Tomi on 15/4/2013 at 15:03

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Alright, this game has been waiting for me in my Steam library for the last six months, so I wanted to give it a go at last... only to find out that it doesn't seem to run properly on my computer. :erg:
The first mission of the game (the attack in the laboratory) ran reasonably well when I adjusted the graphics settings. I noticed some choppiness with certain graphics effects, but even at worst it was still playable and not too annoying most of the time. Then I started the second mission and got to the Sarif Industries lobby...

(http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q590/Tomiboo/2013-04-13_00002_zps578a6f6c.jpg) http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q590/Tomiboo/th_2013-04-13_00002_zps578a6f6c.jpg

... ohmygod :erg: The game suddenly turns unplayable, it runs so slow that I couldn't even be bothered to play any further. I don't know what it is about this place, it's hardly that complex, and just looking at those lamps on the background for example from close range is apparently too much for my computer. Perhaps there's some graphics effect that my graphics card (see my computer specs below) can't handle? I've already tried turning off all those things (whatever they mean) in the graphics menu though, and it makes the game run a little better, but it's still choppy as hell.

I'm afraid that computer specs don't mean much to me nowadays, they've gotten too complicated for me when bigger number doesn't equal better anymore. :p
But I'm hoping that you guys could help me out here!

Here are the official system requirements from Steam:


Aaand here's my computer:


So, is my computer just hopelessly outdated and not good enough for a game like this? I would have thought that my computer meets all the minimum requirements at least, and even some of the recommended settings.

I suspect that one problem could be the fact that I'm still running Windows XP? I've been too lazy to install Windows 7, because so far everything has worked just fine on XP, but then again I haven't played any modern FPS games lately... I thought that the biggest advantage in having Win 7 would be DirectX 11 (or whatever version the modern games support) that you can't have on XP, but even the recommended system settings only mention DirectX 9.0c, so I assume that DX:HR doesn't support any super-advanced gfx effects?

I remember experiencing some really bad performance in Mirror's Edge too, but turning off "PhysX effects" fixed that and everything ran smoothly ever since. I'm hoping to find a similar kind of a solution for this, but what do you reckon, could DX:HR even run on my computer?

halp pls :(

Tomi on 15/4/2013 at 16:46

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Ha! I don't know whether it was the new DirectX (I thought that DX 9.0c is the new version, but it turned out that I didn't have the newest release of 9.0c!) or the new version of ATI/AMD Catalyst, but I just ran DX:HR and looks like my problem has been sorted out!
I don't mind feeling like a bit of an idiot for not trying this already, since the game seems to be running really smoothly now! :cool:

I'll enable some of the advanced gfx effects again now, and see what works and what doesn't. Names like SSAO and DOF mean absolutely nothing to me, and I have no idea what level of antialiasing or texture filtering my gfx card is able to do, but I guess I'll try experimenting with those.

Thanks a lot, voodoo47! \:D/