Don't let the published minimum system requirements scare you

[Marck]

System requirements have been published on Riven's Steam store page now. As it seems, Cyan really wants to be on the safe side with those high minimum requirements, similar to what they did with Firmament.

I am happy to report and pleasantly surprised that my 16 year old computer (graphics card is a few years younger) is able to run the Riven demo.

• Hardware: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz), 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7750 (1 GB)
  
• Using launch option: -dx11 (DirectX 12 does not work, driver is from 2020 which is the latest with support for my graphics card)
  
• Graphics settings: Everything on "Low", except for textures on "Epic", super sampling method "AMD FSR 1.0" with quality on "Balanced", windowed fullscreen resolution 1920x1200 pixels.
  
• Average framerate: about 15 fps (playable enough for me, can walk around just fine)

There are only a couple of minor glitches. The Cyan logo intro video freezes after about a third of its length, but music continues to play and the game loads. The viewing device for opening the spinning dome does not show the moving symbols. I have to lower the texture setting to "High" in order to see anything moving in the device. Everything else works fine, as far as I can tell. Mind you, this is what I see in the demo; performance might tank considerably in other parts of the full game, e.g. on Jungle island with all its trees.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3267759487

[RangerXT]

well, i wouldn't really say thats playable, and the minimum requirements are all listing cards that are over 6 years old at this point, so I think what they chose is pretty reasonable for a decent visual experience

[Marck]

Well, it is still multiple times better than in the original where I can achieve maybe 2 or 3 frames per second, depending on how fast I am able to click in order to transition from one frame to the next. Also, the original only supported a resolution of 640x480 pixels.

;-)

[Kn8cK]

The auto-dected options told me to play on medium graphics.
I turned the graphics to maximum, to see what it would look like and the game ran just fine on max settings.

[solidap]

7900 GRE and Ryzen 3900x

All setting max with no FSR. I get anywhere from 90-144fps. The performance seems quite variable but it never drops below 90 for me. It's a fantastic looking game, I'll definitely be buying it sometime this year

[Ocelote.12]

I have a GeForce GTX 1060 3Gb. This is way behind minimum settings on the Store page, but I still decided to try anyways because the demo is free, and the provider's Internet plan that I'm using has no traffic limits. I installed the demo on a system drive (which is on SATA SSD -- all other drive on my computer are regular HDDs).

On Medium settings the game sometimes loads walls, ceilings and floors some seconds after you enter a location. The level (one of 5 main islands) loads 7-10 minutes, even from an SSD.

So I turned settings to Low, FSR 100% Ultra-Performance. Now the (one of 5 islands) level loads 3 minutes, I have big pixelated walls, 100 fps (which looks smooth on my 1080p@240Hz monitor) and the game had just freezed completely in 5-gateways room, when looking on one of the gate (with a dome behind the gate). I had to use a Windows Task Manager (in "blind" mode, because the game prioritizes its screen before other WIndows applications) to stop it and remove from RAM. At least everthing was loading and rendering in time.

[Sir Eric 2004]

Just curious, what OS is your 16 year old PC running?

[Jellepepe ツ]

Originally posted by Ocelote.12:

I have a GeForce GTX 1060 3Gb. This is way behind minimum settings on the Store page, but I still decided to try anyways because the demo is free, and the provider's Internet plan that I'm using has no traffic limits. I installed the demo on a system drive (which is on SATA SSD -- all other drive on my computer are regular HDDs).

On Medium settings the game sometimes loads walls, ceilings and floors some seconds after you enter a location. The level (one of 5 main islands) loads 7-10 minutes, even from an SSD.

So I turned settings to Low, FSR 100% Ultra-Performance. Now the (one of 5 islands) level loads 3 minutes, I have big pixelated walls, 100 fps (which looks smooth on my 1080p@240Hz monitor) and the game had just freezed completely in 5-gateways room, when looking on one of the gate (with a dome behind the gate). I had to use a Windows Task Manager (in "blind" mode, because the game prioritizes its screen before other WIndows applications) to stop it and remove from RAM. At least everthing was loading and rendering in time.

How much ram does this pc have? Or does it have a very weak cpu? My (admittedly much more powerful) pc loads the game in seconds. My ssd might be faster but it sounds like its having to either utilise swap or is somehow unable to unpack the game data properly due to a cpu bottleneck, those loading times don't seem related to the gpu

(Also, wow, didn't realise home internet providers with traffic limits existed in 2024)

[Jellepepe ツ]

Originally posted by Marck:

System requirements have been published on Riven's Steam store page now. As it seems, Cyan really wants to be on the safe side with those high minimum requirements, similar to what they did with Firmament.

I am happy to report and pleasantly surprised that my 16 year old computer (graphics card is a few years younger) is able to run the Riven demo.

