I am guilty as well (for upgrading periodically), I only did it for STALKER.
Most other games nowadays are ported from console and play fine on older hardware.
But the min specs look very reasonable to me, the devs already said the game will scale well with more cores, so they do not exclusively rely on the graphics card. Judging from screenshots Medium will have the best compromise between graphic fidelity and framerate. I hope to have a smooth framerate at medium and higher resoultion.

I don't and I am not ashamed of that.

The minimum requirements aren't *that* high at all, really.

Most (desktop) computers made within the past few years will have better than a C2D 2.2Ghz.

1GB RAM is quite a low requirement. Haven't seen many recent releases that claim to run on less.

8800GT 512MB is the only requirement that's really above the average games requirements.. and that's a four year-old card. Consider this: in, say, 2003, you wouldn't have been able to run many recent games at all with a card made in 1999, let alone play them smoothly.

16GB HDD space is a decent size for a game, but a drop in the barrel for most HDDs these days.

^Even if you don't meet those specs, it wouldn't cost a heck of a lot to get components that would run the game.
^^TW2 would probably run on less powerful hardware than the stuff specified anyway - my guess is that if you could run The Witcher on low-medium settings, than you will also be able to run The Witcher 2 (though not necessarily with a playable framerate).

EDIT: As an example, the (relatively) recently released Two Worlds 2 ran quite smoothly for me (maximum graphics settings without AA @1680x1050, on an 8800GT - which was specified as the minimum requirement for the game).

Well it all really depends. For me, the minimum requirements are high. But for most, yeah, I would say they are definitely not high. If you have a desktop computer, the minimum requirements aren't that high because its cheap to upgrade parts. If you make a lot of money, the minimum requirements aren't that high. If you are good at saving money, the requirements aren't that high. But for a small minority, the requirements are very high. So it all depends.

This makes me wonder if there are any sociological studies on what class of people play computer/video games mostly. If more upper to maybe mid/upper middle class people play games then I would agree with your assessment. But if the distribution was more evenly split then there should be a large number of people who are middle to low class who upgrading parts is a hassle/large expense.

* Raises hand *

Apparently my rig cant run it.

ATI Radeon HD 4670 (512mb)
AMD Athlon X2 7850 @ 3.02
4096MB ram

According to Yougamer my GPU is way below par and CPU slightly below min.

wich site is more accurate? look at the results they gave me! now i'm worried cause i thought my laptop would easily run the game.

YES.

Don't use those sites they are geared more for desktops and even then they are inaccurate. Best bet is to search the internet for video card benchmarks performed with a comparable CPU.

Why would you think that a laptop would easily run a PC game that was just released? Expecially one that has been touted as having good graphics?

The game will probably work on your laptop but just like any demanding PC game you'll have to lower your resolution and drop all the settings.


I did back in 2009 when I upgraded my video card to a ATI 5870. Haven't needed to do any upgrades since then to max PC games. :(

the minimum specs on the game box are more to establish what the developer will support, than what actually is the "minimum" that the game will run on.

think of it more as the cut off point where they will start telling people "you need a better rig" instead of trying to get the game running on someone's archaic system ... well, except for the part about the processor, that part is usually pretty accurate.

what I meant was at least running the game at medium settings. that's what i meant with easily run

My laptop does not even meet the requirement of The Witcher, much less The Witcher 2. Yet, I still want both games... well, for future play of course :-)

That's a lie. Intel GPUs can barely handle a 2D desktop.

Wait 9 more days and i will show you, Wanna have a bet?