Bethesda reveals Rage's modest system requirements

Matthew DeCarlo

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With Rage set to ship in less than a month, Bethesda has published the title's minimum and recommended system specifications -- both of which seem relatively modest. Folks should have no trouble skating by on a dated rig as the game will supposedly run on an Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent AMD processor, 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 8800 or Radeon HD 4200 graphics card.

Meanwhile, if you intend to experience the post-apocalyptic mayhem in all its glory, you'll need at least an Intel Core 2 Quad or AMD equivalent, 4GB of RAM and a GeForce 9800GTX or Radeon HD 5550. Regardless of your processor, memory and graphics configuration, Bethesda says the game requires Windows XP, Vista or 7 along with 25GB (yep, twenty-five gigabytes) of storage.

Rage gameplay trailer -- Wasteland Legends: Water Service

We might be reading into this too much, but if the company specifically recommends a quad-core processor, that could indicate that Rage will utilize more than two cores. If so, it'll be interesting to see the performance discrepancy between each configuration. Nothing is set in stone, but it's highly likely that we'll publish a performance review of the game and we'll be sure to test this.

If the game truly demands 25GB of storage, you can probably scratch any plans of installing it on your SSD boot drive. You're undoubtedly aware of this fact, but as a reminder, 32-bit operating systems generally can't address more than 2.75GB to 3.25GB of RAM. In other words, to meet Bethesda's recommended 4GB of RAM, you'll need to be running a 64-bit version of Windows.

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25GB? Bah! Why get an SSD that can't afford to have 25GB worth of games on it? With hard links you can swap stuff for steam on and off your SSD no problem anyway.
 
Besides loading game content much faster than a mechanical disk having an SSD doesn't really make any noticeable difference to your experience in game anyway.

So the game will load much faster, and loading between levels will be quicker - but other than that its pretty much the same as using a traditional disk.
 
Looks like console crap to me. I did not buy a gtx570 to play console garbage. I will buy if from steam when it goes below $15.00.
 
Did anyone notice Jesse playing Rage on the last two episodes of Breaking Bad? Cool product promotion.

And where's our weekend game deals?
 
To be fair, I recently built a PC which uses a 60GB OCZ Solid 3 SSD and a 450GB Western Digital Velociraptor and it really depends on the game if you want an increase in speed on the SSD.

Windows Definately loads much faster if the SSD is used as the boot drive but the games were a different story.

Doom 3, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Mass Effect 2, Crysis and World of Warcraft did not load much faster on the SSD (like 1 or 2 seconds faster if that).

While the orginal Mass Effect, Supreme Commander, Starcraft II, Company of Heros and The Witcher 2 did load noticeibly faster?

Dunno, just thought I'd throw out my findings with SSD games performance.
 
jetkami said:
Looks like console crap to me. I did not buy a gtx570 to play console garbage. I will buy if from steam when it goes below $15.00.

Really? Cause if you bothered to watch the gameplay video most interactions were done with the "E" button. I cant find an "E" button on my xbox 360 or PS3 controller...How about anyone else?
This game has gone through painstaking detail and polishing to look and play its best on all platforms...the best of which to be played on is the PC. One word...MEGATEXTURES!
Now......R@GE!!!!
 
To be fair, I recently built a PC which uses a 60GB OCZ Solid 3 SSD and a 450GB Western Digital Velociraptor and it really depends on the game if you want an increase in speed on the SSD.

Windows Definately loads much faster if the SSD is used as the boot drive but the games were a different story.

Doom 3, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Mass Effect 2, Crysis and World of Warcraft did not load much faster on the SSD (like 1 or 2 seconds faster if that).

While the orginal Mass Effect, Supreme Commander, Starcraft II, Company of Heros and The Witcher 2 did load noticeibly faster?

Dunno, just thought I'd throw out my findings with SSD games performance.

My conclusions were similar when I had my 256GB SSD, before its ill fated death. Now I use my old Linux SSD (64GB) for my Windows 7 install paired with a 1TB Spinpoint F3 and I really can't say I notice much reduction in game peformance.

In fact, I recently overhauled my brothers i7 PC and that was fitted with a Samsung Spinpoint 640GB hard disk, and I can't say it felt any different in regards to load times with games. The OS was noticeably slower to load than my PC with its SSD, but gaming acted no different at all.

The lack of difference is certainly enough to prevent me bothering with a large capacity SSD for my games in the future. I'll stick with a 60-120GB SSD for W7 and applications, and keep my games on the 1TB hard disk.
 
My SSD experience shows that the OS boots much faster (I don't really care since I almost never reboot) and only one game has noticeably shorter load times, Rift. I'd happily trade the funds spent on an SSD for a faster GPU in my lappy and slower load speeds. I'll have to install a few more recent games to give more input.

Oops - forgot, Civ5 loads faster too.
 
Its funny that games are barely utilizing quad cores when we have hex cores. Damn consoles.
 
I agree with burty117. Game performance is almost unnoticeable when running off an SSD. In some cases, it is even slower (albeit by 1-2 seconds). But my OS runs like a dream on it.

With these unbelievable minimal video settings, it looks like this is going to be another crappy console port. I was tempted to pre-purchase, but I'm definitely holding off now until I see some PC reviews.
 
PS3 version will have higher rez textures than the 360 version because it will utilise the extra storage capacity of the bluray disk.

As far as this being console crap, it is multiplatform but ID Software were the front runners of 3D gaming years ago. The problem I have seen so far with this game is that nothing looks great compared to Borderlands
 
rage seems like one of those games that should just have a native linux support.
but nooo
 
I'm sure it will get Linux support soon enough - after all this is Carmack we are talking about and the game runs in OpenGL.
 
What?! 64GB SSD's are a waste?! They're really not, seriously, they are almost the ultimate upgrade! Please explain??
 
Those minimum system requirements are funny.

I'm running the same specs on 64-bit win 7 with 6 gigs of RAM and Rage is playing like a slideshow.

I updated my ati drivers, applied amd's Rage performance patch, and set the game to the lowest resolution, and now it's running like a flipbook. Better, but still garbage.

Either someone re-released Crysis 2 or Bethesda should've at least tried their game before tossing it out.
 
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