Geforce FX 5700LE
2.70GHz Celeron(soon to get Pentium 4 by next week)
512 MB of RAM

that good enough to at least run on medium?

i would guess yes, but obviously we cant tell now, we dont even know when the game is gonna be out. my best guess atm is if you can play Doom 3 you can play Q4.

No. You're going to need to drop at least $2000 to play it at low quality  

Quote (sarro @ April 10 2005, 8:47 am)

No. You're going to need to drop at least $2000 to play it at low quality

lol

Anyone who can play Doom 3 on High settings can surely play Quake 4. It would depend how much they polish the graphics. You might get less Frames/sec or even push down to medium settings. But Q4 is definately still on for play!

Well,

I have a pent 4 2.80c  @ 3.3, 1 gig of geil 4200 platinum with an ATI x800 XT.

If you can still find all of the above stuff, it should run you less than $1,000.  A basic MSI mobo to stack it all in is under $100.

So,

With the above rig I can run Doom 3 at 1280 x 1024 with the graphics turned up.  High conflict makes it a tad gummy, but not much.

Bottom line is that you will not have to break the bank to run Quake 4, even at high resolution.  Just do not over-buy and go get some of the high end last generation before it gets gobbled up.

One more thing:  I am talking about a Pentium Northwood!!  And the cpu needs to be a C stepping (they overclock like mad while still running fairly cool - unlike the stuff that is being cranked out now); and finally, make sure you get a compliant mobo for an 800 fsb.

Oh,  don't skimp on the ram... get top of the line and pay a little more.  You can overclock to  get a 3.3 gig, fast system on the cheap.

Bring on Quake 4, we need it.

Personally I'm just waiting for 512 mb ddr video cards! Particular the Geforce 6600 GT class. But I'll have to check which motherboard to get? AGP or PCI Express!

Go for it if you got the money.

Personally, I just haven't seen a real jump in performance (worth the price) in quite a while.

PCI express with SLI appears to be the next best innovation, but it will take quite a while to get the coding/drivers out in order to make it all worth the lucre.  Then, when they get the software going, the price will come down.

As far a 512 meg video card.... well, the performance jump we were supposed to get from 128 to 256 wasn't even close to being expodential and thus worth the cost.

You can play Doom 3 and soon Quake 4 with current tech properly tweaked (at a fraction the cost).  Why spend the money?

Dude, you can't play Doom 3 on Ultra High Settings at a decent resolution with AA and AF ON, on a single 256mb ddr video card. You can play it on SLI though. But if you have one 512 mb ddr video card you don't need SLI. Unless you really really have the cash for such extreme gaming.

I am not trying to be confrontational  here, but you are buying into the promised hype on the 512 meg cards.

I have yet to see a card perform up to hype.

First of all, if you don't have the cpu kick, then the card will be cpu limited (it always is).  So, you need to consider a complete investment - that could be quite salty and you got to ask yourself if that is worth it just to play an ever decreasing number of quality PC games!!!

I run Doom 3 and get generally over 30fps per second in high conflict. I think that is fine for single player.  I use 1280 x 1024 resolution, ultra high settings.  FSaa is 4x (t2) with a 96% threshold.  Anistropic is 16x quality.

My card is the ATI X800 XT 519/546.  I overclock my NOrthwood to 3.3gig and I use 1gig of geil 4200 platinum.

Current cards hold higher resolution better than the older ones.  There really isn't any need to hit high frames in a single player game.