Alpha Protocol - Sys Reqs
 

A site called Game Debate has a list of recommended system requirements for Alpha Protocol, although I'm not sure how official this is:
More information.

"Nvidia Graphics Card - Geforce 7900 GT
ATI & Intel Graphics Card - Radeon X1800 Series 256MB"

Were those two graphics card stated as the minimum for Risen as well?

Does anyone know if there is any technical reason for that? Is there an important difference between those two cards and the ones below them?

Well, the Geforce 7900 GT is *somewhat* similar to the graphics chip in the XBox360. I'm guessing they don't want to spent time on a render pipeline for even lower hardware specs. It's more fun to add high-end features for the PC than doing a fall-back render pipeline for old tech :)

A Pentium 4 2.66GHz or AMD Athlon XP 2400+ and a 256MB graphics card for recommended? Yeah, right.

Those are clearly made up specs…

WOW, that is recommended not minimum……!!!!

It's pretty common for an Xbox 360 port. I'm surprised you find it surprising…

Also, I see that the game goes easier on ATI cards, since the ATI equivalent of the 7900GT is the X1950XT and not the X1800, which is about 30% worse.

it really looks like the average sys reqs from 3 years ago.
recommended means fairly low resolution and most fancyness disabled anyway, so the point of having 3 years old specs means also having 3 years old graphics, to say the least.
surprise or no surprise, it'd better be a mistake.
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Zoloft lawsuits

Nevermind. Took a look at Mass Effect reccomended specs and indeed, it's not far off the Alpha Protocol ones.

A lot of newer games are no longer pushing the graphics/CPU edge. This is goodness! The "throw your system away every 2 years" grind was getting old.

Seems a little low to me, even the reqs for Mass Effect were higher than that…

It's cyclical. We've probably just moved to a 4 year upgrade cycle now instead of the 2 year now that PC development will be tied to console releases.

When the xbox2/ps3 were released only the cutting edge PCs could run simliar games. Now that those consoles are getting long in the tooth an average PC is much more powerful. Soon enough they'll release the xbox3/ps4 and we'll start the process all over again.

As fun as it is to mock those reqs now, in 2-3 years when the new consoles are released these forums will be all teeth gnashing over having to build a new computer to keep up with the newest games.

Ok thanks, that makes sense.

I suppose even if it did run on lower graphics cards. They probably did not want the hassle of acquiring lots of older cards and seeing if the game worked.

Also it makes sense for them to keep it simple. It is probably complicated enough for them to optimise their engine. I think they had problems with that when making NWN2.

it's not about testing every single card.
all are compatible within windows and its directx engine, but there's a chart, and each card in the chart has a certain power, and supports certain standards in terms of graphical fancyness.
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Black tubes

I think you are spot on. It make sence that then you'r making a 3 way port, you then settel whit a engien that run smoot on the "weakest" masine, in this case the Xbox2 (or PS3, I dont know), and then reuse that engien on the two other more powerful masines, that saves alot of work and money.

So next time I upgrade my PC, I would chose a spect that is slighty higher that the new Xbox3/PS4, no point of spend alot of money on some kind of super spect, just to max preformens on some few PC exclusive titels.

you might also wish to include some kind of spell checker into your next investment. :)
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Nash 600

Sorry, im Danish and writing from work, so I can't run it throug Words, before I post, so I have to do whit my "school english", hope you can understand it anyway :p