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Most people have 128.

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Way too high, ES won't take the risk that almost nobody can play it. I think almost, maybe even more than half of the players don't have such high graphics card.

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Welcome to 2005, PhatFish.

Minimum:
1.5GHz or higher (2.0 or higher recommended)
512MB RAM (1024 Recommended)
Fully DirectX 8 capable graphics card

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I think that's still quite true, even in 2005.

Do you buy a new tv every two or three years? Then why should you do so with a computer...

Because TVs do not follow Moore's law.

Welcome to 2005, Frenzie, where 256MB is defined as the minimum for something to be a computer, and where printers regularly come with 32MB RAM.

[This message has been edited by Firefox (edited 01-07-2005 @ 06:44 AM).]

Frenzie: uh yeah. If you have 256 ram in your machine, XP and 2000 will basically already use half of that themselves. And sadly, game development does force you to upgrade every two to three years if you don't just want to be able to run budget games.

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I would think that too, but I took Valve's Steam survey when I installed Half Life 2. The most common video card registered by Steam users? GF4's.

It continues to mystify me that game developers demand such high specs, because it's counterproductive towards having a large buying market, but they seem to do it without any adverse effects.

32 MB generation cards are pretty bare minimum for gaming these days, so I wouldn't be surprised if Radeon 9000/GF4's are minimum, or at least the minimum supported.

The second common, IIRC, are 9800Pros.

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I think that FPS and RTS players are from a much different 'breed'. The FPS player is over-active and has to upgrade much more and is willing to do that too because otherwise he can't get rid of his aggression
And the RTS player is much more relaxed and nerdy, and has an old crappy PC that barely can run Age of Empires 1.

[This message has been edited by Argalius (edited 01-07-2005 @ 07:14 AM).]

I dont know but even for work with multiple programs you need at least 512MB Ram (1024 is standard now), so I really wonder where the problem is. To run almost any game today you need at least 512 and 1024 if you don't want to have any lag at all.

And I think it is also exaggerated to call a Geforce 4 or Radeon 9000 a high end video cards... You can't play anything with some effects with them so... and finally there would be no development, if they wouldn't use the possibilities of the modern GPUs.

[This message has been edited by arnitald (edited 01-07-2005 @ 07:18 AM).]

I think Minimum will be about...

1000Ghz
512 RAM
6GB Hard Disk
64MB 3D Card
98-2000-ME-XP

Recommended:

1.5Ghz
1GB RAM
64MB 3D Card
8GB Hard Disk
98-2000-ME-XP

About all new games require that amount of Ghz and RAM.

6 GB! UT 2004 didn't even need that much space...

I hate it how so many of these threads pop up when discussing a new game. ES hasn't given us any information regarding this issue, we can only guess. Even if we can get an accurate estimate of the system requirements it's far to early to upgrade your computer. Some people just make ridiculous estimates, ES wants a broad market, they aren't going to force everyone to buy a 2000 euro computer. I'm sure that if you can play new RTS games on High settings you can at least play AoE3 on low settings.

[This message has been edited by aom dude (edited 01-07-2005 @ 09:12 AM).]

I even think it will be equal. I base my calculations on what effects I have seen. Almost all of these are to be found in HL2, which has a very powerful engine too. I can run HL2 on maximum settings with my not so good computer (512Ram, 2100+, Radeon9800Pro 128). I was suprised that it runs, but because my video card isn't that bad, it ran good with the DX9.0 effects. And I think that AOE3 will run a bit worse than HL2 because of the many units. But effect-wise it should be the same.

By Max settings, do you mean is AA and AF on? Cause I have a X800 and AA and AF on max, and I get a good 70FPS+ rate, throughout 99% of the game.

[This message has been edited by Elpea (edited 01-07-2005 @ 10:40 AM).]

No, I don't count AA or AF. That would kill my CPU and video card.

Serious guys,, 1gb ram, 8gb space, no no..

Rise of Nations(newst RTS I know of)
system:
128mb ram
500Ghz
16mb 3d card

Now AoE3 might be several times as good as RoN, but I don't think the system req wil go over the dobble of this,, except maybe videocard,,.. I ran AoM on a 4mb intel Extrme grafix,,hehe.. The mouse lagd,,but else the game runed fine on my hp
673mhz, 4mb gfx, and I needed 96mb of ram, so I upgraded my ram to 320(from 64,added 256 and volla).. and AoM runed..

I don't think AoE3 will demand really high sys req to run minimum...but I do think gfx will be really really good, so to have the highest gfx you will need a good comp.

[This message has been edited by Silentflame (edited 01-07-2005 @ 12:56 PM).]

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Please don't talk about graphics card in combination with RoN, it hurts.

RoN is ten years old and has not good graphics. What you have to compare with are titles like Ground Control 2, Panzers or Battle for Middle Earth... and those don't have that ammount of detail. Please.

LOL Phatfish 128 is so 3 years ago

Most companies develop AHEAD of their time to increase the longevity of the games graphics. For example, A game that can't be run on highest settings right out of the boxs will continue to look good once the graphics cards that are able to run the game on highest settings. Perhaps we should expect this from Age III?

Besides, this is a very good business strategy. Not just increase the longevity of the game by adding better multiplayer aspects, but increasing the longevity by adding higher settings that will be "unlocked" later in the graphics industry life.

Quoted from batlle for middle earth system requriments:

Okay..the system req will probalby be a little higher than this,, little better cpu, and a geforce 4 gfx card..

Quoted from Argaulis:

haha!

hehe..

Man... it's all too early to discuss system requirements here... but one thing I sure is that by the time the game release, the mainstream ram size of normal user will be at least 256MB, and gamer user will have at least 512MB system memory... Also, guys, I believe you guys are trying to complain if the game's graphic is good or bad... For what I mean is that if the graphic is good, you will say:"Man I can't play this game, probably no one else will" and if the graphic is bad, you will say;"Man, AOE III graphic sucks! look at other games like XXXX XXXX... ES sucks up big time!!" So either you guys are going to complain anyways... what's the point? what do u want?

[This message has been edited by madpcsupreme (edited 01-07-2005 @ 04:04 PM).]

I need to know if coming fall I need a new pc cos this would require immediate saving plans...

I don’t know, but I really think it should be a sis rec min of 256mb of ram and not 512. They want millions of people to buy this game not 100000. So for that they should have min sis recs at the level about 1.5 yrs before the game came out (IMO); this would be in the neighborhood of 256mb.

My PC spec: AMD Athlon XP CPU 1944Mhz (155 FSB)
256 X 2 dual channel DDR 333 ram(running @ 155 X 2Mhz)
nForce 2 Motherboard w/ MCP-T onboard nvidia's soundStorm sound.
ATI Radeon 9800LE w/ 128MB 256Bit DDR running @ 8X AGP(Unlocked all 8 pipes, and overclocked to 400/310 core/ram)
80GB 7200rpm WD 8mb buffer HDD
onboard 10/100 network

u think it will run AOE 3 ok?

[This message has been edited by madpcsupreme (edited 01-07-2005 @ 06:55 PM).]