Need For Speed Most Wanted is not Tomb Raider:Legend. But i used it earlier in my examples of CPU/Ram usage when playing a Directx9.0c game. I just wanted to show what happens.
First, the official minimum system requirements list.
So i tested this.System Requirements
Date:Wednesday, 30.11.2005 20:45 Written by: Electronic Arts Short Description: The minimum system requirements
The minimum system requirements necessary to play Need For Speed: Most Wanted Black Edition are as follows.Although Direct3D is supported, this support is only officially extended to certain 3D accelerator devices. The following major D3D chipsets are supported.
- Windows 2000 or XP
- 1.4GHz Pentium IV or comparable processor
- 256MB RAM
- A video card with at least 32MB of video memory with DirectX 9.0c (or higher) compatible drivers, supporting one of the chipsets listed below.
- At least 3GB of available hard disk space
- DirectX 9.0c (or higher) installed
- A DirectX compliant sound card
- 8X CD-ROM Drive
ATI Radeon 7500
ATI Radeon 8500
ATI Radeon 9xxx series
ATI Radeon Xpress 200
ATI Radeon X300, X600, X700, X800 series
NVIDIA GeForce 2 (GTS, MX, Ultra/Ti)
NVIDIA GeForce 3 (Ti)
NVIDIA GeForce 4 (MX, Ti)
NVIDIA GeForce FX series
NVIDIA GeForce 6200, 6600, 6800, 7800
Intel 950/i915g
S3 GammaChrome S18 Pro
While Direct3D supports a wider variety of 3D accelerator devices, the behavior of Need for Speed Most Wanted cannot be predicted in these situations. In extreme cases, running Need for Speed Most Wanted with a Direct3D device that is not officially supported can lead to an unstable PC environment.
To play online a network card is required for broadband connectivity
1. Depending on the type of CPU, Need For Speed Most Wanted is a very CPU intensive game. More so for an old Pentium4, less on the newer hyperthreaded Pentium 650 CPU. It will not be pushed to its limits, whilst the older CPU is constantly at or very close to 100% load.
2. The RAM usage, when playing @ 1600x1200 at the highest settings is over 900MB. When lowering the resolution to @ 800 x 600 and game settings to the very lowest, the RAM usage still is 650 MB. So, on my older PC it is good that i have 1GB of RAM on it. At highest settings, the game occupies about 810 ~ 850MB RAM.
The result on the newer pc:
- Pentium 650 @ 3.78Ghz Hyperthreaded / 888 Mhz FSB
- ASUS P5AD2-E Premium
- 2 GB CORSAIR PC5300 DDR2 Ram @667 Mhz Dual Channel
- ATI Radeon X1900XT / 512 MB GDDR3
- Creative Audigy 2 ZS
- EIZO T965 @ 1600x1200
1600x1200, all game settings at maximum:
1024 x 768, game settings at medium:
800 x 600, game settings at lowest possible, so no AA, AF, no reflections, shadows, weather effects etc.:
img
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The result on the older pc:
- Pentium 4 ~2.66 Ghz / 533 Mhz FSB
- ASUS P4PE
- 1 GB Infineon PC2700 DDR Ram
- ATI Radeon9700 Pro / 128 MB GDDR
- Creative Audigy 2
- Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 512 @ 1600x1200
1600x1200, all game settings at maximum:
800 x 600, game settings at lowest possible, so no AA, AF, no reflections, shadows, weather effects etc.
(look @ the graph on the left, at the right it already sunk because of pausing the game while saving the screenshots in Paint):
600 x 480, game settings at lowest possible, so no AA, AF, no reflections, shadows, weather effects etc.:
You see?
Now back to the official system requirements. It says 1.4 Ghz CPU minimum. In reality, you see the Pentium 4 2.66 Ghz already is almost 100% loaded.
It says 256MB of Ram. That's a straight lie. Let's say: 256MB for the game itself, so ON TOP OF the 256 MB that WindowsXP needs for itself to run smoothly. But even that is not sufficient to play it at the lowest settings @ 640 x 480. You see that the minimum system RAM usage is 660 MB.
So, when you try to play this game on a pc that only just fits the (official!) minimum specifications, the CPU won't be able to keep up, and the PC will use the swapfile on the harddiskdrive as RAM, a method that is much slower than system RAM. This means the game will not only look the poorest, but will also run with a lot of stuttering and delays. While it is a racing game...
In Legend (next generation), it is this.
1600x1200/85Hz.
During startup of the game untill the Main Menu, the RAM usage stays under 400 MB. Start of Bolivia level begins with a usage of 530 MB (opening FMV's), proceeding the level slowly ascending to around 610 in the box-puzzle area.
I then switched to Ghana for five minutes (627MB). Then back to Main Menu, and again started Bolivia. Now it quickly rises to 686 MB in the opening FMV already.
