looking through different engine specs, have quest

Also you have to consider that the spec Ulillillia specs, will most likely be entry level in the next 6-12 months. I purchased my 3Ghz pc 2 years ago now, so I think it is a realistic benchmark.

Just my 2 cents.

Most PC users buy one computer and never upgrade it, and they probably won't buy another one ever unless they have to because of theft or damage. So, I don't think 3GHz is anywhere near average or entry level neither now nor 6 months from now. Only the hardcore and gadget people will fork over the dough or stay up to date.

I have run a gaming clan for 2 years, with a lot of members, 40+
Only 2 of them have had less than 3ghz PC's so I beg to differ

Most of the serious gamers I know think nothing of spending £300-£500 on a GFX card, and most of them are running bits of kit that put my PC to shame.

Again 90% of these guys are constantly rebuilding thier PC's adding new hardware and overclocking bits and bobs, looking for the best configuration. Our clan competed in 2 leagues and our team often got outspec'd.

I wonder if those of us who enjoy games, more so builders, are just not in as financially secure a position. When it comes to competative online play, I think you will see a much higher spec than 1-2Ghz CPU's with 512MB.

I would also like to say, that our gamers often took part in an online specification tester, and our team's PCs often rated in the top 20% of PC's around the world. So I may be speaking from a bias perspective, most of us upgrade or replace our PC's every 3 years.

Just my 2 cents, once more

It depends who your catering for. If you go for everyone, like most people here do, your game will need to have below average graphics, and will automatically look like an indie project.

All commercial games target the above average to overkill PCs. The bar is raised, and most gamers dont even look at indie projects. This is my oppinion, and I will start a thread to discuss this in more depth.

lol so by my calculations, 40+ REAL people, dont make me show ya screen shots of em! lol - your 20-25 people puts me......at least 10-15 up!

Im doing a victory lap! Woot!

Like I said above, I expect this is simply a case of dedicated gamers probably spend more on their PC's than the rest of us and it really does depend on who your pitching your game at.

At the other end of the spectrum of course, I have clients (non game related), education sector, who are not even running P4 chips, most are on PII's and a few lucky ones have PIII's.

So lets face it its a broad market, pick your niché

The same peak point should also apply if one has a 1.5 GHz processor and Radeon 7000, or a 4 GHz processor and Radeon X1800. It's the balance that matters. The performance graph is based on my system which is sort of balanced. Memory, the hard drive speed, and programs running in the background also play a factor. When doing the experiment I closed whatever I could to free up memory which meant that I had to go offline to free up 140 MB memory from Firefox (the big one) and other programs I had running. I took the fastest values I could.

In otherwords, stick to models of about 1500 to 5000 polygons for best results. I need to run an experiment to find the peak with more precision than in the graph. The graph just gives the full range and isn't focused on anything special, just the limits of DirectX (and rendering speed).

Note: I'm assuming "balanced" as in the card and processor being of the same release dates (as in when they were first available). I don't know when the first 3.0GHz processors were released, but they should be somewhere around August 2004, which is in the range my video card (Radeon 9600 XT) was released.

It would be interesting to draw from a nice range of 'balanced' PC's to get an idea of how the graph would be expected to go. For example across 3 balanced platforms starting with a P1 lowest spec through to a P4 High spec, some kind of benchmark tool.

The data could possibly then provide a rolling expectation of performance chart that could allow you to plot your title and cross reference the recommended PC spec for your title.

Very interesting and certainly more research is needed in this area.

If I had such computers available, I'd do so, if it was legal though (the part of installing 3DGS on other computers without a team license is the big one). I've given my test subjects so you can test it yourself. All you need to do is take note of the kps value and average it out ignoring sudden drops. Then, given the numbers, I could plot them on that logarithmic graph I made. For some, especially with 3.8 GHz processors and the very latest video card, they could be getting 12 million polygons per second as their peak (a semi-random guess). My motherboard only has AGP available (no PCI-express like the newer cards only seem to have) so I can't get the newer cards without first swapping the current motherboard.

The hypothesis is that, with the processor, video card, and video card drivers from the same date of creation, the peak is going to be roughly the same. When an old processor is used with a new video card, the peak will be much higher (~6K) and when a new processor is used with an old video card, the peak will be much lower (~800). It's only a hypothesis though and not tested. I don't have such a test environment to doing this with so it'll be difficult for me to analyze and verify it.

I don't have such cards so this is only a guess I made. It doesn't hurt to run an experiment and find out, however.