The official HALO 2 for Windows Vista product page is showing the system requirements for the game. The page is located on the Games for Windows site. That site has traditionally been home to inaccurate and misplaced information for a lot of games. However, I think these system requirements are legit. And, they don't seem too taxing on even a two-year old machine (or maybe older). The requirements:
OS: Windows Vista
Processor: 2 Ghz Pentium 4 class processor (or x64)
RAM: 1 GB
Hard Drive: 7 GB
Video Card: DX9 graphics card: WDDM driver, PS 2.0/32BPP, At least nVidia 6000 or ATI x700 or above
Online Multi-player: Internet connection for Games for Windows – LIVE
Drive: DVD-ROM drive
My three-year old system didn't meet the GPU requirement until a recent upgrade (I had a Radeon 9800 Pro). All other requirements can be met by modest hardware and at a very affordable price. However, most gamers have at least 1GB or RAM and a 2Ghz P4 processor. Will they have at least an x700 or 6600 GPU?
An ATI x700 video card or better is very affordable. You can get one for about $50 at online retailers. However, before you upgrade, you might want to know that DX10 is the future. nVidia already has DX10 cards on the market. Later this month, they are going to release budget version of those DX10 cards for under $200 (source).
Also, ATI has yet to release their DX10 cards. They are set to launch later this month and be available in May. I'm holding out for the benchmarks on that hardware before I buy it or an nVidia DX10 card.
TIP: For all of you gamers out there with old motherboards that don't support PCI x16 slots, you might want to invest in an AGP card for your rig. Yes, AGP. Several companies make an AGP version of the x1950 Pro card from ATI. You can even get it in a 512Mb of RAM flavor. It'll cost just under $200. (AGP x1950's on Newegg)
I was in that boat with my "soon-to-be" old gaming rig. Fortunately I found the AGP card. I'm going to game on that until I finish building my new system with some kind of DX10 card.
I think most gamers will have all of those specs save one. Will they have Vista?
Will you be able to meet the requirements?
Thanks for the tip, Jaxson.
well, SM2 is expected as
well, SM2 is expected as Vista requires a SM2 machine as a minimum.
what i am worried is that my other (probably nearly 4 years old) computer is AthlonXP 2000+, meaning it doesn't have SSE2 instructions set, so Medieval2 TW can't play on there. they've put Pentium 4 class processor, so does it mean it will need all the instruction sets on P4 to function?
(that's got a x800gto, perfect :P )
on the other hand, my current, 1 year old Sempron 2800+, 1GB, x1650pro computer looks promising. hopefully there'd be a lot of SM3 effects as the x1650pro is very powerful with SM3 effects.
very good advice there, shame the x1950pro came out a week after i've bought the x1650pro, but that's definitely the card to keep a 2 or 3 year old computer alive for gaming.
and another advice for gamers who've already got PCI-e, wait for ATI to release their Dx10 cards before buying one, since the chances are, 8800 will drop in price when ATI releases their cards. and you never know, ATI's might be better in terms of value-performance.