X1600 Playing Unreal Tournament 2007?

Sup all,

Hoping to play unreal tournament 2007 on a MacBook Pro 1.83GHz core duo with 1.5GB RAM and 128mb ATI mobility radeon x1600.

Here are UT2007 specs...
Minimum Requirements
CPU: 2.8Ghz
RAM: 512MB
Graphics: Geforce 6 series

Recommended System
CPU: 3-4Ghz
RAM: 1024MB
Graphics: NVIDIA 6800GT/Ultra or 7800GT/GTX SLI


UT2007 Technical features and requirements
* Dual-core CPU: Multi-threading is supported and should provide much better performance
* 64-bit version to be available with better textures
* Renderers: SM3.0, 2.0, possible DX8 renderer
* HDR supported
* Physics: Novodex Physics Engine
* AGEIA PhysX PPU supported.

Keep in mind that these are not official requirements from Epic, nor final. What we know is that the game will take advantage of technologies such as dual core processors, AGEIA compatible Physics chips and Shader Model 3.0.

Thilo Bayer, Editor-in-Chief PCG Hardware, adds:
As I clarified in a seperate e-mail with Mark Rein, we have some misunderstanding in the term "minimum specs". We mean "minimum specs for high in game detail" which is not the same as bare "minimum specs" so that the game runs at all.


Statements from Epic about requirements & performance

At E3 2005, Epic's Tim Sweeney suggested an NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra level card for decent frame rates at 1024x768 resolution.

According to Mark Rein, VP of Epic, Nvidia 7800 GTX runs Unreal Tournament 2007 significantly faster than the Geforce 6800 generation of cards.
Source: Inquirer


Please help.

 

its kind of covered here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=102317

But I'll also try and get final confirmations for the specs and requirements for this game before the Demo gets released in about a month or so.

 

Yeah, we need final confirmation on requirements. And then one can download the demo and try before you buy. Nice that multi-threaded support is picking up steam

 

It should run it at least on low or medium settings.

 

Hmmm, ill be playing it on low graphics, i guess. Not a high end gamer.

 

Personally, I'm not too concerned that my MBP won't be able to play the latest games being released in the next 2 years. That fact, GPUs like the X1600 are the bread and butter of the gaming industry. If they really expect to make money for the effort they are putting into making a game, their games must be able to play and play "decently" on current mid-range GPUs as that represents a much larger portion of the market than high-end GPUs. This is expecially true looking at the number of IGPs or low-end GPUs in the market which should be able to "run" the latest games. (Notice I say "run" not "play", since running is the basic prerequisite of someone buying a game and the company getting money. I know I'm making game makers out to be money hungry fiends, but they are a business and that dictates certain business decisions such as keeping your market as wide as possible.)

I like to look at what Dell and other big manufacturers are churning out as an indicator for where the gaming industry is going. In this case, the most popular notebooks are the HP dv6000t, Lenovo T60, Sony Vaio SZ, and the Dell Inspiron 6400 all of which have a Go 7400/MR X1400 GPU, so it's almost guaranteed that will be the minimum for nearly all games released in 2007 and most in 2008. For comparative purposes a MR X1400 class card beats a 9600/X600 and is a little bit slower than a 9700. A MR X1600 class card is faster than the 9700 and a X700/6600 class card, which makes me feel quite comfortable with the MBP since the 9700/X700/6600 is a huge portion of the market and the performance level they have is quite capable so I can't see them leaving us out cold. I would say the 9700/X700/6600 is a very potent movement, maybe even more so than the GeForce4 Ti movement was, and the efforts to keep GeForce4 Ti owners in the loop are still being felt.

 

This is probably one of the dumbest quotes I've ever read.

Really? One generation's high end will be significantly faster than the last generation's high end? NEVER!

Anyways, if you'd like a decent gauge of how UT3 will run on your MBP, download the demo for RoboBlitz and give it a spin. RoboBlitz runs on Unreal Engine 3, and while it's not going to be wholly accurate (I expect UT3 to be more demanding), it's at least informative.

 

"That fact, GPUs like the X1600 are the bread and butter of the gaming industry."
Not agree with ltcommander_data. Game industry make games mainly for Consoles, and secondarily for PCs. So PCs have to keep up with them, and not the other way around.

 

No way. The XBOX360 or PS3 only have the graphics power of roughly a Geforce 7600GT, or a Radeon X1600. The computer industry, meanwhile, is pushing ahead with cards like the ATI X2900XTX, with 1 GB of 512-bit GDDR4 memory, or the Nvidia Geforce 8900GTX, with 512 GB of GDDR4. Take a look whose graphics processors, memory, and cards are ahead. You'll see the computer industry leads the way in raw power. I don't see any Geforce 8800GTX-equivalents in an XBOX360.


Now back on topic -

UT2K7 is a DirectX 10 game. The X1600 is a DX9-compatible card. That means that you will be able to play the game, but you won't be able to unlock any of the DX10 eyecandy, like shadows, or dynamic lighting, or extra physics features, or other stuff like that.

Currently the X1600 is a pretty powerful card. However, when Geforce 8600 comes out in two months, it'll be relegated to the "slightly outdated" category of video cards, like the 7800GTX or X1950XTX were outdated with the release of 8800GTX. This doesn't mean it'll suck, however. It'll still be powerful enough to play UT2007 at at least low settings.

Although ... I've heard that the X1600 in MacBooks are only 64-bit memory, not 128-bit. If that's true (I'm not too sure, not a big Mac person), there's a huge performance difference between those two types of memory, because one memory can basically handle twice the information flowing through it. UT would still probably be playable, but you'd definitely have to crank down the settings.

Once again, everything in this thread is just purely academic speculation. We can't really know how the X1600 plays the game until it's actually released.

 

In a way you are right, but the equivalence for PS3 is a GeForce 7900 and for XBOX360 a ATI X1900. Those cards are at least twice the x1600, so the games, aiming to the main consumers (Console people) will still go a bit farther.
I hope the x1600 last some, since I have one, but I see it difficult.

 

The MR X1600 in the MacBook Pro has a full 128-bit memory bus coupled with the standard 256-bit ring-bus memory controller. Apple hasn't skimped on the quality of their components. In fact, the GDDR3 memory that is coupled with the MR X1600 seems to be the same Samsung stuff rated at 700MHz that is used with the desktop X1900Pro. No doubt Apple uses this higher grade memory and downclock it to 450MHz to save power and heat rather than using more common 500MHz memory. My 3DMark05 score is 3928 even with only 128MB of dedicated memory and that certainly isn't achievable if it only had a 64-bit memory bus.

 

Wonder how UT2007 will run on mine