Specs for UT2007/UT3

[Spaz]

I seen the Games "Convention in Germany" and Nvidia 7800 demo videos on IGN and they look awesome. But what specs did the devel PCs use during those demos? and Has a minimum/recommended requirement be determined yet by the UT2007 team?

[Wowbagger]

I dunno but i guess a Pixel Shader 3.0 gfxcard is a must.
I dont know if UE3 is scalable? (Doom3 required a Geforce 3 iirc)

[Yoshiro]

UE 3 is somewhat scalable, but I do believe Shader Model 3 is the minimum because of alot of the effects used. Could be entirly wrong.

But at the various shows they have had it on 6800 Ultras SLI'ed and then 7800 GTX's SLI'ed.

[legacy-DagnyTaggart]

So, don't get an ATI X800 series card that doesn't support Shader 3.0? Instead, go with an nVidia 6600 GT or 6800 GT?

[Spaz]

Right now I'm looking at the 6800 and 7800. I wish there was some word on what will work well.

[fuegerstef]

I wish there was some word on what will work well.

Patience will work well.

[Spaz]

I wish there was some word on what will work well.

Patience will work well.

Patience might but violence is faster. *Pulls out Metal Bat*

[RoadKillGrill]

i would think a bare minimum specs would be a p4 2.0 ghz, nivdia 5200, 512 mb ram

[legacy-gamerfreak101]

eeh. Wouldn't be very fair for us ATI lovers if UT2007 would only work on a Nvidia card.

[legacy-turrican]

eeh. Wouldn't be very fair for us ATI lovers if UT2007 would only work on a Nvidia card.
And for most it's not a matter of lovers ;) , it's just that I got my card when it seemed better than Nvidia's offerings (according to a few benchmarks that I saw on the net), it could have been the other way around. I only intend to pay for the game, not for a new videocard, even if it has a bit less of eye candy that GeForces.

[legacy-SW0RN_ENEMY]

I have read that you can have nvidia anything FX level (which is good cuz i have the fx5600)and that any ati over 9600 i think is ok too, ill have to find that site I read it on.

[legacy-turrican]

I took a look at the Unreal Engine 3 page. Well, all that is being hyped is HDR, light and shadow processing. I have experience on some games that these 2 last features are very demanding for the Radeons and seen benchmarks where the Nvidias murder them. Also there's a demo of perfect HDR based on FP16, and the Unreal Engine 3 uses FP64. Finally UE3, Epic are sponsored by Nvidia.
I see where this is getting at. And I'm not going to put up with it.
Sorry, but this is disrespectful for the ones that pay for the game. These ones like it, contribute for making Epic a better company. Still, they have to deal with an Engine that includes features that gives the most advantage to one of the video card manufacturers and makes the game lag or being completely unplayable on the others. There is no valid reason for using HDR FP64. None. And putting the pressure on light and shadow effects, neglecting others that maybe would do better on Radeons. I bought a Radeon 9800, not a product that competes with Epic, so I'd like to see reasonable performance out of it, as good as for instance a Geforce 5900. It's fair because as I said, I voted with my wallet after seeing benchmarks on the web, and I work hard to pay for my kit, as do most people. There is fearful competition between the videocard manufacturers and they deserve the money because they put out products with excellent value(some years ago an hi-performance video workstation could cost 100000$), so they will do anything to get their profit, including sponsoring game companies. But it's not my business. Mine is work, have family life, and have fun playing the game.

There is a way to really play the game without adding the cost of the video card: warez. Yes, it's extremely lame and criminal, even more because UT2004 was very affordable, and Epic gave ECE expansion pack for free unlike other companies. But I need to play offline the maps where the system can cope with it, because let's be honest, rendering a lot of players on maps selected by the server will not be a good experience. And I'm not sure that all the maps will play as good as the demo. And ONLY then buy the game. If not, I will just move along and play other game.

Epic is certainly my favourite gaming company as is for you, but there are lots of released games out there. And if there weren't there's always the possibility of loading the Amiga emulator and play Turrican.

[legacy-Xipher]

turrican, you have to realize, these developers want to make the game look the best it can. I wouldn't even try truning on HDR with that card, as with my 5950 Ultra I recently dropped couldn't even handle that. In order to actually have some decent proformance, with HDR on, Im saying you will need xX00 series from ATI , or 6000 series from Nvidia for it to not crush under the presure. Sorry to say, but developers try and get the most out of there engines, and that means everything isn't going to be avalible for the older generation of hardware. Also, if you didn't know, ATi actually didn't even impletment Shader Model 3.0 completely it its newest line of hardware, they left out one key feature. Ill quote from HardOCP


Yesterday we wrote a short news piece on some realizations that have come to light about what features the X1000 series support in regards to Shader Model 3.0. We asked ATI specifically if texture lookups in the vertex shader were supported, this is their response:


Vertex texture fetch (an optional feature in SM 3.0) is not supported directly; however, since the X1000 family does all pixel shader calculations with FP32 precision, just like the vertex shader, it is possible to get the same results using the render to vertex buffer capability. Basically, you do a quick pre-pass where you render to a special linear buffer in which each pixel represents a vertex. Textures can be used to modify each vertex through the pixel shader, and the result is then read back into the vertex shader. The result is fast vertex texturing with full filtering support, without requiring any special hardware in the vertex shader engine.

