How well will Bioshock run?

[dKran]

Sorry if someone else has asked this, couldn't find anything in the search.
I have a 2.33ghz Core2Duo, 2Gb Ram, and the 256Mb ATI X1600.
I keep trying to download the demo, but it always freezes and such, so i was worndering if someone would be able to tell me how well it will run? Resolution and settings etc?

thanks alot for the help.

 

[Chone]

I didn't do extensive testing (of each options and such) but on my CD MacBook Pro with a X1600 256MB (overclocked to 430/430) running Vista the game was pretty playable at 800x600 at near high settings, it ran silky smooth at 640x480 max settings and you could probably run it at 1024x768 with some options turned off. It didn't look bad (just fuzzy and lots of jaggies).

Maybe I'll do some more testing.

 

[dKran]

that would be great
thanks for the reply

anyone lse care to post their experiences?

 

[vlawillie]

I've got a 2.16 C2D with 2 G ram and X1600 128 mb. It ran the demo pretty close to playable at 1280x720 and everything turned on in XP. I imagine your rig will be playable at that resolution, and very playable at a lower resolution. Mine ran silky smooth at 896x480 (I think) with all options on.

 

[Chone]

I've got a 2.16 C2D with 2 G ram and X1600 128 mb. It ran the demo pretty close to playable at 1280x720 and everything turned on in XP. I imagine your rig will be playable at that resolution, and very playable at a lower resolution. Mine ran silky smooth at 896x480 (I think) with all options on.

What were your framerates and settings? And why are you using 16:9 resolutions instead of native (to your MBP) 16:10 ones?

 

[vlawillie]

i'll try and get back to you about framerates, I would estimate 15-20 at 1280. The reason i used non native is because I wanted to have less pixels and higher framerate. All settings maxed. 890x480 was very smooth 40-60 fps

 

[Philip J. Fry]

will it make a difference in speed if i run it on xp or vista? because i'mrunning it on xp right now on my c2d 2.4 mbp with 2gb ram and the 256mb nvida-card and i haven't yet found a setting that was quite smooth enough for me...

 

[overcast]

Why bother running such a beautiful game at 800x600 or *gasp* 648x480

 

[Chone]

Why bother running such a beautiful game at 800x600 or *gasp* 648x480

Thanks to Apple MBP owners don't have much of a choice

That being said, at 640x480 the game doesn't look that bad and none of the atmosphere is lost. If 640x480 was the only way to play Bioshock, I'd still do it.

 

[rodti]

I've got the retail version running at 1280x720 on a 20" iMac w/X1600. It runs fine, perhaps 25-30FPS.

 

[JackAxe]

Why bother running such a beautiful game at 800x600 or *gasp* 648x480

Widescreen DVDs are 852 x 480i and they look *great!* Of course real life gives it a massive edge over GPU pseudo lighting/effects and still somewhat loy-poly people.

640x480 was the resolution for the enhanced version of System Shock and it was way better than System Shock 2, or any other game I've played. You don't need a higher-resolution screen if the game is good. You just need good controls and the time to play it.

<]=)

 

[JackAxe]

I didn't do extensive testing (of each options and such) but on my CD MacBook Pro with a X1600 256MB (overclocked to 430/430) running Vista the game was pretty playable at 800x600 at near high settings, it ran silky smooth at 640x480 max settings and you could probably run it at 1024x768 with some options turned off. It didn't look bad (just fuzzy and lots of jaggies).

Maybe I'll do some more testing.

SP1 might help performance, but from what I've been gathering online, is that the game runs faster under XP.

This guy states about 15ps faster over Vista.

<]=)

 

[gloss]

Thanks to Apple MBP owners don't have much of a choice

That being said, at 640x480 the game doesn't look that bad and none of the atmosphere is lost. If 640x480 was the only way to play Bioshock, I'd still do it.

Yes, because they should have put an 8800 in that .7 inch chassis. Then it could serve as a hotplate in addition to a word processor.

