27 réponses à ce sujet

[Metcalfe14]

Yes I know, another spec question - I appreciate anyone kind enough to humor me.

My Current Set-Up:

Windows XP 32-Bit
Intel Core 2 Duo e6420 @ 2.13 GHz
2 Gb RAM
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT (512 Mb)

After a quick look at the game requirements, it looks like like I'll be able to run the game pretty decently on medium-settings.  Would you guys agree with this?

If not, can anyone tell which part of the system is bottle-necked at the moment?  More RAM (up to 4Gb)?  Better CPU?  New video card?  Do you need more info?

I sincerely appreciate any advice, thanks!

[Baelin Firestorm]

Other areas also factor in such as your hard drive (e.g., space available, fragmentation, RPM, etc.), but the only area I see in your spec that might hinder you is the CPU. 2GB and XP 32-bit seems okay. The video card seems fine. Of the three, it'll be your CPU that is trying to play catch up.

[GhoXen]

Your graphics card seems to be your weak point. Also, it will be pointless to upgrade your memories above 3gb, since you are using a 32 bit Windows.



What kind of budget are you willing to put up with an upgrade? It actually does not cost a murdering lot to upgrade to the latest DX11 cards and quad-cores.

[MrGOH]

Your CPU will be fine with DA:O. I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. If you were gonna upgrade any component, upgrade the video card; it's the part DA:O, and most modern games, are the most sensitive about.

[Meteo63]

Hey, don't wanna bother you guys with another thread so... Could you guys look at my specs too? I'm pretty sure I can run it, just wondering which if any I should upgrade?



Windows XP

Intel Core 2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13 GHz

2 GB RAM

Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS



What does the 32 bit thing mean? I'm not sure which one I have.

[MrGOH]

If you have Windows XP 64 bit, I imagine you would know, unless you're using a computer made and used by someone else. Your specs are the same as the OP's, except you have a better graphics card. I wouldn't worry too much about upgrading at this point - you may want to upgrade in a while after current-gen hardware comes down in price, but you're good to go for games released now.

Edit: Your graphics card is a 2 year old mid-range card and should support medium to high settings. If you are still worried about performance or you don't get the performance you'd like to out of Dragon Age or any other game, you should swap the graphics card out for a newer one; decent ones run around $80 to $120 USD.

Modifié par MrGOH, 27 octobre 2009 - 04:38 .

[Meteo63]

Ah, I've got a 32-bit then. Just checked on microsoft's support site on how to find out. Does that make a difference at all? What's the difference between 32 and 64?

[Jab0r]

A 64-bit OS allows you to run 64-bit applications and make effective use of more memory. Other than that, there's not a lot of difference.

The only really decent 64-bit Windows is 7 - Vista is inferior to it, and the 64-bit versions of XP are pretty horrendous as far as compatibility goes.

[Lord i64man]

People, since you are talking about specs, can I get a reading at my specs:



AMD2 64 dual core 3.2 GHz

4GB RAM

NVidia 9600 DDR3

Windows Vista 32bit



I have over 100GB space in my HD.

[Hockey Beard]

Lord i64man wrote...

People, since you are talking about specs, can I get a reading at my specs:

AMD2 64 dual core 3.2 GHz
4GB RAM
NVidia 9600 DDR3
Windows Vista 32bit

I have over 100GB space in my HD.

You've got a solid system homie...no need to sweat it.

[GhoXen]

The 4gb ram worth only 3gb on Vista 32 bit, which doesn't support above 3gb. The fastest way you can get an upgrade is to get Windows 7 64 bit. Really.

Modifié par GhoXen, 27 octobre 2009 - 04:52 .

[Terwox_]

32 bit vista only supports 4 gig memory in total. Which includes graphic card memory as well. So if you have a 1 gig memory on your graphics card you'll only have 3 more gig available on your limit for RAM

[Metcalfe14]

Thanks for the help fellas. Glad to hear the Video Card is likely holding me back the most - I was afraid it was the CPU and as computer rookie, I didn't want to have to deal with potentially upgrading that! Luckily video cards and RAM don't seem all that difficult to replace.



Sounds like I don't need to upgrade too desperately at the moment - I'll wait to see how it goes after I play the game abit.

[Cuuniyevo]

Whenever you want to know whether or not your graphics card is good enough, but don't want to bother learning what all of the technical jargon means, go to the appropriate page below and find the minimum card listed on the game's back or website. Then find the card listed as the recommended. Then find the card in your computer. Compare all three and pay special attention to the "Texture Fillrate" section of the links I provided. Of course that's only one of many ways to judge a GPU's efficacy, but it is very easy to understand and mostly accurate. Higher Fillrate means your GPU can put more pretty on your screen faster, mm'kay?



ATI's GPU's

nVidia's GPU's



Metcalfe14, you've got an nVidia card so I'll just compare those:

XP Minimum Specs

NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB or greater

According to wikipedia links, fillrate = 4000 MT/s



Recommended Specs

NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater

wiki says = 41,600 MT/s



Your Video Card

Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT (512 Mb)

wiki says - 8,640 MT/s



Assuming that the minimum card can run the game perfectly on lowest settings and the recommended card can run the game perfectly on highest settings, you can run Dragon Age: Origins perfectly with 12.34% of the settings turned up. Unfortunately, you're at that awkward stage where going up to the 9000 series isn't viable due to them using PCI-E 2.0, and the upper end of the 8000 line is almost sold out everywhere, due to its age. =[ That being said, maybe BioWare did a fantastic job of optimizing and you actually can run the game at medium settings. No way to know for sure without trying. =/



My advice, as someone who has spent his life behind the technological curve, is to turn down or completely turn off anything related to shadows and lighting while lowering the view distance and AA down really low and the resolution kinda low. That usually worked for me, as I could then set the textures and models higher so my immediate surroundings looked great. I managed to sneak by playing KotOR back in the day with a GeForce 2 MX and a CPU 400MHz below the minimum. >__<



Remember, the resolution is the most powerful graphics setting in the game. If you shrink your screen size by a percentage, you reduce the amount of work the video card does by almost the same. Dropping from 1920 x 1080 to 1024 x 768 is a reduction of 62%, and it'll still look pretty good.

