5 réponses à ce sujet

[Gorath Alpha]

               Created 18 months ago, Modified about 6 months ago
                 Ignore Warning Labels at Your Wallet's Peril

For two years, possibly three, during roughly 2003 to 2006, about 70 % of the desktop PCs sold did not include any dedicated 3D video expansion slot, and this ratio jumped above 90 % of laptops.  Without such capability, those PCs are not game-capable machines.  Numerous of my (past) references here at the BioWare Community (the original of this comment dates back a couple of years to the Legacy forums) cover various aspects of this.  The minimum (discrete add-in device) video card includes a games-capable GPU made by ATI or nVidia.  Nothing from Intel qualifies.

The old AGP video bus was a very complicated system, and costly to include on an economy priced mainboard, but the much more recent PCI-e video bus system is far less complicated, and we all should be well pleased that AGP faded out of favor rapidly (2006).  However, the manufacturing process that laptops standardized on amounts to a similar limitation.  They are almost all a monobloc, solid, with no access to any upgrade for CPU or graphics.  The attempt to separate the mainboard from the chassis destroys one or the other, if not both. 

Current mobile computing devices continue to to be sold with mostly unusable (for games) video systems (above 95% now).  All recent 3D games have a warning label on the back, bottom flap, or side panel, of the game's box, that you should never ignore!  The official minimums (ME2), IMO, aren't really good (practical) choices for that designation.  Nevertheless, they are real video cards, while Intel hasn't even managed to produce one of those for retail release since their disastrous singleton about a dozen years ago.

Far too often, owners of below minimum hardware are complaining about problems and avoiding the truth that they should have expected trouble due to the cheap or obsolete hardware they have.  I've normally chosen not to try answering questions that don't have a basic list of the important components, at least; I just direct them to the matching pinned thread about reporting problems.

Elsewhere, the differences between what a Game Developer chooses to name as the minimum, and what the cheapskate route to playing games on junk for graphics amounts to, have been defined.  Some onboard chips from AMD and nVIDIA can satisfy that latter crowd, but I personally believe they are doing a disservice to the work done by Bioware's people creating this game when they choose to do this.

P. S. Another thing that I have seen fairly frequently during the past couple of years, while the cachet for owning laptops has gone up, and desktops have become too Low-Status to hold onto, is that over time, ordinary systems being forced into use at playing games when they were not designed to do so are deteriorating.  I don't know what goes bad, or how, and can only offer my suspicion that it is probably heat-related.

Both AMD and nVIDIA have been offering various Chipset video chips for about three or four years that have all of the needed functions and features, other than dedicated VRAM, and fairly recently Intel has been able to offer some Chipset graphics that challenges the 3D companies' onboard superiority, which has in its own turn encouraged other Intel Chip video owners to try to join in, for which there are some software add-ons to use that disguise the worst of the Intel Chips from the games' configuration tests.

It is systems with those onboard solutions primarily, but also some systems with Low-End business graphics cards, that are wearing out prematurely from the demands of game playing, I think.

Here is the official requirements' naming of minimum graphics.  I've expanded their list of what isn't going to work, and  I believe that the X1650 is more appropriate than the X1600 Pro, plus I think that the warning about the two low-end Geforce 6800s I've added should have been included from the start.

Video Card = 256 MB (with Pixel Shader 3.0 support). Supported GPU Chips: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or greater(**); ATI Radeon X1600 Pro or greater. Please note that NVIDIA GeForce G.205, G.210, 310, 7100, 7200, 7300, 7400, 7500, 8100, 8200, 8300, 8400, 9100, 9200, and 9300; ATI Radeon X1300, X1550, HD 2400, 3100, 3200, HD 3450, HD 3470, HD 4200, HD 4250, HD 4350, and (probably) HD 5450 are below minimum system requirements. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required. Intel  and S3 video devices are not officially supported in Mass Effect 2.
(**)Two of the Geforce 6800s are worse than the next-lower Geforce game card, the 6600 GT, and should be avoided (6800 SE, 6800 XT).

Gorath

[Gorath Alpha]

Although the increase in new arrivals in this forum lately is probably a spillover from interest being generated by the imminent release of ME-3, too many of the folks with "bad" PCs (unsupported, below minimum) are showing up. Let's reinterate:

there is no official support for laptop PCs, and there is no official support for any kind of PC with only an Intel or S3 integrated video solution.

In my opinion, we game players need to encourage developers to continue to ignore the lowest possible of graphics, and I have chosen not to offer my assistance to members who will not meet the requirement to have an AMD or nVIDIA product for graphics.  Complaining about whether any of those Intel chips, at this point starting 2012, is useful for games, is the equivalent to beating on a dead horse, hoping it will get up to finish a race.

I expect Intel to continue incrementally improving its offerings, and continuing to release junk, for at least another three years, if not longer. 

To the extent that my experience is applicable, I do attempt to help owners of laptops with proper gaming class graphics cards, whether Bioware / EA does so or not.

Gorath

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 06 janvier 2012 - 03:50 .

[Gorath Alpha]

This message thread is about System Requirements, particularly. ME-3 will be released in about six weeks, and is still using the UT3 engine, although a few additional tweaks will be involved. Intel's tinker toy video is still not going to be supported.

[Gorath Alpha]

Gorath Alpha wrote...

. . . too many of the folks with "bad" PCs (unsupported, below minimum) are showing up. Let's reinterate:

there is no official support for laptop PCs, and there is no official support for any kind of PC with only an Intel or S3 integrated video solution.

In my opinion, we game players need to encourage developers to continue to ignore the lowest possible of graphics, and I have chosen not to offer my assistance to members who will not meet the requirement to have an AMD or nVIDIA product for graphics.  Complaining about whether any of those Intel chips is useful for games, is the equivalent to beating on a dead horse, hoping it will get up to finish a race.

I expect Intel to continue incrementally improving its offerings, and continuing to release junk, for at least another three years, if not longer. 

To the extent that my experience is applicable, I do attempt to help owners of laptops with proper gaming class graphics cards, whether Bioware / EA does so or not.

Gorath

Ivy Bridge is still not a gaming-quality device.  Nothing has changed.  Intel video is still junk.

[Just-Me]

I might disagree to some extent with calling it "Junk", but it's certainly not a "good" video solution. I haven't seen the very latest whatever it is that is coming AFTER the Ivy Bridge CPU and Chipset, but the recent announcement of a Trilogy compilation is going to stir up interest in both ME-1 and ME-2 as stand-alones (especially as stand-alones, if the Trilogy retains its consistentsy with ME-3, requiring the hateful apron strings from Origin).

There is even some hint that the never-existent PS3 for ME-1 version might be added, instead of the added-on segment to replace an ME-1, that was issued with ME-2, and I've forgotten what the heck it was called.

Modifié par Just-Me, 26 septembre 2012 - 10:41 .

[Just-Me]

This exchange (linked) probably hasn't arisen out of the publicity about the Trilogy Collection.

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/106/index/781755/1#14329446

However, my answer is representative of what I expect will be routine, soon.