RAGE specs (pc)

[wuliheron]

Yeah, 25GB of disk storage is what caught my eye. Damn!

That's the "mega" in megatexture. Instead of relying on faster processors with more cores or more powerful graphics cards it uses data compression to pump outrageous textures from the HDD. The next version of the engine will supposedly do the same for geometry allowing for real time ray traced geometry as well as ridiculous textures. I can't even begin to speculate what kind of storage that sucker will require other then to say it will definitely make 25gb look trivial.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Interesting reading you guys are writing down here. I didn't know the engine was so different in RAGE.

Almost sounds like the stuff the PS3 was made for.

 

[RobertPters77]

Have faith in Carmack. For it was he who birthed the FPS genre with his bare hands. For it is he who will save PC gaming!

 

[Dankk]

HD 4200 is such a slow card. It came for free with my mobo and can hardly run anything at all.

My shitty laptop has an integrated Radeon 4200. I CAN PLAY RAGE!

 

[deustroop]

Recommended memory

: 4GB
------------------------------------------
How does the memory referred to here operate in relation to video card memory ?
Is this memory subject to the 32 bit OS limitation or can the game access memory outside the windows limitation ? Will lots of video memory reduce this memory requirement ?

I have win 32 bit with 3 GB DDR3 and a video card that has 1.2 GB of memory. Is the system at the recommended level of performance ? Will adding more system memory help ?

 

[busydude]

I have win 32 bit with 3 GB DDR3 and a video card that has 1.2 GB of memory. Is the system at the recommended level of performance ? Will adding more system memory help ?

Adding more memory(DDR3 RAM) does not help if you are on 32 bit OS. VRAM is OS agnostic.

 

[wuliheron]

Interesting reading you guys are writing down here. I didn't know the engine was so different in RAGE.

Almost sounds like the stuff the PS3 was made for.

Not at all.

This engine is openGL which very few games use and isn't a big factor in console designs. The PS3 I suspect was simply designed so they could have bragging rights to higher peak performance.

 

[wuliheron]

My shitty laptop has an integrated Radeon 4200. I CAN PLAY RAGE!

You can play this game on an iPhone and it still looks and plays great. Its the modern equivalent of the original Doom which was one of the few really good games that could play on almost any computer.

 

[zebrax2]

By the looks of it they plan to put a lot of people in RAGE

IIRC AMD cards also handles higher resolutions better (less performance drop in comparison to nvidia cards) maybe that is proving to be quite useful when handling the megatextures

 

[Arkaign]

You can play this game on an iPhone and it still looks and plays great. Its the modern equivalent of the original Doom which was one of the few really good games that could play on almost any computer.

You have Rage on your iPhone?

 

[Arkaign]

Adding more memory(DDR3 RAM) does not help if you are on 32 bit OS. VRAM is OS agnostic.

This isn't strictly true.

VRAM takes address space away from system memory. This is why a 32-bit OS system with 4gb of ram and a bigass 2gb video card reports less ram than an otherwise identical system with a puny 128mb video card. It actually takes address space on 64-bit as well, but the ram limits are so high that you'd never notice it even if you had 128GB of ram.

 

[Texashiker]

25 gigs of drive space? Holy crap, and I thought left 4 dead 2 was big at around 7 gigs.

Something else on the recommended specs

Recommended:

• OS: Win XP SP3
• Memory: 4GB

XP only registers something like 3.2 gigs of memory.

I hope rage lives up to the hype, but somehow I doubt it. id software has not made a good single player game since quake ii and doom 3 - depending on which one you like the best.

Somehow I think players are going to need at least a 64 bit OS, and at least 6 gigs of memory to get Rage to run right. Which 6 gigs of memory is common these days.

When Rage comes out, I can see it pushing gaming to the next level, which will mean 64 bit OSs as the target. Sooner or later games are going to get so large that windows xp and its 32bit memory limitations will not be able to keep up.

In the next couple of years, as games get larger and larger, people hanging onto XP wil be forced to upgrade just for the extra memory. At least that is my opinion.

 

[Wyndru]

Yeah, 25GB of disk storage is what caught my eye. Damn!

It's funny, I got excited when I bought my first 20gb hard drive, now it's the minimum requirements for a game.

 

[dangerman1337]

That's the "mega" in megatexture. Instead of relying on faster processors with more cores or more powerful graphics cards it uses data compression to pump outrageous textures from the HDD. The next version of the engine will supposedly do the same for geometry allowing for real time ray traced geometry as well as ridiculous textures. I can't even begin to speculate what kind of storage that sucker will require other then to say it will definitely make 25gb look trivial.

IIRC Carmack stated that at Quake-con that they may release a 75GB uncompressed texture pack. But good luck finding servers for that , unless they sell it on disc for a cheap price for distribution costs...

 

[Arkaign]

25 gigs of drive space? Holy crap, and I thought left 4 dead 2 was big at around 7 gigs.

Something else on the recommended specs



XP only registers something like 3.2 gigs of memory.

I hope rage lives up to the hype, but somehow I doubt it. id software has not made a good single player game since quake ii and doom 3 - depending on which one you like the best.

Somehow I think players are going to need at least a 64 bit OS, and at least 6 gigs of memory to get Rage to run right. Which 6 gigs of memory is common these days.

When Rage comes out, I can see it pushing gaming to the next level, which will mean 64 bit OSs as the target. Sooner or later games are going to get so large that windows xp and its 32bit memory limitations will not be able to keep up.