 

[overcast]

Widescreen DVDs are 852 x 480i and they look *great!* Of course real life gives it a massive edge over GPU pseudo lighting/effects and still somewhat loy-poly people.

640x480 was the resolution for the enhanced version of System Shock and it was way better than System Shock 2, or any other game I've played. You don't need a higher-resolution screen if the game is good. You just need good controls and the time to play it.

<]=)

You're not going to ever convince me that playing a DVD or game at only 480 lines of resolution looks "great" , because it does not. I understand a lot of you try to convince yourselves of that , because of your severely limited hardware. But playing the new HD formats at 1080 is absolutely stunning and I'll NEVER go back to standard definition. Playing NEW games at resolutions from 10 years ago is absolutely unacceptable.

 

[Chone]

SP1 might help performance, but from what I've been gathering online, is that the game runs faster under XP.

This guy states about 15ps faster over Vista.

<]=)

But SP1 isn't out yet, if you are referring to the performance and reliability hotfixes from Microsoft released early August then I already have those installed. It made Vista an even better OS (still not better than OSX though but loads better than XP IMO).

Yes, because they should have put an 8800 in that .7 inch chassis. Then it could serve as a hotplate in addition to a word processor.

No but there are better options in the mobile range than a X1600 which was a pretty bad card by ATI. Nvidia for example did wonders on the midrange mobile GPU market with their 7 series. Choosing the 8600GT for the MBP was for example, a great choice. Choosing the X1600 for the previous MBP generations, was not. That is all I'm saying.

Sometimes you guys take the whole GPU deal out of proportion.

 

[JackAxe]

You're not going to ever convince me that playing a DVD or game at only 480 lines of resolution looks "great" , because it does not. I understand a lot of you try to convince yourselves of that , because of your severely limited hardware. But playing the new HD formats at 1080 is absolutely stunning and I'll NEVER go back to standard definition. Playing NEW games at resolutions from 10 years ago is absolutely unacceptable.

My main screen is 1600p btw, to use this lame way of not giving enough description of a a screen's resolution. I can watch 1080p content with room to spare. DVDs look folds better than anything "any" computer can currently generate in real time. It's called life. Since you assume I'm not privy HD, I'll assume you're family room set is a LCD and even though it states it supports 1080i , it can't truly display that resolution? Most fixed-pixel displays do a better job of "bastardizing" the majority of content, even HD content, than they do improving upon our so-called viewing pleasure. At 1368x768 (1080i, well not really.) a plasma looks better than any 1080p set I've seen, and I've seen some of the best this ever changing market has to offer. And that resolution when it comes to computer monitors now days is "average."

10 years ago I was gaming at 768p, 7 years ago I was gaming at 1024p. Welcome to yesteryear with your so called HD, which ten years ago refereed to hard disk. I even have speakers in storage from the early eighties that use the term HD. The majority of all content is still SD and it will be for a very very long time. 852x480 is nothing to sneeze on. In the long run HD will prevail, but as of now it's still a work in progress that causes my eyes pain, since digital TV has ruined so much content visually.

And just for reference, here's a screen shot of a 1080p trailer(Notice how the compresion removes so much detail. Objects that should be way shaper at this resolution have been dumbed down. Information has been removed so that they can keep it in a set bandwidth, and even worse, it was most likely upscaled to 1080p, which seems to be quite common.), next to a 480i DVD (I used Star Wars for reference, because I'm a nerd.), next to Bioshock in all of its facet-plagued-occlusion_free-polgon_overlaping-pseudo glory. Bio looks good for a game, but it looks like overwhelming "crap" next to a 480i DVD upscaled to 480p. You probably haven't seen this, but on a CRT, the SDTV commercial for Bioshock looks just as rich as these screen shots.

See for yourself here. (1.9 Meg Jpeg of my desktop. I had to use terminal to capture a screenshot of the DVD.)

<]=)

 

[JackAxe]

But SP1 isn't out yet, if you are referring to the performance and reliability hotfixes from Microsoft released early August then I already have those installed. It made Vista an even better OS (still not better than OSX though but loads better than XP IMO).

