got the latest video card? guess what...

[rallynavvie]

Now you're going to need a "Physics Processing Unit" in order to get the best performance out of your games.
http://www.ageia.com/technology.html
It isn't enough that we're required to get TWO high end video cards in order to get the most out of the latest games, we'll soon need to have an additional processor dedicated to managing the physics of the game.

A slippery-slope just for fun:
GeForce 6900X2 "Doom 4" Edition ($1099.99) - Already preorder Doom 4? Be the first to order this pair of GeForce 6900 paired SLI video cards with a bumpmipmap hardware decoder built into each card! Bumpmipmap is the latest in scalar graphics technology that was pioneered to give Doom 4 a look that no other game possesses. Without one of these you will not be able to use this technology in the game and will be forced to run it looking like a 32-bit game! Also included is a PCI-E x8 physics processing unit that will handle all of the immense physics attributes of the game such as blood splatter patterns, projectile trajectory slop, and wound reactions for example. Without this unit you'll only be able to play the game without any of these great features enabled!
Free Doom 4 condoms with purchase for when you have to sleep with the dirty software executives that drive our sales!
System Requirements
- Windows XP 64-bit Edition
- Two dual-core physical processors (AMD Opteron 248s or Intel "Montecito" Xeons recommended)
- 1024MB DDR2 memory with CAS timings no greater than 3-3-3-8
- 650 watt rated minimum power supply
- SLI-capable motherboard with available PCI-E x8 slot for physics processing unit
- 16x DVD burner
- at least one LED fan is recommended

[ / tongue in cheek ]
I'm both surprised and disappointed that games are not already being written for SMP systems

[thecoalman]

So where are we supposed to plug the rest of the stuff in? I lost a pci slot to my current card.

[guns1inger]

You need to by an SLI ready motherboard with dual PCI-E slots placed for SLI rigs. Oh - and a sh*tload of money

[lumis]

i stopped playing most PC games long ago because of the crazy hardware requirements.. i play console games.. you plop down $200-$300 games on a console, and $30-$50 per game.. unless you're sly

[ViRaL1]

You forgot to mention striped SATA-II 3Gb/s drives with at LEAST 500GB capacity in order to prevent choopy video and lag.

(300GB required storage space)

[guns1inger]

ID did actually spend quite some time trying to get true SMP into Quake3Arena. John Carmack wrote a couple of logs about the effort required, and the fact that so much processing time went into simply balancing the load and keeping everything sync'd up, that in the end the best you would get would be in the order of 10 - 20% increase. At the time, this wasn't deemed worth enough to pursue.

[ViRaL1]

I'm assuming you meant not enough of an increase for THEM to put in all the work. It's funny how much money gamers will spend to add 15-20fps to their game.

[studtrooper]

I dunno, from what I see, the videocard is WAY more important than processor speed. Even if Doom 3 is only using one of my 2.8ghz Xeons, I doubt things would be better if I was using a single 3.2ghz P4...

[rallynavvie]

You forgot to mention striped SATA-II 3Gb/s drives with at LEAST 500GB capacity in order to prevent choopy video and lag.

(300GB required storage space)

Damn! How could I have forgotten the hard disks? Actually you'll be required to run 15k SCSI hardware striped across 4 drives minimum in order for the physics processor to access things quick enough and load maps instantaneously. That is unless you utilize its onboard DIMM slots and fill it up with PC4000 DDR2 memory to the tune of 2GB (not seen by the system of course so it must be in addition to what on the system board) so that it can preload the physics engine data. I'm sure it utilizes some sort of riser card for that which will block off the rest of your PCI slots. Just have to get a motherboard with Audigy Platinum Doom 4 onboard sound with EAX 8.1.3.

[BobV]

i stopped playing most PC games long ago because of the crazy hardware requirements.. i play console games.. you plop down $200-$300 games on a console, and $30-$50 per game.. unless you're sly

I'm with you lumis. It became a hobbie that grew out of control. It was fun for a while but as I spent more and more money pushing virturl worlds closer to reality, it made me think. So I took the final plunge and joined the real world.