PSNext Performance and Spec Reqs

[GTGD]

If there's one thing SOE needs to get right, it's performance. I'm sure many of you remember the beginning days where things were choppy, but playable. And then after a few patches, things went to hell. 15fps in medium sized battles is what made me quit playing the first time. This past year when I bought a new, awesome desktop, I finally experienced Planetside the way I always knew it was supposed to be.

With the info we have now, what do you guys think will be the requirements for PSNext? I'm banking on a current system running it decently. So something like an i5, 6GB of RAM, GTX 460/470. As for running it very smoothly in the larger battles, probably stuff that hasn't come out yet...

[duck]

Originally Posted by GTGD

With the info we have now, what do you guys think will be the requirements for PSNext? I'm banking on a current system running it decently. So something like an i5, 6GB of RAM, GTX 460/470. As for running it very smoothly in the larger battles, probably stuff that hasn't come out yet...

I think that type of system specs would be too high for PSNext. The thing about MMOs is that you want to have minimum specs that are low as possible so that you can get more players. I think the minimum would be dual-core, an HD 4830 512mb, and 2GB memory.
Too play on MAX I would say a quad-core, GTX 4xx/HD 58xx, and 3 or 4GB memory

[Sirisian]

yeah I think the OP has a good basic spec list. With the quality level being raised and the game probably being more complicated this time around I'd expect more modern system requirements. This would be especially true if the player count was raised past the current 400 limit which Smedley has hinted at a few times.

// Edit would be nice to see a DX10/11 release honestly. I don't know any of my friends using older cards anymore to play games. Projecting current trends 70% of people should have a DX10 capable system with Windows 7 by the probable 2012 release date.

[GTGD]

My line of thought was judging by games like BFBC2 and the new CoD games, on such a massive scale. Keep in mind a lot of that stuff I listed isn't exactly new. I bought my rig early last summer and a lot of the components were a good bargain, but not the newest on the market. It's already been a year, and it's looking like PSNext will be ready for a Beta by the end of the year at the earliest.

I'm positive Windows 7 will be the required OS, and yeah DX10 will most likely be standard too. A big problem is all of the people like me who quit when our PCs couldn't handle the stress from the massive battles. I think SOE learned a lot from that. And honestly, people who have really crappy computers are probably not the intended demographic for this anyway.

[morf]

Personally I think they need to focus on scalability with the graphics settings. Would like to see minimum settings playable on nvidia 9000 series and higher, scaling up to high/ultra settings on the latest cards at release. This would make the game accessible to the vast majority of FPS gamers.

[Raymac]

Be patient. The specs will likely be one of the last things we learn about the game. The way things are lookin...we have a long time to wait.

[Ailos]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Be patient. The specs will likely be one of the last things we learn about the game. The way things are lookin...we have a long time to wait.

You can say that again. I think we'll have time to buy/build two more new systems before PS:N comes out, the way things are looking right now.

[NivexQ]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Be patient. The specs will likely be one of the last things we learn about the game. The way things are lookin...we have a long time to wait.

It's called speculating. He's not demanding soe release the specs.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by NivexQ

It's called speculating. He's not demanding soe release the specs.

Thats fine. I say speculate away. In fact, this forum is filled with speculation at this point because that is all we have to go on to satisfy our collective excitement. I was just pointing out the fairly obvious point that out of all the things we are speculating on now, this one is likely to resolved last.

[otomotopia]

I will say that if the GFX card minimum requirement is over a 9x series NVIDEA card, or equivalent, and anything over 4Gs of RAM, we won't be playing with a whole lot of people. I'm talking MINIMUM here, not recommended. And that minimum should still obviously be of quality-not blow you away graphics, but still sharp.

[2coolforu]

Game has no AI and lacks many other aspects that really stress the CPU, scripts etc will be run by the server therefore the CPU req will be pretty low. The GPU and RAM will be high though, Planetside 1 was a RAM hog.

My guess:

Minimum

Dual Core > 2.3 Ghz
ATI HD 5750/ NVIDIA GTX 460
3 GB DDR3 RAM
2 mbit internet connection

Recommended

Quad Core > 2.3 Ghz
ATI HD 5850 - 5870 / Nvidia GTX 470 - 570
6 GB DDR3 RAM
8 mbit internet connection


Just my guess

Bear in mind they have no reason to use a 4 core processor, that's only needed for programs that are extremely demanding and need to multithread a lot of different processes, like I said you won't be running scripts/physics calculations/ AI and the host of other things that go on in the background in most games.

In terms of CPU pure clock speed would be best, an i3 or i5 dual core with 4 GHz clock will be a lot better than an i7 quad with 2.6 GHz clock.

As for graphics this game isn't a console port and its wider scale than anything out there currently. There's gonna be a lot of people running around to render and huge open worlds that need to be loaded, if its even slightly bigger than old PS in scale and has console level graphics it will be doubly demanding than a game like BF:BC2. Bear in mind these are just console ports with dx10 and Anti-Aliasing added, they weren't designed for the PC what so ever (Remember the old 100% CPU glitch in BFBC2, all because of porting) and don't come close to stressing a modern PC. I think a GTX 460/ ATI 5750 is a good estimate in terms of minimum specs, if this game gets released next year these cards will be pretty dated.

In terms of RAM Planetside was a huge hog, it leaked over prolonged playing and a big battle can still eat up 1.5 GB of RAM on a modern rig, 3 GB seems reasonable. Lets compare this to ARMA 2, a game with huge maps and big fights; 3 GB can get you along in that game but 6 GB is better to keep it smooth and prevent crashing.

[GTGD]

I think you're overestimating the amount of server-side calculations that will be done. Keep in mind the devs also said they're working on more realistic air simulation. There will be a lot more going on, for pilots at least. However, the rest seems pretty much in-line with what I'm thinking as well. I'm hoping for your scenario though, so long as the game's quality doesn't suffer. I'd prefer to not have to upgrade a ton of stuff to play PSNext smoothly. I'm still so satisfied that I can max out BFBC2!

[Tiberius]

I played PS on a DELL with 1GB RAM and an Nvidia GeForce3 lol

As long as you're not playing on some old POS with 1GB you should be fine, standard HP laptops come with 4GB RAM these days.

[Crator]

I play PS with the below system currently. Major performance increase when using Windows XP versus Windows 7. I'm guessing this will be different with DX10 though especially because can't use DX10 in XP? Right?

System Board: Striker II Formula
Memory: 4GB RAM
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 (2286 MB)

[Infektion]

I'm not to worried with the specs... game code has matured quite a bit since the old 2003 planetside written on older code.

I currently run an E8400 @ 4Ghz w/ 4GB 1066 DDR2 and a 4850 512MB card. I run resolution at 1680x1050, I would'nt mine a 1GB card though ...

I say any new architecture Dual Core @ atleast 3Ghz, 4GB ram, and a 512MB 3850HD or something similar will be able to handle this game at relatively good settings. Remember, it's a MMOFPS, so the eyecandy isn't really going to be a major part of the game in comparison to playability. Are we forgetting how big these fights are going to be?(crosses fingers).