by Enrique Caroli on Jun 23, 2008
Do you have a minimum, recommended, or awesome system?
Worried about needing to upgrade your machine for Age of Conan? Well, this should give you the answers you need. Gamespot ran a test to see how the game performed on three different systems testing how graphics ran, specifically. One met the minimum reqs, one met the recommended reqs, and one was just plain awesome in their opinion. My only concern is they didn't test at all in combat, so we won't see how that affects things.
Server conditions, population activity, and numerous other conditions make testing MMORPGs difficult. We increased our usual test duration to three minutes and used FRAPs to measure frame rates to compensate for the variability of our test runs. Our test ran through the streets of Old Terantia where we wound our way from the East Gate to the docks and back. The path has a mix of long view distances, heavily trafficked areas, and graphically varied regions that make the test brutal on the system hardware, as well as representative of the different scenery that the game offers. We found that the city test represents the absolute worst case scenario. We easily saw our frame rates double as soon as we stepped outside of cities, and combat instances in enclosed areas proved much less taxing than the civil environments.
For the full article, check here.