As long as MS uses vista to monitor my files, deeming them legal or not, I will never ever install Vista willingly on any of the PCs here, even the dead ones. *EVIL* But I would love to have windows move around without fluttering to death, because of XP's ancient way of displaying 2D UIs.

Anyway, I will have my Bio day shortly. I'm finally picking up Metroid tomorrow morning to tide me over.

<]=)

 

[Chone]

As long as MS uses vista to monitor my files, deeming them legal or not, I will never ever install Vista willingly on any of the PCs here, even the dead ones. *EVIL* But I would love to have windows move around without fluttering to death, because of XP's ancient way of displaying 2D UIs.

Anyway, I will have my Bio day shortly. I'm finally picking up Metroid tomorrow morning to tide me over.

<]=)

Well DRM hasn't been a problem for me and overall Vista has been a pretty peachy experience, of course, I don't own a HD drive or any HD movies which I think is what brings all these troubles.

Vista is a great OS, its MUCH more secure than XP (I don't even use an antivirus in vista) and its even better performing, hardcore gamers complain that they lose a few frames with Vista... but to be honest that is nvidia's/ati's fault and it USED to be a problem but not anymore, the difference is neglible now, especially if you have a high end computer and I'm definitely trading a few insignificant frames for all the other goods Vista provides.

I'm still dual booting XP and Vista on everything I have (parallels, my PC and my Mac Pro) but when I build a new computer later this year it's definitely getting Vista

Enough about Vista though I tried Bioshock on my MBP again today and it runs just fine at 1024x680 (widescreen) with a few options turned down (dynamic lighting and shadow maps) but the two important ones (high detail shader and post processing) are on which makes the game look awesome. At some weird WS resolution below 1024x680 (can't remember) the game ran maxed out and it still looked pretty spiffy. Yeah, Bioshock is definitely worth buying if you have an MBP, the game looks great and runs great.

If you are fine-tuning for performance you might want to disable anisotropic filtering in the .ini. If you are disabling in-game settings make sure "high detail shaders" is the last to go, too much graphical quality is lost with that one, reflections and distortions are good ones to turn off since they only degrade water quality and some effects like the incinerate plasmid (there is not much water in the game and it still looks good without reflection and distortion).

Dynamic lighting and shadow maps give a good boost but they are also a nice feature to have but definitely worth axing in favor of performance. Post processing (hdr/bloom) is a matter of personal preference but it does give you a huge boost when its off so this might be a win win situation (some people hate bloom), experiment with this option first to see if you want bloom or not.

Actor detail doesn't make any difference that I've seen, I have it set to medium on my MBP and see no difference with high, might give you a performance boost with no IQ loss (that I've seen yet). Textures are fine at medium, don't use low (looks like mud), if you have a 256MB card just use high since the textures are not that demanding.

AA only works if you have a HDR+AA capable card, haven't found a way to make it work on non-HDR+AA cards, not even with post processing off.

Also, 8600M and HD 2400/2600 owners on Vista, you can force DX9 mode by using the -dx9 modifier in the shortcut but I'm not sure if it brings performance improvements, maybe it does and the DX10 effects aren't really noticeable unless you do a side-by-side.

 

[0098386]

Who on earth is this clown?

You're not going to ever convince me that playing a DVD or game at only 480 lines of resolution looks "great" , because it does not.

Doesn't it? Hmm. Well I think it does and the lacklustre care of the HD market probably says a lot of people don't care either...

I understand a lot of you try to convince yourselves of that , because of your severely limited hardware.

I don't have to convince myself anything thanks. I know what I like. Plus I didn't know my hardware was severely limited, or are you running a veritable super computer there?

But playing the new HD formats at 1080 is absolutely stunning and I'll NEVER go back to standard definition. Playing NEW games at resolutions from 10 years ago is absolutely unacceptable.

10 years ago, 1997. Ah. That was the year we got some Quad-thingy graphics card and went from 1024*768 to 1600*1200 on a classic CRT monitor.
So, if we're using my standards any of the current video game systems are absolutely unacceptable.

