Initial Alpha access restricted to 64 bit OS

Eh... I can play a $30 - $40 video game for hundreds of hours, vs paying $30 to see a 1.5-2 hr movie once. And there are a lot of cheap or free games you could spend many hours playing.

The cost of the hardware is significant, but even more so is the OS. What does Windows 7 64bit cost nowadays? Or are you suggesting people pirate that?

You could use Linux as an OS if money is that tight.

It sounds like you are a casual gamer and not part of PA's target market. A Windows 7/8 license is $100, far less than the cost of the hardware. Which itself is only $197 for a CPU/Mobo/RAM. And there is always Linux for the OS.

You seem to be under the impression that gaming capable PCs still cost $800 or more, that hasn't been the case for several years now.

What CPU do you have? If it was from 2008 then unless you were tricked into buying some hardware that was already out of date then I'd be very surprised if your computer doesn't already support x64. I can't think of any CPUs that you'd buy for gaming in 2008 that weren't capable of x64.

Just as an exercise I went to Newegg and put together a new PC.

Assuming that you can reuse the screen, keyboard, mouse, hard drive, and optical drive (but not the case or PSU) from your current machine it comes to $433.67 after shipping for a quad core 64 bit gaming machine with 8 gigs of ram and a non crappy video card. And that includes a 64 bit Windows license.

If you can reuse your case and PSU and don't mind running Linux the price drops to $298.69, which is well into console territory.

Some of these posts remind me of PC vs console gamers.



Not everyone can afford to upgrade.

Love your use of Comic Sans for those inferior, unwashed 32-bit masses. But you may want to tweak the spelling of "peasants."

That looks like a variation of the PC gaming master race meme.

But as I have demonstrated upgrading isn't that expensive and if you don't have the money to own a gaming PC then you don't have the money to play modern PC games. Consoles are cheaper and have plenty of great games.

PCs and consoles both need to be replaced every few years. This requires money. Not everyone can afford to do this. This is just how the world is.

Besides, I am not sure a box from 2008 could run PA even if it was 64 bit capable.

Bung enough RAM in and job's a good 'un I reckon.

Intel's 2008 CPU lineup refresh suggests dual and quad core 2.5+GHz was available in 2008, meaning dual / quad 2.0+GHz would have been mainstream. If teradyn has a >2.5GHz quad then I'd think enough RAM to max out the motherboard should see you through until you can save up enough to upgrade. If it's a dual core >2.5GHz (especially a dual core that supports hyperthreading), again max out the RAM and it should suffice for a while.

Note: I'm assuming that by "good gaming system" teradyn meant "mid to top end CPU and a mobo that supports 8GB+ of RAM". All of the mid to top end desktop CPUs of 2008 were x64 architecture, IIRC, and decent motherboards supported 8-16GB max RAM. Of course your mileage may vary.

Hell, I'm intending to try out the alpha on an HTPC running an Atom D525 dual core with a measly 4GB RAM, and I'm happy to report on performance to anyone that's interested. While it is technically new architecture, performance-wise it should mimic a 5yo gaming rig pretty well.

A modest mid range Core i5-2400 from 2011 is 63% faster than an high end Core 2 Quad Q9400 from 2008. 63% is an awful lot when talking about CPUs.

While the Core i5-2400 would certainly run PA just fine I am not so sure the Core 2 Quad Q9400 would be able to handle anything beyond a small match.

I roll thousands of units on a Q9400

I'm sure a Q9400 runs older games like a champ. And it may run PA just fine too depending on the size of the match. Its too early to know system specs yet. However it is a 64 bit chip so you can certainly use it with a 64 bit OS and 8+ gigs of RAM.

Based on the requirements listed on the Steam early access page which state the minimum CPU requirement is simply a 64bit dual core of no specific generation, I'd be very surprised if the Q9400 couldn't handle moderately sized games (8 or less players) as a client, though it probably wouldn't do well as a server for the same sized games. I'm guessing even the mid range dual core Core 2 CPUs will probably run PA acceptably as a client for smaller games. Of course minimum specs at this stage of development are hardly going to be accurate but from everything that Mavor has said it sounds like PA is probably not going to be too CPU hungry on the client side of things.

CPUs are amazingly powerful, and lazy programmers have made us forget just what they should be capable of, I mean just look at TA, that ran OK on my 100mhz laptop with 16mb of RAM (not great mind you but it was certainly playable), and that had hundreds of 3D units, and was also using the CPU for rendering on top of all the simulation. So getting PA working on a computer with a dedicated GPU and an old dual core CPU that is literally 100+ times faster than what was needed for TA (400+ for something like a quad core i7) shouldn't be too much of a stretch (I hope that doesn't put too much pressure on you Uber ).

You are probably correct. A Q9400 will probably run PA fine at some level. But its still a 64 bit chip.

Are there any 32 bit only chips that would be fast enough to run PA well? I know that 32 bit quad core chips don't exist but did Intel ever make any 32 bit only dual core CPUs? I can't seem to find any.

I'm pretty sure that the Pentium D was Intel's first mainstream dual core chip. And it was 64 bit capable. AMD's first dual core was the Athlon 64 X2. Which as the name implies, supported 64 bit as well.

So since we know that PA will require a dual core CPU, can anyone find a mainstream desktop CPU that is dual core but doesn't support the x86-64 instruction set? Because if there aren't any than upgrading to 64 bit really is just a matter of some more RAM and a new OS for anyone with a dual core CPU.

The difference between the Core 2 cpus and the first Core i* cpus was amazing. It was a serious gut punch to AMD when it was released as before that the AMD cpus could still go toe to toe with the Core 2 line. When the first Core i5 cpus were released almost a year after the first Core i7 cpus, the slowest processor in that family was still faster than the most expensive AMD cpu available. AMD has been struggling since. It was also a bit of a punch to anyone who had just bought a new Intel PC in the months prior.

Here's an example of the same Core 2 Quad Q9400 released in August 2008 and the i7-920 released three months later.
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/574/In ... 7-920.html

I choose the i7-920 specifically because that's the CPU in my current workstation... from 2009.

^ Yeah, that was me. I have since rectified that mistake but boy was I pissed.

I had thought maybe a high end atom processor (like the D2700) might be able to run PA, but it seems all the dual-core versions of atoms I could find are 64bit anyway, not to mention anything with an atom processor is unlikely to have a decent enough GPU for PA. So maybe there isn't any 32bit hardware that would run PA after all, which really does suggest that maybe Uber really should just drop 32bit if they aren't going to support XP.

Seems like I will get quite the speedboost when I finally upgrade my e6600. From late 2006.

I can't be arsed into delving deep into it, but I certainly recall one of the restrictions on upgrading OSX back around the 10.5 era to be that you had to have a 64bit chip, and it was this requirement that locked out a number of the early Intel Mac computers because they were only 32bit for one reason or another. Were the chips 32bit only, or was the firmware only 32bit and Apple not willing to update it, or was it just Apple being Apple? It'd certainly be a place to start for anyone interested.

The real question is whether or not those 32 bit only chips were dual core. I suspect they were all probably single core. But you are correct, Macs are something of a different animal.