sh*t my laptop is.

My wife's phone was more powerful than our laptop until we just replaced it this year.

I'd had the same laptop since 2005 and it was slowing down a bit, but good enough for general use.

New one is shiny - still only 4GB RAM but since the last one was 0.5GB RAM, it's a lot zippier by comparison (plus dual-core + hyperthreading vs. single core and not)

And Nvidia 710M vs onboard graphics - it's actually giving my (now dead) desktop a run for its money gaming wise.

 

Still planning to buy a new desktop system (building it myself) before PoE comes out.  That'll have 16GB of RAM eventually but may start with 8 - mostly for 3D-art work rather than gaming since I'm still happy playing the likes of IE games, NWN(1+2), et al.

Not sure what graphics card to get but it might be a GeForce 760 or something like that - a big step up from my last 9600GT.

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, pretty sure the type of RAM being discussed became rather nebulous for a little bit there. 8P

 

Also, I think what was being intentionally said about VRAM was that most gaming cards now have 3-4GB. I mean, my laptop has a 3GB card, and it's not even brand new, nor was it the top of the line one.

 

So, it wasn't so much "If you're a living human, you probably have 4GB of VRAM." But more, "If you want a gaming graphics card, it's not exactly hard to find 3-4GB of VRAM."

 

*Shrug*. It could be that this is incorrect, and I completely misunderstood.

VRAM is a pretty bad measure of how powerful a card is, anyways. Many "mobility" (i.e. laptop) chips have 2x-3x more VRAM they could feasibly use - if not worse than that. I have no idea why that is, but it's not very unusual to see some super low-end GPU have 2GB of VRAM with no way of ever actually using it - compare that with, say, the old 8800 GTX, which had, what, 256MB of VRAM, and still outperforms many of the lower end series cards that came out way later that have 4-8x as much and of a higher quality? So yeah.

Edited October 25, 2014 by Bartimaeus

[Flow]

 

Yeah, pretty sure the type of RAM being discussed became rather nebulous for a little bit there. 8P

 

Also, I think what was being intentionally said about VRAM was that most gaming cards now have 3-4GB. I mean, my laptop has a 3GB card, and it's not even brand new, nor was it the top of the line one.

 

So, it wasn't so much "If you're a living human, you probably have 4GB of VRAM." But more, "If you want a gaming graphics card, it's not exactly hard to find 3-4GB of VRAM."

 

*Shrug*. It could be that this is incorrect, and I completely misunderstood.

VRAM is a pretty bad measure of how powerful a card is, anyways. Many "mobility" (i.e. laptop) chips have 2x-3x more VRAM they could feasibly use - if not worse than that. I have no idea why that is, but it's not very unusual to see some super low-end GPU have 2GB of VRAM with no way of ever actually using it - compare that with, say, the old 8800 GTX, which had, what, 256MB of VRAM, and still outperforms many of the lower end series cards that came out way later that have 4-8x as much and of a higher quality? So yeah.

 

 

Used to be true. Not so much any more. Games are appearing that actually use significant VRAM... or at least will use it if you opt for huge textures. Shadow of Mordor, Assassin's Creed Unity, etc.

 

This seems mostly to driven by the fact the latest consoles have a lot of VRAM. Though attached to fairly underpowered GPUs compared to the latest desktop cards.

[Azrael Ultima]

25 GB!? IIRC, DA:I, which is humongous, will be 27GB of HD space.

It says MB, not GB. Though that just makes it more unlikely. Unless graphics and sound are going to be really, really sparse.

[Silent Winter]

 

25 GB!? IIRC, DA:I, which is humongous, will be 27GB of HD space.

It says MB, not GB. Though that just makes it more unlikely. Unless graphics and sound are going to be really, really sparse.

 

^It's super old-school, 8-bit joy

Edited October 25, 2014 by Silent Winter

[Dark_Ansem]

have the recommended ones been released?

damn I funded Numenera but I wanted to fund this too lol