Question about System Requirements Lab

[The Phantom Eyebrow]

I have a question about the System Requirements Lab website, namely:  How reliable is it?

I ask because I was directed to it while checking out the fact that Mass Effect is being released soon on PC.  When I checked the System Requirements Lab website, my machine passed each of the minimum requirements but one, the graphics card:



From my reading, it seems that my card meets all of the individual requirements, but just does not cut it overall for some reason.  Can this be right? 

Also, and coming from the opposite end of things, the site showed several other games where I would have had my doubts about my machine's ablity to run them but the site says it can.  So my question as to how reliable it is can be fleshed further to say:

1.  Is it accurate?
2.  If it is not, does it tend to over-estimate or under-estimate things?

[detourne_me]

I would say it overestimates things,  especially in the graphics card field.
i recently bought an ASUS eeepc, and every game i play on it currently fails the tests for processor speed and graphics card :D

[The Phantom Eyebrow]

Cheers Detourne, I certainly feel confident now that if the website says my machine can handle it, then my machine can handle it.  (Bioshock... Whooo!)

I was wondering if someone can explain the results from my screen grab though; it seems to be saying that my graphics card has all the requirements to play Mass Effect but that it still isn't good enough.  Eh?

[zuludelta]

I was wondering if someone can explain the results from my screen grab though; it seems to be saying that my graphics card has all the requirements to play Mass Effect but that it still isn't good enough.  Eh?

I have no idea how the System Requirements Lab applet gets the video card info, but I'm guessing it just references your video chipset against a list of approved/recommended models. If your chipset isn't on that list, it gets a failing mark, even if it meets the minimum requirements, in which case you can probably play Mass Effect with the minimum settings.

Alternatively, maybe it looks at the clockspeed of your GPU (since I don't see any sort of listing in your screenshot). If it isn't up to a certain minimum, it gets a failing mark, in which case you probably wouldn't be able to play Mass Effect (or you could run a graphically hobbled version).

EDIT: Just noticed that you have a Mobility Radeon X1400... I have my doubts about that chipset's ability to handle a game like Mass Effect. I'm sure you could get it to run, but I don't know if it'll be at a decent enough framerate/resolution. Bioshock might also be a bit too laggy or you'll really have to dial down the detail settings for it to be at a playable framerate.

EDIT II: The funny thing is that Mass Effect and BioShock have virtually identical graphics card requirements. Mass Effect requires "NVIDIA GeForce 6 series(6800GT or better)
ATI 1300XT or better (X1550, X1600 Pro and HD2400 are below minimum system requirements)" while BioShock requires "Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550)."

Why SRL says your graphics chipset can handle BioShock while saying it can't handle Mass Effect is certainly curious.

[The Phantom Eyebrow]

That's some good info ZD, thanks a bunch.  I didn't show clockspeed or any of the other requirements as Systemsrequirementslab says my machine meets those requirements.  It was the card that was the only concern it raised. 

And furthermore, what with me looking for a new game or two (hence this thread) I went out this evening after work and got me a copy of Bioshock!  It started off a bit jerky-looking, but I checked and the default game set up was for everything to be maxed; once I dropped the display settings it ran fine.  (Well, I understand that there are some issues with the mouse in this game but even so it played pretty okay to me).

If your reading is that the card requiremens for both games is quite similar then I'm pretty confdent my rig will run Mass Effect (obviously I hold you to nothing here  ^_^, but I am quite confident I can get my next-gen Kotor-y fix now, and that's a good thing!)

[The Phantom Eyebrow]

Just to update; I got Mass Effect this morning, installed it and... it craps out once I create a character.  As soon as I launch the game, I get a shot of a planet and get a Rendering Thread Exception message.  However, all may not be lost as there's a big thread over at the Mass Effect forums and there are several folks reporting the same error message - perhaps my machine is falling short or perhaps all I need is a patch.

At least Bioshock works (with the odd crash but they're infrequent enough not to spoil the fun), and I would never have got that game if I hadn't started checking out the website and getting some feedback here, so thanks again guys!

[zuludelta]

Too bad about Mass Effect not working. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a workaround out there, though.

[UnkoMan]

Maaaaan, and this is why I am no good with computer gaming. I always want things to display well, but I just don't know enough about hardware to get the goods to make it run. Curses.

I should check my computer against a buncha things.

[Lord Elcorion]

what's the URL for this? i'm curious...

[zuludelta]

what's the URL for this? i'm curious...

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

You'll need to have a recent version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed to get the applet to work.

[BWPS]

Maaaaan, and this is why I am no good with computer gaming. I always want things to display well, but I just don't know enough about hardware to get the goods to make it run. Curses.

I should check my computer against a buncha things.

I just mashed this up inside my computer and now I can play every game.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8600.html
So far no overheating/exploding.

[Lord Elcorion]

what's the URL for this? i'm curious...

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

You'll need to have a recent version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed to get the applet to work.

thenk you!

[detourne_me]

another alternative to a high end graphcs card is this http://www.tommti-systems.com/main-Dateien/files.html
3D nalyzer lets you emulate certain aspects, and it can trick your computer into thinking it has a better graphics card.
i've been able to use it on my eeepc to run Fable.  I haven't had the right luck to get Punisher to run yet though... maybe soon.

[The Phantom Eyebrow]

Sounds interesting, Detourne.  And complicated too, to my one as savvy-free as me.  Does making your graphics card perform above itself like this present any risk at all?  I hear mention every now and then of peoples' graphic cards blowing up or melting when put to do too much - is this the sort of thing that makes that sort of thing more likely to happen?

[zuludelta]

Sounds interesting, Detourne.  And complicated too, to my one as savvy-free as me.  Does making your graphics card perform above itself like this present any risk at all?  I hear mention every now and then of peoples' graphic cards blowing up or melting when put to do too much - is this the sort of thing that makes that sort of thing more likely to happen?

Don't take my opinion too seriously since I haven't tried the particular piece of software detourne_me is recommending, but I think it should be fairly safe. From what I can gather, it's a code-based hardware simulator... it basically tricks the game into thinking you have a much better graphics chipset than you actually have, and uses some of your CPU's processing power and main memory to mimic what a much better GPU (graphics processing unit) and more expansive video memory should be doing.

At the worst, your game will probably crash to desktop, but that would have happened anyway if you tried running a game beyond your graphics chipset's abilities.

The stories you hear about people's graphics cards "melting" or "blowing up" (I think the proper technical term is getting "fried"  :lol:) is probably the result of aggressive overclocking, basically monkeying around with the graphics cards clock settings to make it run faster, at the risk of overheating. It's something some PC hobbyists do to squeeze out every last bit of performance from their cards, but the performance gains generally aren't worthwhile for anyone but the most hardcore of gamers.