We have not given out official min/recommended specs yet Simples, but if you have an i7 with around 8 GB of RAM and a decent GPU within the last 3-5 years you will be able to play Pantheon, even if you have to turn the graphics settings down, it well be playable, of course if you spend extra on a more recent GPU like the Nvidia 9 series (970, 980, 980ti, titan etc.) or the AMD cards 290 and 390 you will have no problems playing Pantheon very well on max settings.
This will change of course with more performance and optimization sweeps but currently, as it stands, decent PCs with decent GPUs within the last 5 years should have no problem and settings can be tweaked if you struggle a bit.
I can promise my OLD pc will be a good test for system specs. I don't remember who, but someone told me a while back to not worry about building a new machine as the idea was to design so the game could be played on an older one.
At some point, I will build a new machine but will wait until I see how the older one works out in the first testing phase, and will not salvage parts from the old one for the new, so I am able to check optimization updates.
BloodbeardBattlecaster said:I can promise my OLD pc will be a good test for system specs. I don't remember who, but someone told me a while back to not worry about building a new machine as the idea was to design so the game could be played on an older one.
At some point, I will build a new machine but will wait until I see how the older one works out in the first testing phase, and will not salvage parts from the old one for the new, so I am able to check optimization updates.
Yeah, nice Bloodbeard, I will be interested to see how it performs :)
Remember when EQ had that full on screen UI which made your view box like 320x320? I ran that way for months on a PII 266 and STB Nitro before I got a 3d card.
Krixus said:Remember when EQ had that full on screen UI which made your view box like 320x320? I ran that way for months on a PII 266 and STB Nitro before I got a 3d card.
Way back when, probably early 2000, my computer was awful. When I first started playing I couldn't leave halas because the game would lock up and freeze which would prompt a reboot. Then I wouldnt be able to get into the game since I was in Everfrost. I would call up my friend Tim, have him get on my account, and zone me back into halas so I could continue fishing. The first month of my everquest experience was fishing Ha! When I finally bought my Voodoo 2?, and a friend hooked me up with some 16mb sticks of ram, I could finally zone out. Good times.
Simples said: Just looked up my cpu i7-920 2.66ghz and saw it for $80. Then i saw a ton of other i7 processors. Been out of the game for so long didn't know they came out with so much. Is the i7 2.66 still pretty good or closer to obsolete for gaming.
It's getting a little old http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-920-vs-Intel-Core-i7-6700K but most games these days rely on the graphics card(s) a lot more, so as long as your system isn't bottlenecking or struggling you should be ok, it's hard to tell until you play it, if it can run other games fine then you will be ok with Pantheon :)
Liav said:FWIW, i7 4790k is at an all-time low price wise and is an absolute steal. Amazing CPU that shouldn't be tossed aside because of its older platform, and has a price/performance ratio much higher than that of the Skylake chips due to the newness factor.
Absolutely, I am using an i7 3970X and it still powers on without even so much as a struggle ;)
The GTX 690 on the other hand...great card but I am seriously eyeing off a 980ti.
Kilsin said:We have not given out official min/recommended specs yet Simples, but if you have an i7 with around 8 GB of RAM and a decent GPU within the last 3-5 years you will be able to play Pantheon, even if you have to turn the graphics settings down, it well be playable, of course if you spend extra on a more recent GPU like the Nvidia 9 series (970, 980, 980ti, titan etc.) or the AMD cards 290 and 390 you will have no problems playing Pantheon very well on max settings.
This will change of course with more performance and optimization sweeps but currently, as it stands, decent PCs with decent GPUs within the last 5 years should have no problem and settings can be tweaked if you struggle a bit.
Nothing wrong with a solid optimization for everyone to play.
HOWEVER!
Do not forget about us losers who spend almost as much on their computers as they do they Trucks. My 290X will be old and tired with Pantheon release, as will my 5760x1080 eyefinity build.
SO an ultra wide 4k screen(s) with AMDs Arctic Islands video card and Zen CPU will be ready to host many a dungeon run!
Exmortis said:Nothing wrong with a solid optimization for everyone to play.