In the next couple of years, as games get larger and larger, people hanging onto XP wil be forced to upgrade just for the extra memory. At least that is my opinion.

I agree with this largely, though I do think Rage will actually turn out to be a fairly decent game.

However, the best thing about situations like this is opening the door for new tech

Moving the industry forward has been done by iD a few times in the past, this looks to be a similar leap if it's everything they say it is. Copy/paste is one of the more annoying things about games that's a holdover from the old days, and this could be a path beyond that.

As for development costs, I'd guess that paying artists and the time to do all of the extra work to make more of the area look different would still play a factor.

 

[vshah]

IIRC Carmack stated that at Quake-con that they may release a 75GB uncompressed texture pack. But good luck finding servers for that , unless they sell it on disc for a cheap price for distribution costs...

bittorrent. also it could be delivered compressed and then uncompressed on the user's machine before use.

 

[Texashiker]

However, the best thing about situations like this is opening the door for new tech

There was a thread on the steam forums asking when games are going to be coded for 64 bit systems. One of the valve employees posted something along the lines of "why code for 64 bit when 32 bit is still the main operating system?"

If Rage turns out to be the new trend, I see games taking the lead in coding for 64 bit operating systems. Sooner of later memory requirements are going to surpass what a 32bit OS can provide.

Technology has reached a point where hardware is outpacing the developers. We have quadcore and hexacore CPUs and 8 gigs of memory going main stream. And the current games are taking advantage of only a small percentage of that technology.

Take a look at Valve software, their games are still running directx 9 technology, when directx 11 is the current standard.

Developers need to get with the times and utilize current technology. Maybe Carmack and id can set a new standard that all other games are judged by.

 

[homercles337]

There was a thread on the steam forums asking when games are going to be coded for 64 bit systems. One of the valve employees posted something along the lines of "why code for 64 bit when 32 bit is still the main operating system?"

Take a look at Valve software, their games are still running directx 9 technology, when directx 11 is the current standard.

One word: consoles.

 

[Texashiker]

One word: consoles.

consoles what?????

 

[deustroop]

This isn't strictly true.

VRAM takes address space away from system memory. This is why a 32-bit OS system with 4gb of ram and a bigass 2gb video card reports less ram than an otherwise identical system with a puny 128mb video card. It actually takes address space on 64-bit as well, but the ram limits are so high that you'd never notice it even if you had 128GB of ram.

I assume that if there is a disadvantage to the 32bit system with only 3GB DDR3 and a monster video card, it will show up in FPS. So I will report back with mine when the game's available here. Will there be a cap on the fps ? If so, the 32bit system will not mean a thing, ceteris paribus.

 

[Arkaign]

I assume that if there is a disadvantage to the 32bit system with only 3GB DDR3 and a monster video card, it will show up in FPS. So I will report back with mine when the game's available here. Will there be a cap on the fps ? If so, the 32bit system will not mean a thing, ceteris paribus.

Oh yeah, I'd typically go for a system with 2gb of ram and a top-notch video card 10x out of 10 vs. a system with 4gb of ram and a crap video card.

Ideally you'd want more of both, obviously

I doubt very much that they would risk this thing being unplayable with 2-3gb of ram (alienate too many potential customers), but hopefully it's nicely scalable so that if you've got 4+ gb of ram and a stompin good GPU that you can continue to crank the details/etc to take advantage.

 

[busydude]

This isn't strictly true.

VRAM takes address space away from system memory. This is why a 32-bit OS system with 4gb of ram and a bigass 2gb video card reports less ram than an otherwise identical system with a puny 128mb video card. It actually takes address space on 64-bit as well, but the ram limits are so high that you'd never notice it even if you had 128GB of ram.

So.. what you are saying is.. if I have 1GB of VRAM and 3 GB of DDR 3 RAM.. a 32-bit OS recognizes only 2GB of DDR3 RAM? So.. the TOTAL addressable space is 3GB, period?

 

[Arkaign]

So.. what you are saying is.. if I have 1GB of VRAM and 3 GB of DDR 3 RAM.. a 32-bit OS recognizes only 2GB of DDR3 RAM? So.. the TOTAL addressable space is 3GB, period?

No, sorry for the confusion.

32-bit OS allows 4GB of address space unless PAE is used (typically not in XP, though I think you can hack it to some extent at your own risk).

Address space is affected by drivers, memory size of things that need address space (like video memory), and system memory.

So 3GB of ram and 1GB of VRAM = Right at the 4GB address space limit, should be no problem.

4GB of ram and 2GB of VRAM = 6GB of address space, which is 2GB over, but due to oddities in the implementation of all of this stuff, will probably result in some strange number being reported as usable system memory, might be 2.75gb or 3gb.

Lots of threads and posts on this out there, gimme a minute I'll find a decent one for you.

 

[busydude]

So 3GB of ram and 1GB of VRAM = Right at the 4GB address space limit, should be no problem. 4GB of ram and 2GB of VRAM = 6GB of address space, which is 2GB over, but due to oddities in the implementation of all of this stuff, will probably result in some strange number being reported as usable system memory, might be 2.75gb or 3gb.

OK.. I get it now. 2 ^32 = 4GB.

 

[Arkaign]

OK.. I get it now. 2 ^32 = 4GB.

Bingo There are lots of subtleties to this, a good brief read I just found on the subject, although a few years old, is here :

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1035670

And a brief article here also sheds some light :

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/clearing-up-the-3264-bit-memory-limit-confusion/3124