Am I gonna need a graphics card to play this?

The images we've seen for the game so far look really good, and they make me worry that I'm gonna have to buy a graphics card for my computer in order to play this game. Am I?

 

From what I have heard, yes, you will require a decent GPU. Probably no less than shader model 3.0 and a Gig of RAM on the card itself.

I could be wrong, but good luck convincing me of that in any event...

 

Well, obviously, you also needed a graphics card to start IE or Chrome. Not that an integrated one wouldn't work, but that's still a graphics card.

 

An integrated GPU may work. But depending on just how graphical it is, it may be too much work for it to keep up. And as much as I love Intel, the so called Intel Integrated GPUs are pure garbage virtually guaranteed to fail. That does not mean any AMD or NVidia junk will work. A good Integrated GPU will give a cheap real GPU a run for its money.

Bear in mind that integrated usually means it shares system RAM with the GPU. So your RAM needs expand with better graphics in that case too. And typically with an integrated GPU you have a significant amount of GPU work being done on the CPU since it is still much faster. Time will tell however.

 

YES! Hideously crippled and ugly is entirely my style.

 

Oh, damn and I thought I could get away with buying a little cheap laptop for my voluntary year Gaslamp Games, you got me again! Curse you!

 

Or you could buy a friggen desktop pc for the sake of gaming. Gaming on a laptop is like scrubbing rusty spoons with your fingernails. If that's your definition of having a good time, so be it.

 

I do own a gaming PC, but I'll be doing a year of voluntary service in Turkey (probably), living in a flat with some other guys and travelling quite a lot. So, I'll need a laptop.
I'm usually of the same opinion as you, but I don't see any solution but a laptop in my case

 

Well, there's loads of good games that don't need an above-average graphics card. 2 years ago, I had a second hand 50 euros pc. Yet it could run most games from before 2006 or so, if they weren't like some triple-A title.

 

Yeah, I know. My old netbook, which is utter crap, can play Dredmor, Cave Story and SpaceChem and tons of other stuff just fine, but if I get a laptop as my primary computer, it should pack some punch at least

 

If you have the money check out the last ultrabooks with discrete GPU (like the asus ux32).

Or if you don't care about size/weight there's a lot of cheap 15" that got decent gpu.

 

Nah, I a) don't want to spend too much money on it since I'll be partly living off my savings for a year and b) want an optical drive and c) what is the point of an Ultrabook with discrete GPU? Thought they were optimizing shiny and battery life, and lifestyle doesn't need gamers
But thanks, didn't know Ultrabooks came with GPUs nowadays. I'll look into them, but I really, really want a disc drive, Turkey sounds like a country where you might need one.

 

The point of an ultrabook with discrete gpu is to be able to play while travelling without having to carry a huge ass 15 inches laptop. When you have to travel a lot and carry your laptop around a lot as a result, having a 3kg dead weight in your back pack is really a pain (that's why my next laptop will probably be one of those)

 

Well, it depends on the person. Personally I got used to hauling heavier stuff around while I was young, so any laptop smaller than a 17'' one is annoyingly light for me.

Though I do agree with you in that the point of "ultrabooks" with discrete GPU is being able to play (or watch stuff, because some things require a lot of juice to render) without having to carry anything backbreakingly heavy.

 

"annoyingly light" I do not compute

 

Get used to hauling heavier things for a long time, and if something is light enough you won't feel it's really there, and you'll be annoyed that you have to constantly check if it really is even though you know you are carrying it.

It goes with getting some exercising done on a regular basis and with having to lug some heavier stuff (or rather, more of the same weighting stuff compared to "average" people) when I was young, I guess; there was a time when I even used training weights, so now anything that weights less than they had is "too light" for me.

But yeah, people who like heavier things can't understand why would anyone want something light, and people who prefer light things often can't understand why would someone haul more willingly.

 

Yeah you can think of carrying heavy stuff around as free exercise!

I also prefer if things have some weight though we aren't really going in that direction the focus seems to be on lightness.
I once thought that adjusting my netbook's monitor with a light push was a good idea. It fell over hit the battery which made it shut off then it bounced back