Minimum specs: don’t believe the hype

Let’s face it: games are becoming more and more resource hungry, not just for RAM, but also for graphics and hard drive space.

What pisses me off is game publishers give what the minimum specs should be, when what is on the back of the box is total bullshit. I’ll break it down for you

RAM

Most games these days require a minimum of 1 gigabyte of RAM to play. This is the absolute minimun, mind you. Garbage. Most of us these days are running things in the background like anti-spam, firewall and anti-virus. So you really need a minimum of 2 gigabytes of RAM. And quite frankly, this is the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM anyone should have if they’re going to play games on their computer

Video Card

A good quality video card with at least 256mb of video RAM should be fine. But if you’re like me, you like game graphics to look crisp and sharp. Finding a card with 512mb of video RAM should be no problem these days. Just make sure your motherboard has a slot that can take a PCI-express video card, as most video cards 512mb and above are PCI-Express (or PCI-e for short). You might get lucky and find an AGP card that has 512mb of video RAM, but AGP cards are becoming harder to find.

Prcoessor speed

Unfortunately. if you don’t have the minimum processor speed listed on the box, you’re either going to have to put the box back on the shelf and walk away or buy the game and upgrade. Most games require a minimum of around 2.2 gigaherz. If you’re running Vista (and I feel sorry for you if you don’t know a lot about computers and got sucked in to buying Vista) it’s around 2.6 gigaherz. Best bet would be to try and get a processer that has a speed of 3 gigaherz, but these can be fairly pricey.

Hard drive space

Again, if you don’t have the required hard drive space, you’re going to have tp upgrade. Hard drives these days are inexpensive, and last quite a bit longer than they 10 years ago. Around 5 years is the life expectancy for a hard drive these days.

Sound card

If you don’t have a sound card that is compatible with at least Direct X 9C, you seriously need to upgrade. Again, sound cards aren’t all that expensive, and you don’t need a really expensive one. My sound card is actually part of the motherboard, and is connected to a surround sound speaker set up. The only problem is the volume of gameplay can sometimes be a bit loud.

So there you have it. A simpe guide to judging whether or not you can play the latest and greatest games. If only game developers/publishers would realise we can’t all have the best hardware available.

Until next time

Lord Yu