I'd have jumped into the HD market, but well. With no format winner yet, the cost of HD broadcasts, the lack of standards (HDMI 1.4 next?) and the fact that a 480i film looks more realistic than what these supercomputers that you're running can do. Well.

And I've o/c my video card (about time) and now BS runs smooth enough to play in 1440*900. about 30fps? Doesn't drop much below that now.

 

[PCMacUser]

10 years ago, 1997. Ah. That was the year we got some Quad-thingy graphics card and went from 1024*768 to 1600*1200 on a classic CRT monitor.
So, if we're using my standards any of the current video game systems are absolutely unacceptable.

I'm pretty sure he was referring to 3D game playing resolutions, not 2D desktop resolutions. My PC from 1998 spec'd with 2x Voodoo2 cards in SLI mode plus an AGP video card with 8Mb RAM could NOT play 3D games at 1600*1200.

 

[PCMacUser]

will it make a difference in speed if i run it on xp or vista? because i'mrunning it on xp right now on my c2d 2.4 mbp with 2gb ram and the 256mb nvida-card and i haven't yet found a setting that was quite smooth enough for me...

Running it on Vista might slow it down a few FPS, but you get the added benefit under Vista of DX10 - which your nVidia card supports. The advantage of this is that you get better graphics quality, particularly in the water details.

 

[PCMacUser]

Vista is a great OS, its MUCH more secure than XP (I don't even use an antivirus in vista) and its even better performing, hardcore gamers complain that they lose a few frames with Vista... but to be honest that is nvidia's/ati's fault and it USED to be a problem but not anymore, the difference is neglible now, especially if you have a high end computer and I'm definitely trading a few insignificant frames for all the other goods Vista provides.

I'm still dual booting XP and Vista on everything I have (parallels, my PC and my Mac Pro) but when I build a new computer later this year it's definitely getting Vista

Yeah, Vista's really grown on me too. My PC dual boots but I hardly ever go into XP anymore. I would still strongly advise you to install some sort of anti-virus protection though.

As for your next PC build, if you build something similar to my machine (in my sig), then rest assured that Bioshock plays at 1920*1200 with all features switched to maximum at about 45-60FPS.

I just completed the game for the second time in a week - it's just that good.

 

[overcast]

My main screen is 1600p btw, to use this lame way of not giving enough description of a a screen's resolution. I can watch 1080p content with room to spare. DVDs look folds better than anything "any" computer can currently generate in real time. It's called life. Since you assume I'm not privy HD, I'll assume you're family room set is a LCD and even though it states it supports 1080i , it can't truly display that resolution? Most fixed-pixel displays do a better job of "bastardizing" the majority of content, even HD content, than they do improving upon our so-called viewing pleasure. At 1368x768 (1080i, well not really.) a plasma looks better than any 1080p set I've seen, and I've seen some of the best this ever changing market has to offer. And that resolution when it comes to computer monitors now days is "average."

My dedicated theater room houses a 60" Sony SXRD. Which is essentially an implementation of LCOS, and yes it does do 1080P natively. Please don't even begin to argue that plasma running at 1368x768 or ANY other resolution for that matter can compare to LCOS or a proper 3 Chip DLP projector. The SXRD technology, a long with their Ruby projectors of the same tech are BY FAR the finest picture quality sub $10,000 on the market. Honestly I don't even know what are you are arguing, flopping back and forth between your main screen to LCDs, to plasmas.

10 years ago I was gaming at 768p, 7 years ago I was gaming at 1024p. Welcome to yesteryear with your so called HD, which ten years ago refereed to hard disk. I even have speakers in storage from the early eighties that use the term HD. The majority of all content is still SD and it will be for a very very long time. 852x480 is nothing to sneeze on. In the long run HD will prevail, but as of now it's still a work in progress that causes my eyes pain, since digital TV has ruined so much content visually.

