Testing Age of Conan: Gamespot's hardware roundup + performance guide

by Matt Warner Jun 23rd 2008 at 7:30PM

You got bills to pay, no computer upgrades in a year, heck maybe it's been two or three, and here comes along Age of Conan with eye-dazzling effects that you must play. It also comes with launch bugs that don't ease the stress on your computer or your nerves for that matter. Crash after crash will leave you infuriated, the problem could be drivers, maybe the PSU can't handle the load, or it's poor optimization code -- whatever it is let the debugging process begin.

PC Gaming really does need some better standards, especially MMOs, but let's get back the basic computer hardware needed to run Age of Conan. What hardware will make it run like a champ, and what hardware will even run the game at all in case Grandma wants to chop some heads off in Hyboria on the most sluggish computer. Everything you need to know is available in this in-depth, fantastic hardware performance guide by Gamespot.

Age of the Conan is put to the test on various system builds and the results are very informative. NVIDIA video cards will run Age of Conan much smoother than ATI cards. In fact, ATI cards pretty much blow chunks when it comes to running Age of Conan. The budget 8800 GT 512 MB card actually runs the game almost as well as the more expensive 9800 GTX on a higher resolution making it a great all around pick. Of course, in Age of Conan's cities the 9800 GTX will shine.

When it comes to the amount of ram there is no difference performance wise between 3GB ram and 2GB ram. If you don't feel like upgrading any computer hardware you can try turning off some of the graphical effects to help improve your gaming performance. The guide has side by side image quality comparisons to help decide what graphical effects you want to sacrifice that might help increase the game's performance.

So how does your computer hold up outside from the end game siege warfare?

Tags: 8800GT, 9800GTX, age-of-conan, ati, computer-guide, computer-hardware, conan, cpu, funcom, gamespot, graphics, nvidia, performance, ram, requirements, specs, video-cards

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

007deadlysins said on 10:54PM 6-23-2008

AOC keeps smacking down my PC, like a pimp who aint got all his money. I have a Dell XPS 400 (ok, stop laughing ) with 4GB of RAM and an ATI HD 2600XT video card. It runs AOC at about 15-19 FPS if I am lucky and do not crash when zoning.

What make matters worse is when I played during head-start I was getting 23-25 FPS but now its really unplayable. I know I need a new PC and looking to build one soon but not for AOC but some game called WAR.

crsh said on 11:25PM 6-23-2008

Gamespot's guide is a good start, however they strictly use Nvidia cards (and only a handful of them at that); while they are "Made for Nvidia", I can't say my Radeon HD 3870 doesn't deliver a solid performance (avg. 45 FPS outdoors, 65+ in solo instances, but 25ish in cities).

Ghen said on 7:17AM 6-24-2008

Games that push the envelope never run correctly on ATI cards at launch. ATI -always- has to 'optimize their drivers' for the new games. Why? Nvidia just works.

So even though ATI usually makes a card 10% cheaper that performs well in benchmarks, I won't buy their brand ever again. Last one was an overclocked 9800se, it served me well but only on games over a month or two old when on the newest drivers.

Taymar said on 8:06AM 6-24-2008

I did enjoy the guide, once I found it. The article is a bit self-referential link heavy...

Nadril said on 8:45AM 6-24-2008

Just throwing my specs into the fire here in case anyone is interested:

Core2duo E4300 @ 2.7ghz, 9600GT 512Mb, 3GB ram, 1680x1050 resolution.

I run on all highs with medium shadow & Players only @ an average of 40 FPS or so. Sometimes I can get 55fps or so in the right zone, other times (like cities) it is closer to 30fps.

rafe.brox said on 10:51AM 6-24-2008

*cough*

http://news.bigdownload.com/2008/05/20/big-iron-age-of-conans-demanding-tribute/

*cough*

(I am inordinately proud of my header graphic, what can I say?)

nickpick said on 7:12AM 6-26-2008

Hrm... I really wish I could play the game for longer than 5 minutes. I know that the x1400 is never enough to play it even on the lowest setting, but there's really no need for it to crash the entire OS. Vanguard runs on about the same framerate, if not slower, but AoC seems to have a strange tendancy to display the beautiful blue screen of death.