Quake Wars System Requirements Revealed

http://videogames.techfresh.net/news/video-games/pc-games/quake-wars-system-requirements/

The system requirements for Quake Wars have been set and they are surprisingly light. Only 512MB of RAM in XP and a 128MB GeForceFX 5700 or the trusty Radeon 9700. No DX9.0c/SM3.0 GPU limitation. Of course, being built on a modified Quake 4 engine which was a modified Doom 3 engine rather than a completely new engine and being multiplayer targeted helps keep the requirements low. I guess this is probably close to what you would expect for Starcraft 2. No word on the requirements for the Mac version though.

 

Yeah. I was actually pretty happy when I got the beta for QuakeWars, and found that it ran very well on my PC (which is getting long in the tooth now, with an Athlon 64 3400+ and a GeForce 6800GT).

 

Which means everyone's 8600m GT should be fabulous

 

Indeed, not a very demanding game, I like.

 

Looks and plays a heck of a lot better than both BF2 and BF2142, yet the system requirements are so low.

 

I think you might be pushing it a little there Cheeseman, I'm sure those are the min specs. And the game doesn't look any better then BF2 or BF2142 when you have things lowered done. Then again everything is opinion based these days, I don't like what it looks like and I don't find any more or less fun then BF2 and BF2142 and since on both of my systems those games run fine, and the Quake wars Betas ran the same.....

It's nice the reqs are low for so many people, and the games good but it's not my thing I guess is what I am trying to say. Not directing any heat at anyone, if it sounded like I was -_-

 

I believe part of the reason for the low system requirements is to demonstrate the capabilities of OpenGL. With DX10 being marketed as bringing increased performance over DX9 and better graphics, with people expecting that on picking up a DX10 title, they probably want to show that OpenGL is still a perfectly viable alternative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvuTtrkVtns

Cormack's id Tech 5 demo at Macworld was actually pretty decent considering that it was operating single-threaded and only using a 512MB Quadro FX 4500, basically a GeForce 7800GTX. Pretty steep restrictions for a tech demo trying to advertise a game engine.

http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/10928/HD+Rage+FileShack+QuakeCon+2007+Footage

I believe the later footage from QuakeCom was using a higher-end GeForce 8800, and RAGE looks as good as upcoming DX10 titles, even though Cormack said they weren't using any DX10 features in the GPU. (I suppose he means even ones exposed in OpenGL so he's basically using DX9c equivalent in OpenGL).

 

Quake Wars


Battlefield 2142

They might be similar, but with system requirements of Quake Wars being almost the same as BF2/BF2142, it still has better graphics and much more superior engine in comparison. Have you tried BF2 on lowest settings? There is no balance, things just look awful. In BF2 there seems to be a large visual leap from high graphics to low, but Quake War's on low still looked a lot better than BF2 on low settings. I would post comparison screenshots, but I uninstalled Quake Wars beta a few months ago.

 

http://marketing.aspyr.com/newsletters/Aspyr_September_2007/Mac/index.html

A note for Mac users. Aspyr has reported that most of what's left on the Mac version of Quake Wars is optimization and bug fixing. They are looking to ship the Mac version very close to when the PC version is released.

It just goes to show that with proper coordination between the game developer and porting company there isn't really a need for Cider. I'm sure most Mac users are willing to accept a reasonable delay, say a month, if it means getting a well optimized native game port. I'm sure a company like Aspyr who depends on ports for business would provide better support and more frequent patches than say EA who is only doing the Mac on the side.