The "Would my PC be able to run M2TW?" thread (all such queries here pls)

[fruitfly]

I don't know if CA will make a formal announcement, but here's some general advice:

If your processor is made by AMD, and is not an Athlon 64, new(ish) Sempron (socket 754, 939 or AM2) or dual-core, then you won't have SSE2 and won't be able to run the current demo.

If you've got an Intel pentium 4 processor (or better), then you probably will as far as processor compatability is concerned.

Less than 512MB of RAM probably won't cut it in terms of getting any decent sort of performance, but you may be able to run things if you don't mind some lag.

If you're not sure what sort of processor or how much RAM you've got:
Right-click on "My Computer" and select "properties" from the menu and the dialogue box that opens up will tell you some basic information.

For more detailed information on what processor you have and what instruction sets it supports (ie whether it's compatible with SSE2 or not), you can download a program like Cpu-z
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
Run the exe and it'll list details about your processor including that info.

As for graphics cards, make sure you've downloaded the newest drivers and installed them correctly (in case of compatability issues, uninstall the existing ones and then install the newest). If it's less than 256MB you're probably going to have to sacrifice at least some of the eye candy to get a decent frame rate. As previously stated here, the best thing to turn off initially is shadowing. If you're having real problems and have already updated your drivers, try turning all settings to minimum to see if you can get any improvement in performance and then gradually increasing them. There are also some pretty dire 256MB graphics cards out there, so I'm afraid having one that on paper exceeds the minimum requirements (128MB with Shader 1 support) doesn't automatically mean the game will run well.

Finally, remember that this demo is pretty old in terms of game development and the finished product will hopefully have been improved in many areas (including SSE2 support- pleeeease CA, be nice to us old AMD owners).

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EDIT: Forgot to add - I wouldn't rush out to upgrade anything your PC is short of apart from memory before CA/SEGA give more concrete information about hardware compatability for the release version of the game. Not unless your graphics card is seriously underpowered anyway.