HOWEVER!
Do not forget about us losers who spend almost as much on their computers as they do they Trucks. My 290X will be old and tired with Pantheon release, as will my 5760x1080 eyefinity build.
SO an ultra wide 4k screen(s) with AMDs next video card will be ready to host many a dungeon run!
Buying completely current-gen hardware should never be what a game is optimized around. Having the disposable income is nice but it's pretty reasonable to expect that a several thousand dollar PC will be overkill for any MMO that comes out in the same generation.
Otherwise, you run the risk of requiring people to play in gumby mode to get playable FPS on anything less than a $2000 rig.
Liav said:Exmortis said:Nothing wrong with a solid optimization for everyone to play.
Buying completely current-gen hardware should never be what a game is optimized around. Having the disposable income is nice but it's pretty reasonable to expect that a several thousand dollar PC will be overkill for any MMO that comes out in the same generation.
Otherwise, you run the risk of requiring people to play in gumby mode to get playable FPS on anything less than a $2000 rig.
I did state that optimizing for everyone is good (In this I meant main stream). But there is nothing wrong with future proofing and ensuring there is graphic goodness to grow with, like 4k support. MMOs are not 1 year affairs, like say NHL 2015 which is being replaced next year. Hopefully Pantheon will see a run as long as EverQuest has, and that game shows it age terribly, it cannot even handle my eyefinity resolution. Vanguard for all its faults? ran it like a champ, and there was no eyefinity when it was released.
I do not see why asking for features playable on super high end hardware now, that can be turned down/off is unreasonable? You realize that those features unplayable now on a main stream card, will be playabel on a main stream card in 2ish years. So everyone can look forward even better looking game as their hardware progresses.
What people need to understand, there is a big different between "requirement" and "supported". I am hoping for reasonable requirements, but I am also asking for higher end features to be supported, as there are a those of us who yes seem to be afflicted with the upgrade sickness. Though currently I have seemed to resist it, I am still running an i7-2500K.
I know this is an age old arguement, but we have to tread carefully, or yet we still would playing nethack because someone still has a monochrome screen. I do not want the game to play only the most modern hardware, but I also do not want to run on a AMD HD4870 either. What I want is a reasonable requirement of entry, but as much of the glorious features as they can add, that cen be turned off/ or reduced to all such an entry. Like 4K support.
Exmortis said:I did state that optimizing for everyone is good (In this I meant main stream). But there is nothing wrong with future proofing and ensuring there is graphic goodness to grow with, like 4k support. MMOs are not 1 year affairs, like say NHL 2015 which is being replaced next year. Hopefully Pantheon will see a run as long as EverQuest has, and that game shows it age terribly, it cannot even handle my eyefinity resolution. Vanguard for all its faults? ran it like a champ, and there was no eyefinity when it was released.
I do not see why asking for features playable on super high end hardware now, that can be turned down/off is unreasonable? You realize that those features unplayable now on a main stream card, will be playabel on a main stream card in 2ish years. So everyone can look forward even better looking game as their hardware progresses.
What people need to understand, there is a big different between "requirement" and "supported". I am hoping for reasonable requirements, but I am also asking for higher end features to be supported, as there are a those of us who yes seem to be afflicted with the upgrade sickness. Though currently I have seemed to resist it, I am still running an i7-2500K.
I know this is an age old arguement, but we have to tread carefully, or yet we still would playing nethack because someone still has a monochrome screen. I do not want the game to play only the most modern hardware, but I also do not want to run on a AMD HD4870 either. What I want is a reasonable requirement of entry, but as much of the glorious features as they can add, that cen be turned off/ or reduced to all such an entry. Like 4K support.
4k support I agree with, definitely. Getting playable FPS on mediumish settings on a PC with similar specs to current gen consoles is all I want to see. I just don't want to have to spend $2000 to get playable FPS in raids without disabling things like particle effects and shadows.
I doubt anyone will be getting 60 FPS in raids anyway with a game this pretty, even on top-of-the-line stuff, on ultra with a 4k resolution. However, getting 60 FPS on "high" settings at 1080p in raids is a reasonable expectation I think. We'll see.