The claim here is that the feature “Vertex Texture Fetch” is actually an optional feature in Shader Model 3.0 and this specific feature is not supported directly with the Radeon X1000 family. They then go on to explain how there is a work around to enable the same result as doing a texture lookup from the vertex shader using pixel shaders. While the technique is very intriguing from a technical standpoint the fact is that ATI lacks a major Shader Model 3.0 feature in hardware.

Vertex Texture Lookups are necessary for some effects such as displacement mapping, hardware raytracing, advanced hardware skinning, hardware based collisions and soft body deformations, bone system generation, and many other areas of research developers are working on. To not include a very standardized feature means the progression of games utilizing these features will be dwarfed. In fact there is indeed already one game that supports the “Vertex Texture Fetch” feature and is using it to provide better image quality with water.

The way the workaround works with the Radeon X1000 family requires game content developers to specifically write in special code just for ATI X1000 family hardware if they want to gain the same result as doing a texture lookup from the vertex shader. This requires more time and effort on their part to specifically support these kinds of features within the X1000 family. With NVIDIA’s GeForce 6 and 7 series however this same result can easily by done officially through the supported Shader Model 3.0 feature in DirectX. This workaround that ATI has in place reminds us of their backdoor method of performing Geometry Instancing in R420 hardware which was not officially supported in DirectX. We all know how well that turned out, basically no developers used it in their games, instead opting for the Shader Model 3.0 implementation, and one example is FarCry. CryTek added in a patch the ability to do geometry instancing using the Shader Model 3.0 implementation and not ATI’s specific implementation that only works on their hardware and is not part of the DirectX standard.

This seems to us a case of ATI believing they are doing something better or “Right” but in reality they are lacking a very important specific feature of Shader Model 3.0. Therefore we hold our ground in saying that the slogan “Shader Model 3.0 Done Right” should really be called “Shader Model 3.0 Done the ATI Way.” Wasn’t this the mentality NVIDIA had when they created the high level language CG and the GeForce FX? We all know how that turned out.

I would say, ATI is dropping the ball, BAD.

[legacy-turrican]

turrican, you have to realize, these developers want to make the game look the best it can. I wouldn't even try truning on HDR with that card, as with my 5950 Ultra I recently dropped couldn't even handle that.
That's ok, I wouldn't even expect HDR to run very well on my card, although, please, take a look at this demo: http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/ . It's done with FP16 i.e. 64bits p/pixel. And let me tell you, it's not poor man's HDR (it's extremely beautiful, btw). It runs at 37fps default settings and 71 disabling multisampling and depth of field, keeping a lot of percieved image quality. It's a tradeoff that I will accept. And if the game can't run on the card at decent speed that's fine with me. But much less can do with HDR FP64. It's the FP64 and not using FP16 or FP24 that makes me suspect that Epic is doing this on purpose to sell a product that it's not theirs, i.e. videocards, forcing the obsolecence of current midrange ones, mine and yours, and migrating the users to NVidia because for UE3, as you will see from word of mouth, "ATI is teh suXXor".



Sorry to say, but developers try and get the most out of there engines, and that means everything isn't going to be avalible for the older generation of hardware.

But that's fantastic, that's the way it should be. But it should be scalable also. And that's were I'm not so sure. I mean, look at the features of the UE3. I can't digest all that, but it seems that almost is related to lights,shadows and HDR. Tell me on which of these features ATI has a chance vs NVidia. Let me tell this again, UE3 will be used on lots of games, it's a vidcard manufacturers war. There are a large amount of games that favour ATI also and there I see a lot of DIFFERENT HYPED eye-candy. And there's a well know case where that company is backed by ATI.


.... I would say, ATI is dropping the ball, BAD.

Ok, those extra features mentioned can be fantastic but we aren't still quite there. If Epic is pushing agressively the engine towards SM3.0 features, and need to do an half-assed or crippled implementation for the others, that could mean that Geforces 5x00 owners, but also ATI 9x00, x600, x700, and who knows x800, are toasted, and going to migrate to Nvidia. See, it works like a charm. Note: although I may pulling this one a bit out of my ass, of course I don't know what sort of features Epic is using from SM3.0, for me it makes sense.

And there's this that I remembered now: when Nvidia's DX9.0 implementation was 4x2 (whatever that means) and M$ with ATI made it 8x1, Nvidia suffered. Nvidia was also with that Xbox contract and got in trouble, don't remember how. So maybe there's even something more that I wasn't figuring out:
Xbox360: MS + ATI
PS3: Sony => Nvidia > Epic

All of this that I mentioned is low, and it doesn't show much respect for the gamers. And a lot of them can afford the game, but not this greed or bs, which his killing their videocard on purpose. And mind you, I really can afford an Geforce6800/7800, but I'd rather spend on a DualCore CPU, which is general purpose and makes the machine more powerful for all the tasks.
With all this, I really don't care if I play a pirated copy, if the game doesn't perform at say, 80% of speed and perceived image quality on my videocard vs yours. And you can call this sentence a lame threat or trolling, but I've seen enough of this crap in the business world and honestly, I'm not the kind of person to STFU and live with it. It's even more frustating, because besides liking the game, I was very proud for paying for UT2004. And the extra content available, ECE, or done by the community, maps, mods, gametypes made the game last much longer.