Minimal requirements - very recent change in graphics?

[Regis]

Hey guys,

 

I hope it's good subforum to ask this question. Apologies if it's not.

 

I have a question regarding minimal requirements for the graphics: I remember when I was checking this information literally 3-4 days ago the requirements for graphics for Mac were described as:

"Model Shader 3 Compatible Video Card, 512 MB or better"

so I added PoE to my GoG shopping cart (didn't buy it yet, fortunately?). However, when I checked it again today when I wanted to actually buy it, that's what I saw:

"ATI Radeon HD 6750M or NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M"

which, from what I can see, both are "a bit" more powerful than HD 4000. I verified that information in Obsidian shop - it says the same

 

I checked that game authors were explicitly saying some time ago that this game will be working on integrated graphics - they mentioned that in their emails to Kickstarter backers (e.g. see http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=491414&highlight=obsidian&page=65 - "We are really going to work to get the integrated graphics chips to run the game well - and not just on the lowest setting") - isn't that the case anymore?

 

Is there anyone here who had a chance to play beta using integrated graphics? How did that work for you? Or anyone that can tell that HD 4000 isn't far enough from the two mentioned GPUs to worry about it (while I think it is)?

 

The only information I found so far about it is a single guy's short comment on that (see http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/70291-frame-rate-discussion/?hl=%2Bintel+%2B4000&do=findComment&comment=1566363 ): "(...) but the performance is definitely worse on my Intel HD4000 computer, though, as I said, it's still playable" in response to one of the PoE's dev saying "We haven't done any performance optimizations yet. Today, Roby is looking into optimizing factions that might help in larger areas with lots of baddies/people.".

 

I was really looking forward to playing PoE on my Macbook (it's i7 2.9GHz, 8 GB RAM, SSD, but only HD 4000 inside... I'm not a gamer anymore, but I miss Baldur's Gate and other Infinity Engine RPGs a lot ;-) ), but now I wonder if I'll be able to play at all...

 

So, should I buy it or should I just forget about it?

[Abel]

Don't know the specs of these videos cards. All i can say is that my GPU is a Geforce GTS 250 1Gb (and i'm limited in RAM because of win XP Pro 32 bits). It's now an old graphic card (at least 6 years i guess). I can play Wasteland 2 in full graphics with no problems (I still have to play Divinity OS in medium settings, which is OK). I guess PoE is about the same scope regarding graphics requirements. I will point out this 2 links:

 

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/wasteland-2/11931/?p=r

 

http://www.inxile-entertainment.com/projects/wasteland2-beta-support

 

The first is about the tested requirements for Wasteland 2. The other is the requirements for the game according to InXile. The 2 are very different. I have barely the minimum requirements stated by InXile and still, i play with ultra settings. I would not be really worried if i were you. I checked some tests of the HD 4000, and seems that it can even run some quite recent 3D games (like Mass Effect 3). May be more powerful than my GTS 250.

[Pegazus]

I just checked the game (Backer Beta 480) with my laptops (core i3 2350M 2,3Ghz, 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz, Intel HD 3000 / Geforce GT630M 1GB, 5400Rpm HDD) intel HD 3000 and I get about 15Fps (I don't check it with programs, it just felt that way) in 1280x720 resolution (with vsync on). I searched intel HD 3000 vs 4000 and I found out, that HD 4000 has about 50% higher performance than HD 3000.

If anyone are interested PoE runs perfectly fine for me (about 30 - 60 Fps) on this laptop with the GT630M card in 1080p with vsync on.

 

I hope it helps to some of you.

 

Ps.: Sorry for my english, I'm from Hungary

Edited March 17, 2015 by Pegazus

[MotelOK]

Yeah I saw noticed the new requirements on the Steam page. Now I don't meet the minimum anymore, this is a huge letdown. Why is Windows Vista the new minimum OS? And why the huge leap from a Pentium 4 to a i3 for the minimum CPU?

I've been looking forward to this for years and now I find out I can't run the game. I'm just devastated.

[morhilane]

Yeah I saw noticed the new requirements on the Steam page. Now I don't meet the minimum anymore, this is a huge letdown. Why is Windows Vista the new minimum OS? And why the huge leap from a Pentium 4 to a i3 for the minimum CPU?

I've been looking forward to this for years and now I find out I can't run the game. I'm just devastated.

 

Requirements are always based on OS/hardwares that the devs are ready to support for their games. It doesn't mean stuff outside of that won't works with the game.

[Althernai]

"ATI Radeon HD 6750M or NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M"

...

I was really looking forward to playing PoE on my Macbook (it's i7 2.9GHz, 8 GB RAM, SSD, but only HD 4000 inside... I'm not a gamer anymore, but I miss Baldur's Gate and other Infinity Engine RPGs a lot ;-) ), but now I wonder if I'll be able to play at all...

I wouldn't worry about it too much. It would be a lot easier to take them seriously if the GPUs they gave were in any way comparable, but they're not even close. The 6750M is much, much more powerful than the 330M -- by more than a factor of 3 in processing power and by a factor of 2 in memory bandwidth. In fact, I suspect that your HD 4000 is about the same as the 330M or maybe even a little better.

 

I don't have the backer beta, but I can tell you that Unity is relatively friendly to Intel's graphics. Wasteland 2 and the Shadowrun games all chose my lowly HD 3000 by default and all of them worked OK, though to crank the settings all the way up required me to switch to the discreet card. I think those settings simply reflect the worst laptops that they've managed to find. You'll probably be able to play, though I suspect not at the highest settings.