WHAT?! Again, I have NO IDEA what are you are arguing. You're talking about HD resolutions compared to hard disks????, compared to speakers!??!?!! The majority of video content is being created in HD, and film, well film doesn't exactly have a "resolution". Though it's been said to accurately represent it, you would need about 5000 lines of vertical resolution. We're safe there. So you can't really qualify that. If you're referring to old tv shows, or existing content on DVD, then I guess you would be correct. But the majority of that has masters that can be transferred to HD video. How exactly has digital TV ruined visual content? What are you talking about!

When you've actually used anything beyond SD DVD's , and researched a little of what you are attempting to argue, then come back to this discussion. I don't care what your magical "1600p" display is doing, it's not making mountains out of mole hills.

And just for reference, here's a screen shot of a 1080p trailer(Notice how the compresion removes so much detail. Objects that should be way shaper at this resolution have been dumbed down. Information has been removed so that they can keep it in a set bandwidth, and even worse, it was most likely upscaled to 1080p, which seems to be quite common.), next to a 480i DVD (I used Star Wars for reference, because I'm a nerd.), next to Bioshock in all of its facet-plagued-occlusion_free-polgon_overlaping-pseudo glory. Bio looks good for a game, but it looks like overwhelming "crap" next to a 480i DVD upscaled to 480p. You probably haven't seen this, but on a CRT, the SDTV commercial for Bioshock looks just as rich as these screen shots.

See for yourself here. (1.9 Meg Jpeg of my desktop. I had to use terminal to capture a screenshot of the DVD.)

Wow, sweet dude. You took a bunch of sources and shrunk them down to fit on what, a 20" screen? ANYTHING will look good enough if you reduce the size of the image enough, I mean are kidding me? Throw a movie source at 1080 on a LARGE screen , and then compare it to the same move from a 480 source on the same large screen. You tell me which is better. Not only that you're comparing different resolutions, using different compression schemes ( some optimized for web delivery! ) and using different sources! (video/film) and THEN presenting us with a JPEG comparison picture! JPEG! The king of crappy compression! Your comparison is absolutely retarded.

FYI 480i to 480p is not upscaling. It's deinterlacing, slight difference.

 

[overcast]

Who on earth is this clown?


Doesn't it? Hmm. Well I think it does and the lacklustre care of the HD market probably says a lot of people don't care either...

When you actually sit down and compare the two, then you discuss this with me.

I don't have to convince myself anything thanks. I know what I like. Plus I didn't know my hardware was severely limited, or are you running a veritable super computer there?

ANd that is totally fine, I have no problem with it. But don't come in here arguing that turning down all of the effects and lowering the resolution is the same as playing them at higher resolutions with all the candy turned up. Because it's not. If you are fine with mediocrity, so be it. Compared to your iMac, this PC IS a supercomputer.

10 years ago, 1997. Ah. That was the year we got some Quad-thingy graphics card and went from 1024*768 to 1600*1200 on a classic CRT monitor.
So, if we're using my standards any of the current video game systems are absolutely unacceptable.

Current video games DO run at a much lower resolution than capable on highend PC game hardware. So what is your point? There is a reason PC games look superior to home consoles.

I'd have jumped into the HD market, but well. With no format winner yet, the cost of HD broadcasts, the lack of standards (HDMI 1.4 next?) and the fact that a 480i film looks more realistic than what these supercomputers that you're running can do. Well.

Huh? Are you comparing film to video? Just because film looks more realistic, because they are capturing real life, doesn't mean 480i = better than high resolution computer graphics running on "supercomputers". You're comparing two totally different things. Seriously think before you type.

And I've o/c my video card (about time) and now BS runs smooth enough to play in 1440*900. about 30fps? Doesn't drop much below that now.

Congratulations, you're running at a bare minimum framerate for a first person shooter with most of the shadow and lighting turned off. Any dip in that during complex sequences and it will start to stutter.

 

[Vidd]

These are just computer games. Two/three years ago and you would have required a PC along with your iMac just to play these games.
Why are people getting so upset over this? :X