Pupp, a game should work correctly on computers which meet the requirements advertised for the game. If it doesn't work correctly under those circumstances, then the pubilsher dropped the ball. Telling the purchaser that he should upgrade his system in order to get the game to work is ridiculous if his computer already meets the recommended requirements.
IMO, each of the last three times at bat for Obsidian has meant at least one thing for game buyers with their products: the system requirements have been meaningless. gamesas's marketing people tend toward being lamebrains badly enough, believing nVIDIA's lies in 2005, and not even making even test one of any Geforce FX card, so we know to distrust any further "requirement". NWN2 was equally out in left field for requirements (I know, Bioware, but still Obsidian).
Fallout: NV's official requirements are an idiotic joke. Here we had the Fallout 3 game, with a Geforce 6800 GS as the minimum, not a 6600 of any sort, not a 6500, definitely not an atrociously bad 6200, and what do they claim for this one? That all of the 6n00 generation can be used? Bad joke!
Then, what moron decided to name a Radeon X1300 XT as the minimum Radeon? That was the
SECOND name for the same card, of which 6-8 times as many had already been sold with the original name, X1600 Pro. Perhaps that's understandable ~~ the last advertising was on the newer name, and morons do have very short memories. However, I recently visited the Bethesda Support pages for Windows XP, where I've seen that instead of the "X1300 XT Series" (can't be any series, it's only the one card with two names), has now morphed into "X1300 Series", when the X1300 and the X1600 are miles apart in shader manipulation ability!
In spite of those failings, however, the fact remains that at least 60% of the time that I read anyone's unsupported claim that their system "meets requirements", they have exaggerated. This is most particularly true with regard to the most important part inside of a games PC, which is the graphics device. nVIDIA has the largest fan base, and the worst names; most gamers don't understand the meanings of the numbers in the names or the suffix letters trailing the numbers, and by far too many want to believe that Intel knows "something" about graphics, when the fact is that they do not.
Poor naming practices is one of my own personal hobby horses. All the way back in 2000 or so, when nVIDIA had an excellent gaming card, they also had a junk card (the MX), and initially, they didn't pretend it was anything special. But when the Geforce cards outsold everything else any other company offered, their marketing people couldn't resist. The entire product line in 2002 was christened "GF4", including the MX 400, which was still trash. Only the Titanium cards were actual game-capable products that year.
AMD (then still just ATI) had its own bonehead marketing clowns as well, however. They hadn't realized what they had started with their 9000 - 9200 - 9500 -9700 names in 2002 (nVIDIA copied it), and near the end of the production run, they substituted the 9600s for the 9500s, when only the "XT" model could match the Vanilla 9500's speed. On a performance number basis, the 9600 was a 9300, but ATI thought of their 9600 and 9800 models as being "newer" with higher numbers, and while the 9800 was a speed demon that the Geforces would need a full year to catch up with, the lesser 9600s were essentially just crap. Only the XT was worth buying on a value basis.
The last three paragraphs are all about the quoted (unsupported) claim of meeting the recommended requirements. While I continue to feel that the performance numbers in the Radeon cards' names is understandable, there are places such as the System Requirements Labs, where no one understands how the numbering works. The "4" in a 4200 IGP's name doesn't mean it is equal to any discrete video card from the prior several generations. It's a design with its basis in the HD 2400 card and thus not equal to an HD 2400 itself, and not to a 3450, and the 3450 isn't equal to a 38n0 of any sort, but SR Labs' moronic "Can You Run It" tests (meaningless) will rate a 4350 above a 3850, and mislead people who do not know any better.
Gorath
» Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:46 am 
