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Determining Windows System Requirements

Discussion in 'Editor & General Support' started by Jonathan Czeck, Sep 7, 2006.

  1. Jonathan Czeck

    Jonathan Czeck

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    Hi folks,

    I'm trying to get some system requirements for our Windows build. On the Mac side it runs fine on an iBook 800 MHz with a Radeon 9200 mobility, so I was thinking of saying something like this:

    1 GHz Processor or better
    DirectX 7 compatible video card
    256 MB of RAM
    Windows 98.. or newer?

    Any advice? (A giant testing lab or beta program is out of the question)

    Thanks,
    -Jon
     
    Jonathan Czeck, Sep 7, 2006
    #1

  2. Aras

    Aras

    Unity Technologies

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    The OS is Windows 2000 or newer.

    Video card is ok (DX7 level basically covers all Geforces, Radeons and majority of Intel cards). It should run on pre-DX7 cards as well, but look very good or be very fast. We actually don't care if any DirectX is installed; what would be better is adding "OpenGL drivers installed".

    CPU and RAM look ok.
     
    Aras, Sep 7, 2006
    #2

  3. AaronC

    AaronC

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    Perhaps we could start a database of performance on the wiki so we could all post results from tests? Theres obviously a big difference between low and high end
    AC
     
    AaronC, Sep 7, 2006
    #3

  4. Aras

    Aras

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    The performance very depends on what are you doing exactly. For example, low-fillrate cards don't like pixel lights or image effects. Cards without hardware vertex processing won't like geometry heavy scenes. Cards with low memory bandwidth won't like uncompressed textures or lots of alpha blending. And so on.

    I guess just looking at any hardware review site and checking out something like 3DMark scores is a pretty good indicator of card's "general" performance.
     
    Aras, Sep 7, 2006
    #4

  5. Morgan

    Morgan

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    A "Unibench" webplayer, reporting FPS for several test scenarios (different levels and kinds of complexity--polys vs. textures vs. scripting vs. physics, etc.) would be neat--and people could populate a table with the results they get.

    The scenarios could run in a row, ending with a list of the numbers. They could target specific bottlenecks: one dependend heavily on VRAM, one with lots of pixellights and RTT effects, one with massively complex physics, one with a heavy-duity JS running every frame, etc.
     
    Morgan, Sep 7, 2006
    #5

  6. fatso

    fatso

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    Then we could talk about "Unimark" scores :)
     
    fatso, Sep 8, 2006
    #6

  7. yellowlabrador

    yellowlabrador

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    What about pc that originally was a windows 98 or ME and was upgraded to XP?

    The demo test I Put out had some issues with some machine. (All running XP). Too dark on two, One machine the bottom is green and the top is black. Stupid me, I forgot to write down the graphics card and the rest of the info on this machine.

    Ray
     
    yellowlabrador, Sep 28, 2006
    #7

  8. Aras

    Aras

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    If a machine has upgraded to WinXP, then it has WinXP. So no problem there.

    About the other issues: try with just-released 1.5.1 webplayer or rebuild your standalone game with Unity 1.5.1. We have fixed a lot of driver-related issues on Windows.
     
    Aras, Sep 28, 2006
    #8

  9. yellowlabrador

    yellowlabrador

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    Tried the 1.5.1 and so far one machine (windows) just had a very dark background. I was able to get the output .log file and I'm pasting it here.

    The machine is an HP windows.

    Output.log file

    Audio devices: Generic Hardware (default: Generic Hardware)
    Player: init engine
    OpenGL:
    Version: 1.3 [1.3.0 - Build 4.13.01.3119]
    Renderer: Intel Brookdale-G
    Vendor: Intel
    Extensions: GL_ARB_multitexture GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp GL_ARB_texture_compression GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_texture_env_combine GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar GL_ARB_transpose_matrix GL_EXT_abgr GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_blend_color GL_EXT_blend_func_separate GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_blend_subtract GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_EXT_cull_vertex GL_EXT_fog_coord GL_EXT_packed_pixels GL_EXT_packed_pixels_12 GL_EXT_rescale_normal GL_EXT_secondary_color GL_EXT_separate_specular_color GL_EXT_stencil_wrap GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_texture_env_combine GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_3DFX_texture_compression_FXT1 GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_NV_texgen_reflection GL_WIN_swap_hint
    WGL extensions: WGL_ARB_extensions_string WGL_ARB_pixel_format WGL_ARB_pbuffer WGL_ARB_make_current_read WGL_EXT_swap_control WGL_ARB_buffer_region
    GL: Disabling fullscreen due to old Intel driver
    Cleanup player


    What's the safe way to assume or guess what the windows system requirements are?

    I googled this intel chip and it's a 2002 era. Don't know anything about it besides what I try to understand what was written by intel. This chip, I believe is worse than the intel graphics card on the macbooks.

    What exactly are the the windows machine (Processor, speed, ram, video cards) that Unity support. Can we have some kind of list, like posted on a wiki? so dum dums like me can have a ballpark guess as to what we can say the min. system req. for our games?

    Thanks,
    Ray
     
    yellowlabrador, Sep 30, 2006
    #9

  10. Aras

    Aras

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    The best thing you can do is send the webplayer or standalone player to us with ReportBug.app, then we can see what it does and why it does not display on such a card properly.

    As to the system requirements: that very much depends on what exactly the game does. For example, if game creator creates a shader that uses fancy fragment programs and does not write fallback versions for older hardware - then there's nothing Unity can do except display something in black color.

    The builtin shaders in Unity should run pretty much everywhere. On super-old hardware (older than this Intel card), i.e. single texture cards from 1998 or so, it may be too dark (cards don't suppport 'double' combiner mode that all Unity shaders use), the GUI texts may be black (again, no proper combiner mode supported) and some particle shaders can look not entirely correct (cards don't support needed blend modes). But still, the image should look "okay" and it should work.

    Custom created shaders are a different story; what graphics card they run on fully depends on the shader author.
     
    Aras, Sep 30, 2006
    #10

  11. yellowlabrador

    yellowlabrador

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    Submitting a bug report. attached the windows stand alone player.

    Thanks,
    Ray
     
    yellowlabrador, Sep 30, 2006
    #11