Minimum requirements?

[AlphaArcticWolf]

So, I've been playing this for north of 200 hours. I just checked the stated minimum requirements and noticed that the game requires 2 GB of VRAM.

Fun fact - I run this game very smoothly on a 1 GB VRAM GTX 650 Ti (with a MoBo that allows 512 MB of shared memory). You could update requirements.

[Puppers]

Originally posted by AlphaArcticWolf:

So, I've been playing this for north of 200 hours. I just checked the stated minimum requirements and noticed that the game requires 2 GB of VRAM.

Fun fact - I run this game very smoothly on a 1 GB VRAM GTX 650 Ti (with a MoBo that allows 512 MB of shared memory). You could update requirements.

Aren't they more like guidelines? Also do you use any mods? Are you hosting Multiplayer just fine as well?

[Khergit Horse Archer]

i wonder if u can play project zomboid with a gtx 9800

[hardy_conrad]

Yeah I play somewhat below minimum specs myself, although it's a bit vague. The game doesn't run what I would call smoothly (and driving cars in particular causes issues at anything other than a crawl) but it does run.

[Skarth]

Video card performance is significantly more complex than the amount of Vram. There are 4gb cards that will be majorly outperformed by 1gb cards.

The Vram GB listing is more of a "generalized" suggestion. A typical 2gb video card will do decently enough, whereas a typical 1gb card probably won't.

In many cases, it mostly boils down to using a non-integrated, semi-modern card nowdays.

[AlphaArcticWolf]

Originally posted by Puppers:

Aren't they more like guidelines? Also do you use any mods? Are you hosting Multiplayer just fine as well?

Yeah, I also heavily use the mods, running ~20 of them, and it doesn't put any strain on performance. Multiplayer shouldn't stress the GPU unless the float variable calculations are carried out on it (which I do not know). A good SSD with decent RAM speed (and allocated RAM amount) does the job for multiplayer.

Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:

Yep, when I wrote 'em and edited 'em over the yeas, it's mainly been about avoiding certain hardware. So, a 2GB requirement cuts out an absolute ton of old cards that can't handle the game's shaders (or the 1+ GB of vRAM the game will use, resolution dependant).

Same thing for integrated graphics. I don't miss the days of GMAs and Express Chipsets being the norm.

The CPU was simply selected because it seemed to be a common i5 at the time when Core Duos and Pentiums were also causing constant issues.

SSD is very important, though. Since the game is constantly streaming small files whenever you move or drive, seek times of mechanical drives (especially older drives) can really kill performance.

Indeed. GTX 650 Ti would be an exceptional card (maybe even the best card of its period) if it had more VRAM. The fact it has 768 CUDA cores with GPU clock @ 900+ MHz and VRAM clock @ 1300+ MHz makes it capable of competing against GTX 1000 series (many which are also based around 768 CUDAs), minus the VRAM amount.
People just simply didn't need that much VRAM 10 years ago.
The fact you can buy used, functioning GTX 650 Ti cards for 10-20 USD is also a plus.

There are, however, some games that are just simply horribly optimized, like the Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 which, for some reason, dies as soon as you try running it with anything less than 2 GB VRAM (and, considering the amount of graphics it'd take on minimum - it's a sign of bare apathy on dev's side).

PZ is also not THAT heavy on processor considering my old AMD's bulldozer architecture CPU doesn't get hot enough to cook eggs on it while playing... tho regarding hard memory - it'd be interesting testing the game on older SATA I / SATA II HDD, or an SSD on a mobo limited to SATA I. All open world games save segments in chunks, no exception (Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound, etc) --- and loading too many chunks into RAM stresses the memory device & mobo. My mobo, for instance, is limited to SATA II (despite having a SATA III SSD with OS and all software) and that specific limitation impacts the quality of game when I'm moving through multiple chunks too quickly. Only then does it slightly lag. SATA I limited mobo would probably make this game unplayable, which COULD be a valid minimum requirement to add.

Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised the game is this well optimized considering the amount of float variables included, minus the occasional glitches that emerge when stacking a lot of items in a single stack into a single container (strange, some custom dynamic allocation kicks in orrrr...?)