Speculating on UT3 hardware

[{DvT}JonahHex]

Bioshock was released yesterday. I am d/l'ing the demo for it now. It has gotten great reviews...but that's not the point here.

Bioshock uses the Unreal Engine 3.0, the same as UT3 will use. The specs for Bioshock are below and it is not unreasonable to assume that these are similar to what we will be seeing for UT3.

Originally Posted by Bioshock specs

Operating Systems:
Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) or
Windows Vista

Minimum System Requirements: CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
System RAM: 1GB
Video Card: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550).
Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
Hard disc space: 8GB free space

Recommended System Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
System RAM: 2GB
Video card:
DX9: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better)
DX10: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better Sound Card: Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ series (Optimized for use with Creative Labs EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 or EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 compatible sound cards)

Important Note: Game requires Internet connection for activation

[ChemicalWarrior]

I would say Bioshock should give someone a decent idea of how well their system will perform with regards to UT3 and performance. It must be stated though that Bioshock's developers did a lot of work and uses a number of their own rendering and engine aspects. The water for instance is entirely their own work. Also the game first started development on the Unreal Engine 2.5, then transitioned over to UT3. It should still provide a good clue.

My own experience with my system (Core 2 Duo E6300 @ 2.8Ghz, 2GB RAM, X1950 Pro 256MB) is Bioshock performs very well at 1680x1050 and near max settings.

[{DvT}Reckless]

It took me forever but I have the retail version of Bioshock finally running very, very nicely on my new dual core box (AMD X2...eat me Dagger). I'm running Vista Ultimate 64bit and so far the game is smooth as silk.

Of course its took me many man hours of research, trial and error to get over all the initial crashes and lock-ups. Once I did that I have been happily playing it for just over 2 hours and all is well.

If you want a laugh go hit up the 2KGames forums and see the fun folks are having getting this game to run, especially on Vista......

[{OF}Blong]

man the only thing on my computer that meets the recommended is the fact I have 2 gigs of ram.

I do, however, exceed the minimum requirements .

[{DvT}JonahHex]

The Bioshock Demo worked "out of the box" for me in WinXP but in Vista Home Premium (32bit) it would show the initial splashscreen logo then crash at a black screen - opening the Task Manager would get me back to the desktop where I could see the "This program needs to close..." error msg box, w/ an OK button that shut down the program.

After 40-45 mins on "wait" w/ their telephone tech support I got "We don't support the demo" -- of course -- and the suggestion to update DirectX. Unbeknownst to me there was an August, 2007, release of DirectX (here) that immediately fixed the prob in Vista. I'm not sure that I can tell any difference between XP (DirectX 9) and Vista (DirectX 10) in the game - I have all settings cranked up full blast in both - but ... dayum ... it's a pretty game.

Since Reckless mentions it, the Bioshock forum also has a (at last look) 15 page thread slamming their asses hard for the SecuROM DRM that the posters are claiming uses rootkit technology similar to that for which Sony got fried for using on their DVDs a while back. This has me seriously thinking about whether I want to get the retail game or not.

[{DvT}JonahHex]

Originally Posted by ChemicalWarrior

I would say Bioshock should give someone a decent idea of how well their system will perform with regards to UT3 and performance. It must be stated though that Bioshock's developers did a lot of work and uses a number of their own rendering and engine aspects. The water for instance is entirely their own work. Also the game first started development on the Unreal Engine 2.5, then transitioned over to UT3. It should still provide a good clue.

My own experience with my system (Core 2 Duo E6300 @ 2.8Ghz, 2GB RAM, X1950 Pro 256MB) is Bioshock performs very well at 1680x1050 and near max settings.

I was aware of Chem's caveats but he and I seem to have come to the same conclusion: if your system will run Bioshock, it probably will run UT3. How well it runs the games remains to be seen. Epic has a history of tweaking the Unreal series so that their games run reasonably well on lower end (older) machines and they have said that this is part of the game plan for UT3 as well. This also factors into my assumption that Bioshock should give a good clue regarding UT3.

[ChemicalWarrior]

Originally Posted by {DvT}JonahHex

Since Reckless mentions it, the Bioshock forum also has a (at last look) 15 page thread slamming their asses hard for the SecuROM DRM that the posters are claiming uses rootkit technology similar to that for which Sony got fried for using on their DVDs a while back. This has me seriously thinking about whether I want to get the retail game or not.

Since you mentioned it, I made a post in a thread in General Gaming (you'll be able to tell which one it is) about this. While its certainly not rosey for 2K either way, a lot of the Securom situation has been blown way out of proportion and a lot of misinformation about it is just out right wrong. I seriously think Bioshock got a kick in the nuts from some PC gamers because its super hyped and also for the Xbox 360.

[{DvT}Reckless]

Sorry I could have been more specific.

I got the game to run by installing/updating the following:
1) Latest NVIDIA drivers for my EVGA 8800 card
2) Latest DirectX 10
3) Special fix for Creative Xi cards using EAX sound
4) Special fix from AMD for dual core gaming issues

Once I did all that I got the game to run on Vista 64bit. It was a pain in the a$$ to say the least.

I also downloaded the game from Steam, it's not clear to me that the SecureROM issues are evident installing the game this way and I have yet to follow up on it. BTW, I have used to Steam to get several games (HL2, CS and now Bioshock) and I like it a lot.

[ChemicalWarrior]

The Securom protection is still there. It does not prevent you from installing. Instead if you try to install it more than five times it will have you call Securom. It is suppose to release a token so those five only become concurrent installs instead of lifetime ones.

I also don't think the Creative Achlemy is needed for EAX in Bioshock, as I believe Bioshock uses OpenAL for its audio. Hopefully all games in development move to OpenAL as its the best way by far to do game audio now and works perfectly in Vista with hardware audio acceleration.

[{DvT}Sapient6]

Originally Posted by ChemicalWarrior

While its certainly not rosey for 2K either way, a lot of the Securom situation has been blown way out of proportion and a lot of misinformation about it is just out right wrong.

I disagree with the sentiment that it's even possible to blow things out of proportion when it comes to copy protection schemes. SecuRom was developed by a branch of Sony, which is the company that saw fit to install a Rootkit as part of previous copy protection schemes.

So now it's down to trust. Who do we trust for information about what SecuRom does? Sony or some angry guy on the internet? Sony has already lost my trust. Angry guys on the internet, however, have provided me with years of entertainment without ever compromising my computer's security. Further, angry guy on the internet warned me about Starforce and I didn't listen. Starforce caused me some serious problems before I knew it was the cause and nuked it.

Sony: 0
Angry Guy on the Internet: 10

Several sources say SecuRom installs an extension shell designed to prevent the deletion of any 16 bit executables. I can't find any sources that refute this. And while I would have no trouble getting around such a problem, Sony just lost right there.