[Regis]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

 

Abel: I still think that any non-integrated GPU released in last 5 years will outperform 95% of the integrated GPUs released in similar time period. Also, the GPU model you mentioned seems to be about twice as powerful as HD 4000 in tests, from what I can see (

 

Pegazus: Thanks a million for checking that!

 

Althernai: Good point on the 330M - it looks like it's really similar to HD 4000, so I think I'll just keep my fingers crossed ;-) I don't expect playing on full details in Full HD - average resolution and average-to-low details are good enough for me if I can get stable 30 FPS from them.

 

Of course other comments are still appreciated!

[Stratosj]

Okay hi everyone, sorry to bother you but would anyone have any thoughts on my chances of running the game with a 64mb card? :D Since it's a laptop I don't think I can upgrade it :/ I'm of course thinking lowest details/resolution/no effects etc. That's how I play all games anyway.
Or, will there be a way to try out the game to see if it runs, like a demo? Or can I get my money back if it doesn't work? Sorry, I'm new to Steam.

[Sensuki]

That looks okay to me. They've improved performance since the beta.

[Zan Lynx]

required me to switch to the discreet card

A discreet card will not tell your secrets. What you meant is a discrete card, as in separate.

[Kinthalis]

Okay hi everyone, sorry to bother you but would anyone have any thoughts on my chances of running the game with a 64mb card? :D Since it's a laptop I don't think I can upgrade it :/ I'm of course thinking lowest details/resolution/no effects etc. That's how I play all games anyway.

Or, will there be a way to try out the game to see if it runs, like a demo? Or can I get my money back if it doesn't work? Sorry, I'm new to Steam.

 

You don't have a discrete card, you're running your APU's GPU (intel 3000), so your video buffer (VRAM) is NOT fixed.

 

Go into your BIOS at boot up (there's usually a prompt that tells you what key or key combination you need to press while the machine boots in order to enter it), and change the dedicated vRAM amount there.  Obviously, any RAM you dedicate to your embedded GPU won't be available as system RAM. You should be able to set it to 512 MB.

 

I'm not sure if that intel 3000 will be sufficient to run the game though. Hopefully. I'm not aware of any demo on release. I think your best bet is to wait for release and see what people with your APU say here on the forums. It's likely that people will be posting benchmarks on youtube as well. For example, searching for intel HD 3000 + witcher nets me this benchmark for the Witcher 2 on an intel HD 3000 APU:

 

Edited March 23, 2015 by Kinthalis

[Zan Lynx]

You don't have a discrete card, you're running your APU's GPU (intel 3000), so your video buffer (VRAM) is NOT fixed.

 

Go into your BIOS at boot up (there's usually a prompt that tells you what key or key combination you need to press while the machine boots in order to enter it), and change the dedicated vRAM amount there.  Obviously, any RAM you dedicate to your embedded GPU won't be available as system RAM. You should be able to set it to 512 MB.

Integrated graphics sometimes have no BIOS option. But you shouldn't worry. The GPU drivers should be able to pull system RAM into the pool as needed. The only things that are really required to be in dedicated RAM are the frame buffers. Textures and everything else can be remote. In a discrete card this would be slower because it would need to be pulled over the PCIe bus every time it was needed. But in an integrated card there's no real difference in access speed.

 

Of course some games complain about it because they see that the dedicated RAM is low. But in my experience the games will work fine because when the game goes to actually load a texture the memory is there.

[Stratosj]

Thank you for your help gentlemen, it is greatly appreciated. (__)

[Regis]

Soo... I bought PoE, I played aaaand... It's OK (MacBook Pro 13", non-retina, i7 2.9 GHz, 8 GB RAM, SSD, Intel HD 4000). It's not super smooth, but it's "quite smooth" for 99% of the time. Basically it works and I can play without frustration (I'm actually quite happy, it works a bit better than I expected). Not sure how it will work with e.g. magic battles or more enemies, but so far so good.

[Stratosj]

Soo... I bought PoE, I played aaaand... It's OK (MacBook Pro 13", non-retina, i7 2.9 GHz, 8 GB RAM, SSD, Intel HD 4000). It's not super smooth, but it's "quite smooth" for 99% of the time. Basically it works and I can play without frustration (I'm actually quite happy, it works a bit better than I expected). Not sure how it will work with e.g. magic battles or more enemies, but so far so good.

 

 

Maybe this will help? https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72049-workarounds-for-several-known-issues-3-27-15/?p=1601572 Worked like a charm for me, smooth as Minsc's head!!

 

• Many users have reported running into framerate issues and frequent crashing. If this is happening on your machine, please attempt to disable anti-aliasing to increase performance. This can be done by pressing the ` key, (the one to the left of the 1 key on your keyboard). This opens the command console. Then type into the console "msaa 0" without the quotes, and hit the enter key. After doing this you should notice an increase in performance and hopefully this will help to resolve the issue. This needs to be repeated on each transition.  We are working on creating a toggle in the options menu.

Otherwise lowering resolution also solved the framerate issue for me but the UI doesn't scale (yet?) so I'd get parts cut off. I hope that'll get fixed soon so that I don't have to push my laptop to its limits But for now it's well worth it.