Ever had these issues when buying a game?

• Can your computer run that game?
• Ever confused about what is listed for minimum system requirements?
• Do you know if your processor has enough speed?
• Is your video card powerful enough?
• Do you have enough RAM?

With the arrival of new and resource intensive games for the PC platform, it has become increasingly difficult for old PCs – aged two or more – to run these games. The requirements for such games have shot up immensely over the last couple of years.

Most games that are produced for PCs now-a-days have a minimum requirement of:

1 Gib RAM

128 Mib Graphics card with certain features like pixel shader and T&L

Processor requirements have gone up as well.

The one way to check if the game you want will run on your PC is to verify the minimum and recommended requirements for the game on the manufacturer’s site. However it does not end there. Even if your PC has the mimimum requirements satisfied, there may be one or two minor requirements which may never be mentioned in your game manual. So, when you try to run your game, the obvious happens and the game fails to load owing to the lack of a single feature.

This may range from an older version of a vertex shader or pixel shader may make the entire investment on the game go waste.

But there is one way to find out exactly if your PC would satisfy the minimum and recommended requirements and I found it to be amazingly useful and free.

System Requirements Lab presents you, something called the System Requirements Test or SR test for free. Using this you are able to determine how capable your system is of running a particular game. You also get a graphical representation as to how well the game may run on your PC. The ActiveX control is also safe enough and did not cause any problems during several rounds of testing. It can easily be uninstalled after testing to prevent any illegal exploitation. The results are also very accurate and will certainly help in choosing your game.

All you have to do is visit the site, select your game and start the analysis.

What do you need?

OS – Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, Media Center & Vista
Browser – Internet Explorer 4+, Firefox, Netscape 6

What do you have to do?

From the System Requirements Lab web site, simply:

1) Select a product,
2 Give your permission to download an ActiveX or Java browser component and
3) Voila – a quick summary explanation plus a detailed analysis for each listed requirement.

What it does?

System Requirements Lab looks at your computer’s hardware and system software to determine whether or not your current system can run a game. Each of your computer’s components is evaluated to see how well it meets the minimum and recommended requirements for specific games. Recommendations are made on how to update or upgrade each component which does not meet the listed requirements. Sometimes it is a simple free software download and sometimes it is a link to a product such as the right video card.

What do you get?

You not only get an overall summary analysis for each specific game (can you run a game or not), but also a detailed evaluation of how your computer meets each listed requirement.

Security Concerns:

• No personally identifiable information is collected.
• Only your computer’s hardware and system software is evaluated.
• You will need to give your permission to download a signed & secure ActiveX or Java component (depending upon IE or Mozilla based browser).
• You can easily uninstall the ActiveX/Java component when the analysis is complete.

A lot of games are available for you test the compatibility with. Some of the newly added games include Battlefield 2142: Northern Strike, Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars, Fifa 2007, NFS Carbon, Shrek the third and so on. Post in your opinions and comments on this service.

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