Min. Requirments for max settings

[Latrobe]

Just a little curious, but what would the minimun requirments be if you wanted to run at the absolute top settings for AHII and still run fairly well?

[Ghastly]

The problem is that one mans "fairly well ... " is another man's "purrrfectamundo!!" and yet another mans "sucks scummy pond water  "

Perhaps a better definition (such as "all sliders at max, hi-rez textures and (some specification) for shadowing and self shadowing? at never less than 60 fps at (some resolution) over the "big city" strats) would better? 

<S>

[Dragon]

Just a little curious, but what would the minimun requirments be if you wanted to run at the absolute top settings for AHII and still run fairly well?

[Latrobe]

The problem is that one mans "fairly well ... " is another man's "purrrfectamundo!!" and yet another mans "sucks scummy pond water  "

Perhaps a better definition (such as "all sliders at max, hi-rez textures and (some specification) for shadowing and self shadowing? at never less than 60 fps at (some resolution) over the "big city" strats) would better? 

<S>

Maxed Settings on everything. Hi-res texture, maxed ground vis. range (think max is set at 4 miles), hi-res water and ground texture, water reflections, self-shadowing, etc etc. The whole works, and as for FR's 40 or more could be nice.

(Image removed from quote.)

I'm not a computer master so I'm not sure what that's a picture of, so I'm missing a good joke I'm guessing. 

[Spikes]

My systems in my sig ("My PC" link) ran it fine when I had 1 video card (5770)...I'm sure you won't need a Quad Core, I just got it b/c of good price...love it.  You'll probably have to spend upwards of 700 or so, I would assume. Mine is at about 1K now with second vid card, which was 180.

[4deck]

Latrobe, that is the CPU from the movie "War Games"

http://www.fast-rewind.com/wargames.htm

[BaldEagl]

The problems that you face with your question is that two people with even identical machines might experience significantly different results.

If one person downloads a lot off the Internet, doesn't trim Windows proccesses, doesn't run system cleanup and defrag regularily, has a bunch of background appplications running and is pushing a big high resolution monitor their perfomance will be significantly less than someone doing the opposite on the same machine.  So, to offer a minimum system then means that you also have to define your individual habits.

The second problem is your requirement for self shadows/smooth shadows which is a big frame killer.  While most reasonably modern "good" computers of the past few years should run the game without issue with all other settings maxed, this single requirement pushes you from "good" computer to "leading edge" and the budget that goes along with that distinction.

In general I'd say a computer (just the box) priced in the 900-1200 range will handle AH without a problem regardless of your habits but when you take that next step to smooth shadows then the price rises exponentially as you have to move to crossfire/SLI with a bigger PSU, better cooling and all that goes with that.