I...I.. can't believe it.....

Zerocool032

OMG you guys, some of yall might already know this but, Half life 2 is designed to run on lower-end machines, i read this on valve website about HL2.

While the new engine has all sorts of fancy features, it's still designed to scale and work on lower-end machines. Apparently a 700mhz processor and a video card capable of running DX6 is enough, although a 2ghz with a GeForce4 is recommended. Rumors about NVidia or ATI exclusivity are unfounded

Thats from VALVE, about HALF LIFE 2!

Zerocool032

I found this off another gaming website

The trick is all down to some clever programming, As Gabe explained, when designing the PC version of the game, it has to be able to run on every machine set-up possible, from low-end crappy PC’s- the kind you might be forced to use on a daily basis at your school or office- right up to the super powerful, top of the range monsters.

Smelly_Armor

companies have to make sure devs develop games to run on lower end systems so that they don't alienate a portion of their customer base, thus, loosing potential profit.

Of course, to play a game like Half-Lie 2 if you had an older cpu, vid card and less than 512mb RAM, one would have to turn down the settings so their system could handle it. EQ2's minimum system specs required to play it are not that powerful considering its projected release date and the age of a 1ghz processor system:

Operating System: Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
-Processor: 1GHz or greater
-RAM: 512 MB
-Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible. Pixel shader and vertex shader compatible hardware with 64 MB of texture memory
-Sound Card: DirectSound compatible audio hardware

Not as low as HL2, but still, you get the idea.

Most of us have owned systems or currently own systems and have played games that we had to tune down the settings on to play the game. That or go out and buy a new vid card or stick of memory. Company's want to be able to make their gaming product available to as many people as possible  in order to get the highest sales possible in order to make as much profit as possible. Simple economics.

"The probability of someone watching you is porportional to the stupidity of your action." Hartley's 1st Law

flabair

glad one company is thinking about the consumers, meaning us the players

ChronicRick

So, you have until September to get that "monster" rig for Half-life 2...SEPTEMBER!! Man. To think if that source code hadn't leaked.

Ever wondered if they leaked it on purpose to get some more time and reassure the fans?

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Bobiin

Hard to beleive, those graphics are amazing

--Nyture, Arc Convoker of fironia vie server (EQ) --Retired--

-Newbie monk - Nyture on FF11

Pancakes23

They shood do that for  EQII

Pancakes23:Live by the pan, die by the hungery childern your fed too.

Quitters never win... Or lose... They just quit. Now isnt that easy.