• Hardware: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz), 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7750 (1 GB)
  
• Using launch option: -dx11 (DirectX 12 does not work, driver is from 2020 which is the latest with support for my graphics card)
  
• Graphics settings: Everything on "Low", except for textures on "Epic", super sampling method "AMD FSR 1.0" with quality on "Balanced", windowed fullscreen resolution 1920x1200 pixels.
  
• Average framerate: about 15 fps (playable enough for me, can walk around just fine)

There are only a couple of minor glitches. The Cyan logo intro video freezes after about a third of its length, but music continues to play and the game loads. The viewing device for opening the spinning dome does not show the moving symbols. I have to lower the texture setting to "High" in order to see anything moving in the device. Everything else works fine, as far as I can tell. Mind you, this is what I see in the demo; performance might tank considerably in other parts of the full game, e.g. on Jungle island with all its trees.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3267759487

Props for running that pc still man damn. I've thrown away PCs more powerful than that as they are considered ewaste... If you were local i could've given you a free upgrade :)

[Marck]

Originally posted by Sir Eric 2004:

Just curious, what OS is your 16 year old PC running?

Windows 10 Pro. I didn't mention the loading times: Getting to the menu and starting a new game is fine, but the link from K'veer to Riven takes about 20-30 minutes; sometimes I am lucky and it finishes in less than 10 minutes. Using a SSD instead of HDD does not make much of a difference for me.

[SMFD]

Windows 10 here, Ryzen 3 1200 4 core, 32 gigs of ram (gotta run web browsers after all :P). My ancient 1060 manages to run this at near 60 with only minimal hitching with most/everything on medium (Though I, like others, had to use the -d3d11 switch, as 12 caused a crash). I'm sure it would look much better on a modern card, but it's definitely playable like this, and walking around Riven in real-time is wild.. Probably helps that it's a game about puzzle solving and slowly walking through the environment, not high-octane action, but still, I've very impressed with the optimization here. Eagerly looking forward to the full release.

[FuzzyJuzzy]

Originally posted by Marck:

Originally posted by Sir Eric 2004:

Just curious, what OS is your 16 year old PC running?

Windows 10 Pro. I didn't mention the loading times: Getting to the menu and starting a new game is fine, but the link from K'veer to Riven takes about 20-30 minutes; sometimes I am lucky and it finishes in less than 10 minutes. Using a SSD instead of HDD does not make much of a difference for me.

You're kidding me. In addition to all the other issues you had and that abysmal frame rate, the game is not playable in the slightest for the large majority of people on a system like yours.

[Marck]

Originally posted by FuzzyJuzzy:

You're kidding me. In addition to all the other issues you had and that abysmal frame rate, the game is not playable in the slightest for the large majority of people on a system like yours.

Well, I am playing it on that system. I just wanted to report that it is possible to run the game without meeting the minimum requirements, if you are willing to accept the issues coming along with it. I do, because the alternative is not to play it at all. And yes, I will get some better hardware at some point, but it is also kind of fun to stretch the boundaries and to make it work despite the odds.

[owowg]

The 1080 Ti 12GB in the recommended GPU requirements doesn't make any sense.
- The 1080 Ti has 11GB, not 12.
- And the GTX 1080 Ti is NOT comparable to a RX 6800XT. The 6800XT is almost twice as fast! Maybe they meant the 2080 Ti or even 3080 Ti?

Anyway, on my 3070 GPU the demo maintains a locked 60fps at 1440p, DLSS Balanced, on Epic settings. With DLSS set to Quality it occasionally dips below 60fps.
Other specs: Ryzen 5700X, 16GB RAM, RTX 3070 (has roughly 80% the power of a 6800XT)

Hopefully the full game runs the same.

[nurt]

I played the demo on a GTX 1650 Ti, 10th gen intel i5, 32gb of ram and on an HDD and somehow managed to get 30-60fps on many areas with most settings on HIgh. Loading screens are long for the first time (around 5 mins) but running the game a second time they were much faster.

The biggest framerate killers are shadows and effects. I could live with shadows on medium but for effects i decided to keep them on High, otherwise the water would look too ugly. Sadly this meant looking at the water took a huge performance hit. Couldn't really test with FSR as I couldn't tell if the setting was on or off during the demo.

All in all, I'd say this is one of the best optimized games to still look really good somehow. Being mostly exploration, I don't think you need high framerates to still enjoy it. Its not a shooter.

[Marck]

Originally posted by LoadingVern:

You must be seeing the game in matrix form buddy cuz there is no way this game can be seen on that hardware. You really must be missing so much detail...

Check out the screenshots I made in the demo running on that hardware. I am quite happy to experience Riven in a quality which is superior to the original version.