Kilsin said:BloodbeardBattlecaster said:I can promise my OLD pc will be a good test for system specs. I don't remember who, but someone told me a while back to not worry about building a new machine as the idea was to design so the game could be played on an older one.
At some point, I will build a new machine but will wait until I see how the older one works out in the first testing phase, and will not salvage parts from the old one for the new, so I am able to check optimization updates.
Yeah, nice Bloodbeard, I will be interested to see how it performs :)
Of course, I'll have to order parts and build quickly if the old one can't keep up. haha!
Don't see how this is an issue.
Most people buy a new HOME computer every 5~6 years, because the standards change so much in the PC world. Notably, a 5-year old laptop is ancient, & nearly laughable compaired to one today. Pantheon itself.. (& subsequently Visionary Realms) doesn't have to worry about STANDARDS, because it is being built under a 64bit Windows 10 environment. The Unreal Engine supports DX12 and Win10.. do you?
YOU... have to worry about standards. (Is your machine DX12 compliant..??)
Understand, there is no more "optimization" for YOUR hardware... YOUR hardware speed doesn't matter, it is what features of current standards does YOUR hardware support. And whatever ones those happen to be, plug into the game and allow YOU to have them. If not, YOU have to upgrade to the latest standard... not the latest speeds.
Further more, no CPU will matter for Pantheon.. the difference between an i3 and an i7 are insignificant. What will matter will be your subsystems and are do they support the latest Win10 Standards.
If you have a killer i7 gaming rig with a $600 video card & gaming on Win7... won't be the same experience as a new $900 PC, gaming on Win10.
They will be different experience for both rigs. The more you support the latest standards, the less power you need to overcome them. Upon Pantheon's release any Win10 Complaint rig for $900 will do. (Don't be afraid to save $80/month, for a new rig in late 20017... right?)
If your pushing 4k, then you will need a better GPU to push those pixels.. as your video card is detrermined by what resolution you intend to game at. Pantheon or not, it helps to have insight into obtaining a rig that is compliant with the latest standards, more-so than pure speed and e-peen.
Pantheon will play fine on any PC in the last 3~5 years, that isn't abused. But do not take that to mean you'll enjoy all the features the Unreal Engine has to offer. After all.. a PC is a system.. & all those components (in that system) have to be working for the same goal. An uber expensive GPU won't matter, if the rest of the system doesn't support dx12, etc... there will be compromises to be had.
What is the fear here... that your old system will play Pantheon not like a new system..? (Don't you enherently know that already?)
A lot of words to say very little.
Windows 10 is required because DX12 requires it, that is well known. However, pretty much every MMORPG on the market bottlenecks at the CPU. Saying something like the difference between "an i3 and an i7 is insignificant" is pretty misleading to a lot of people. An i5 2500k is not going to perform equally to an i5 6600k, or an i7 4790k.
It's not a matter of whether or not you can boot the game. To most people, it's whether or not they can get enough FPS to not get pissed off and quit. If I can't get 60 FPS at least 95% of the time, I don't play that game, period. There's plenty of DX12 compliant hardware that won't run Pantheon well.
Liav..
For example, Battlefield 4 uses a lot of CPU, because there are in-game physics that the CPU must consantly be fractalizing.. so the amount of CORES matter more than the actual Ghz (speed). Because the game uses many threads. Thus, there is a notable difference in gaming between a i3 & i7. Because an i7 has hyperthreading.
That is not the case with most games. There is a big cost of diminishing returns once you hit mid-stream i5 CPU. Your GPU will matter more in almost every instance... and $80 spent more on a GPU, will get way more performance and noticable effects, than that same $80 spend upgrading your CPU from an i5 to an i7. (CPU's just don't matter unless you are playing high stakes FPS tourney)
CPU's themselves really don't matter and they tend to get a new life under a 64bit OS & DX12.
I don't know of a single MMORPG that bottle necks a CPU.