[Metcalfe14]

Wow much appreciated Cuuniyevo =)

[Chikkenstorm]

Cuuniyevo, you can't just compare some stats. Those are all theoretic and the acutal performance is defined by a load of other stuff aswell. Nevertheless, the 8600GT will run it fine, depending on the resolution I'd say medium to high.

[Brian The Grey]

And don't forget to defrag your hard drive before AND after installing Dragon Age. 

Also, here's some tweaks to optimize XP for gaming.

And here is a detailed guide for disabling services (Windows XP 32-bit)  

Your mileage may vary. 

Modifié par Brian The Grey, 27 octobre 2009 - 01:46 .

[Brian The Grey]

Brian The Grey wrote...

And don't forget to defrag your hard drive before AND after installing Dragon Age. 

Also, here's some tweaks to optimize XP for gaming.

And here is a detailed guide for disabling services (Windows XP 32-bit)  

Your mileage may vary. 

Tweakguides has  extensive system optimization guides also (see pdf download) 

[AlexJK]

Brian The Grey wrote...

And don't forget to defrag your hard drive before AND after installing Dragon Age. 

Also, here's some tweaks to optimize XP for gaming.
And here is a detailed guide for disabling services (Windows XP 32-bit)  

I wouldn't bother defragging - it's almost never worth the time it takes to do! Also, some of those tweaks are good, but only if you know exactly what you're doing and are aware of the consequences of doing them!

[Dragon727272]

Can anyone suggest a reasonably priced video card that I should get to replace my frankly terrible one.

It's MT/s is worse than the minimum even though is 8400 GS

[Brian The Grey]

RE: defragging. 

If someone has an old, cluttered HD that's never been defragged, then yes, there will be a performance increase if defragged.  

IMHO, Diskeeper is better than the Windows defraging utility.

[flem1]

Shader power is more important than fillrate.

[SheffSteel]

The importance of fillrate really really depends on the resolution. Running at a high res will increase the importance of fillrate - the fill time is proportional to the number of pixels to be drawn.

[Cuuniyevo]

Like I said in the first paragraph, fillrate is just one of many factors, but it's a fairly accurate representation of the power of a graphics card to the uninitiated. That being said, nVidia and ATI have different methods of building their cards, and the fillrate is not as useful a measurement on ATI's cards. I was speaking about nVidia cards, as that was what the original poster had. If you actually want to do a direct comparison between the two manufacturers, you need to look at benchmark results, like these. Actually, forget wikipedia, Metcalfe, I should have just shown you Tom's Hardware right at the beginning. Your card is at the bottom of the first link, and the 8800 GTS is about 20 steps up.

Dragon727272, there are 3 basic types of expansion slots on your motherboard that are still used by video cards. AGP, PCI-E, and PCI-E 2.0. I'm guessing that you have a video card using PCI-E, but you might want to find out before spending the money on an upgrade. Technically, you can use a PCI-E card in a PCI-E 2.0 slot and vice-versa, but you won't be getting the best performance possible, if that matters to you. If you're planning on getting a new computer (or just a new motherboard) at some point in the future, go ahead and get one of the newer cards. You won't get the full performance until you upgrade the motherboard, but it will tide you over and the newer cards are easier to find in stores. To use a car analogy, your PCI-E 2.0 graphics card might be like an engine able to go 100MPH, but if you've got an older motherboard that only has PCI-E, it's like having a regulator set to 50MPH. Your card is still good, but it won't run as fast at it could.
I'm rambling again, sorry. The first number in nVidia's naming scheme tells you what product line it is from. Each new line has more features. The second number tells you how powerful the card is within the line. The letters at the end also tell you how powerful a card is. Ultra > GTX > GTS > GT > GS > LE. So a 8000 line model has more features than a 7000, but a 7900 is more powerful than an 8600. ATI has different naming schemes, but it's fairly similar; a 4000 series has more features than a 3000 series, but a 3850 will be more powerful than a 4350.
The point is that your card being in the 8000's doesn't matter as much as having the 400 GS at the end. The 600 cards are for gaming. That's simplified, but please don't sue me for not writing a white paper on it. =P

Modifié par Cuuniyevo, 27 octobre 2009 - 05:59 .

[flem1]

Cuuniyevo wrote...

Technically, you can use a PCI-E card in a PCI-E 2.0 slot and vice-versa, but you won't be getting the best performance possible, if that matters to you.

You're wrong.  All PCI-E 2.0 does at this point is enable 2x the bandwidth:  the equivalent of PCI-E 1.0 32x.  Given that only the 5850 or better (i.e. cards that no average person will buy now) saturate the 16x version anyway, there's no point in upgrading yet -- the standards (unless the mobo manufacturer implemented it out of spec) are completely compatible.

Modifié par flem1, 27 octobre 2009 - 07:34 .