I couldn't agree more. Playing games at sub-VGA resolutions is absolutely absurd, even if it means getting a game, that was never meant to be installed on VERY sub-par specs, to "run".
This has actually been debated several times, and reaching a concensus was never easy, if possible at all. I myself am of the opinion that graphics settings to be considered are at least the ones in the default range of options the game allows. Regarding enjoyable fps, it does depend on which genre is being played, but certainly anything below 14 or even 10 fps is no longer playable IMO. Some will disagree, but slideshow games is not my idea of gaming at all. Even worse is the recent plague of SwiftShader, which is a software renderer, the exact same thing every single person in the world ran away from since hardware renderers through hardware acceleration was available. There are very few exceptions where a piece of hardware doesn't have the minimum graphics features required to run a certain game, yet having enough grunt to run them aside from the lack of features. That being said, if a game doesn't run natively through hardware acceleration, then it certainly won't run any better and with almost certainly run like a real piece of s#!t. The exception to this rule are games that through registry changes can indeed go from slow to rather playable, but those still rely on hardware itself, as things should be since truly efficient software renderers are still years away to reach the common user. On 20 Mar, 03:29, arcane cossack <[email protected]> wrote: > Looking around the 9xx scene, including Youtube, I'm seeing one thing > that is bothering me greatly. Anything that runs is being listed as > "works". 12fps is "playable". Can we get some sort of standard for > compatibility lists and such? Some examples: > > My laptop's a 1.66ghz C2D. I'm using an Intel 965/X3100 with Alpha 2, > I believe. I have 2gb RAM and am running Windows 7 > > Dead Rising 2: Not playable. Not, in any way, playable. Will run at > 2fps on a beefy machine with an Intel 965. Don't even waste your time. > I've seen this game listed as WORKING by people and that needs to stop > (didn't actually test myself). > > Dead Space 2: Works. 8-12 FPS on my machine with 640x480, tweaking and > Alpha. > > Far Cry: Playable. Good example of a playable game: It'll run at a > nice smooth framerate at low settings, and is pushable to medium. I'm > about halfway through the game and running on 800x600 at Medium, and > it looks absolutely great. There's a room I'm in now with 20+ light > sources that I'm going to end up dropping to Low again on, though. > > Unreal Tournament 2000: Perfect. Runs at max framerate. No issues at > all. Will not stutter or lag. You should probably use the DirectX 9 > renderer you can google for, not the internal 7 or the 10/11 plugins > floating around. > > Now, there are other games that I have the feeling should.. kind of be > in a special category. > > You've seen the videos. > > GTA4 X3100 30FPS L@@K! and you click, and it looks worse than GTA3 > did. They've dialed it down to 320x240, disabled pedestrians, disabled > the sky, and tweaked it so heavily there's barely a game there. But it > is a game, and it is playable. I just wouldn't want to wish it on > anyone. -- 9xx SOLDIERS SANS FRONTIERS