For test purposes, I am running a Sager laptop with i7-4700, 8GB of ram, an SSD, and GTX 770M. Its no slouch, but its 3 years old. By the time Pantheon releases it will be right about the time to order a current gaming laptop. Or maybe just build a new desktop again.
The 4k views of Pantheon look great though and I'd like to experience the game that way too!
I've posted something like this before, but it bears repeating:
Pantheon is going to be a great looking game, but it is not going to be pushing graphics to the bleeding edge. One of several mistakes made with Vanguard was trying to be on the bleeding edge -- then, when circumstances forced the game to be launched early, we didn't have time to optimize and the system requirements we're ludicrously high. Most people who quit quit before level 2 -- they didn't even have time to decide whether they liked the game or not -- they just simply couldn't play because their systems couldn't handle it. We will *NOT* make that mistake again.
We also optimize every internal milestone (and sometimes even more frequently). We're not pushing off optmization to the end like I've seen in so many projects.
Here are the system specs of my machine, the one I develop on and playtest Pantheon on. On this system I am getting ~25-30fps at 1080p in our most graphically intensive zone (much higher in other zones):
Processors Information
----------------------
Processor 1 ID = 0
Name Intel Core i5 4440
Codename Haswell
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz
Chipset
-------
Northbridge Intel Haswell rev. 06
Graphic Interface PCI-Express
PCI-E Link Width x16
PCI-E Max Link Width x16
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Size 32 GBytes
Memory Frequency 800mhz (798.1 MHz (1:6))
Storage
-------
Drive 0
Type Fixed
Name Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB
Capacity 465.8 GB
SMART Support Yes
Drive 1
Type Fixed
Name Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB
Capacity 931.5 GB
SMART Support Yes
Drive 2
Name WDC WD1003FZEX-00MK2A0
Capacity 931.5 GB
SMART Support Yes
Display Adapters
----------------
Display adapter 0
Name NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
Board Manufacturer GIGABYTE Technology
Revision A1
Memory size 2 GB
Memory type GDDR5
Software
--------
Windows Version Microsoft Windows 10 (10.0) Home 64-bit (Build 10240)
DirectX Version 12.0
--------------
Some notes:
1. You can see that it's an older CPU, and even when it was new, it wasn't top of the line. And until DX and graphics engines *truly* take advantage of multiple cores, gaming rigs really don't need i7s with a lot of cores. i5s are *fine*. Yes, someday this may change, but I don't see it changing for a while.
2. I have 32 gigs of memory, but to play Pantheon, 8g would be fine. The only reason I have 32 is that I am running Unity, Visual Studio, SQL SMS, Chrome, Outlook, and the Pantheon Client all at once. In fact, I had 16gigs for a while, and could run all of the above and more just fine -- I went to 32 recently because RAM is so cheap and it does help a bit.
3. My RAM is *slow*. 800mhz DDR3. So, again, you don't need the fastest CPU or RAM.
4. Storage: You won't need an SSD, but they are getting cheaper and cheaper, and by launch I think they will be the way to go -- it will make loading and zoning a lot faster.
5. I was running a 750TI for a long time and it's still fine for Pantheon. Upgrading to 960 is nice, but not essential... one of the reasons I did it is that I run high rez music out of the HDMI port on that card into a nice receiver/amp, allowing me to play 24bit/48khz+ multichannel music while I am working -- I have to have my music blasting while working on Pantheon! :) In any case, you can see that you don't need the top of the line graphics card either. I can say you *do* want your graphics card, whichever version it is, to have at least 2 gigs of graphics memory on it. We are using high rez textures and lots of them.
6. Windows 10 works great, but the game will work fine on Windows 7 and above. Currently we have builds using DX9 & DX11. Eventually, and likely by launch, we'll move to DX12 which we hope increases performance and allows to take advantage of high poly counts, etc.
In summary, no, you can't use some ancient dinosaur of a machine, but neither will you need an expensive bleeding edge gaming rig either.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Disclaimer: this post is meant to be informational and give a general idea to people as to what system specs might be, but this is *not* an official announcement of Pantheon's system requirements.