Step 2 of 5

Step 2 — Working out whether your desktop computer can run it

A large online game is one of the heaviest things most people ever install. This step is about measuring your own computer first, with four numbers you can find in about ten minutes, so that the decision to download is an informed one rather than a hope.

Why this step comes before the download

The cost of guessing wrong here is not money. It is an evening. A client of this size can take several hours to arrive, and the point at which you discover a machine cannot draw a busy battle is after all of that has finished. Ten minutes of measuring in advance removes most of that risk.

There is a second reason. Published requirements are written by the vendor, for every customer at once, and they are necessarily approximate. If you know what your own machine contains, you can read those requirements with judgement instead of reading them as a verdict.

The four values worth recording

Four numbers decide nearly everything for this category of game. Write them on the same piece of paper you used for the pre-course checklist.

1. Operating system and version. Which system you run, and which release of it. The product discussed in this course supports desktop systems only — Windows, macOS and Linux — so the first thing to confirm is that you are on one of them.
2. Graphics hardware. The name of the graphics processor, and how much dedicated video memory it has, if any. This is the single value that most often decides whether a game of this kind is playable.
3. System memory. How many gigabytes of RAM are installed. Large online games use a lot, and a machine that is short on it will stutter when a new area loads rather than when you are idle.
4. Free disk space, and the type of drive. How many gigabytes are free on the drive you would install to, and whether that drive is a solid-state drive or a mechanical one. Both matter: the first for whether it fits, the second for how long loading takes.

Finding them on your own machine

Every desktop operating system has a built-in way to show you this. You do not need to install anything, and you should be sceptical of any page that offers to scan your computer for you. This course never asks you to run a scanner, and nothing on Mute Spectrum inspects your device.

On Windows. Open Settings, then System, then About. That page lists the processor, the installed memory and the edition and version of Windows. For graphics, open the Start menu, type "dxdiag", run the DirectX Diagnostic Tool and read the Display tab, which names the graphics chip and its memory. For disk space, open File Explorer, select This PC, and read the bar under each drive.

On macOS. Open the Apple menu, choose About This Mac, and read the chip or processor name, the memory figure and the macOS version. The same window leads to a storage view. For more detail, choose System Report and look under Graphics/Displays.

On Linux. The System or About panel of your desktop environment reports the processor, memory and graphics driver in use. From a terminal, the commands commonly used for the same purpose are free -h for memory, df -h for disk space, and lspci | grep -i vga for the graphics device. Which graphics driver is active matters on Linux more than on other systems.

Write what you find down verbatim, including model numbers. "Some kind of NVIDIA card" is not a value you can compare against anything.

What each value is actually telling you

Notice that none of the symptoms in that last column is an error message. This genre tends to run badly rather than refuse to run, which is why measuring beforehand is more useful than waiting to see what happens.

Reading a requirements table honestly

Every vendor publishes a requirements table, and the only accurate version is the one on their own site at the moment you read it. Treat what follows as a method for reading such a table rather than as a copy of anyone's numbers.

1. Find the table on the vendor's site, not on a third-party page. Requirements are revised as a game grows, and copies go stale.
2. Check the platform line first. If your system is not listed, nothing further in the table matters.
3. Compare each of your four recorded values against the table's minimum column, one at a time, and write pass or fail beside each.
4. Count the failures. A single marginal value usually means lower settings. Two or more usually means a poor experience.
5. Add a margin to the disk figure. A requirements table states the install size, not the install size plus a year of updates.
6. If anything is unclear, ask the vendor's own support rather than a forum. Only the vendor can state what their software needs.

Minimum, recommended, and the gap between them

Two columns usually appear. The minimum column describes the machine on which the game will start and remain playable at low settings. The recommended column describes the machine the vendor expects for a comfortable experience at ordinary settings. Neither is a promise, and the words mean slightly different things to different publishers.

For a first-time player, the useful reading is this: at minimum, expect to lower settings, accept a smaller window or a lower resolution, and still have a slower picture than the videos you have seen. At recommended, expect the game to look roughly as advertised. Below minimum, expect to be disappointed in a way that no setting fixes.

If you land below the minimum, the honest options are to play something lighter, to upgrade a part, or to wait. There is no setting that creates graphics performance, and no download that will create it either. Be particularly wary of any site promising a tool that makes games run faster; general advice on software you can trust and on keeping a device secure is published by the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

The connection, and the download itself

Two different connection questions matter and people often merge them.

The first is the download. A client of several tens of gigabytes takes as long as your connection takes, which on many Australian home plans means hours rather than minutes. Start it when you are not using the connection for anything else, and prefer overnight if your plan is quicker then. If your plan has a monthly data allowance, subtract the download from it before you begin, and remember that updates will keep drawing on it.

The second is playing. Once installed, these games use very little data by comparison, but they are sensitive to delay. A connection with high latency — a long round trip between your computer and the server — makes a vehicle feel as though it is responding late, even when the picture is perfectly smooth. Players in Australia connecting to servers hosted a long way away often notice this. Whether a given game offers an Australian or nearby server region is a fact only the vendor can confirm, so look for it on their site rather than assuming.

A wired connection is steadier than wireless for this purpose. If a cable is possible, it is the cheapest improvement available.

Drivers and operating system updates

A graphics driver is the software that lets your operating system talk to your graphics hardware. Games of this type are the most demanding thing most drivers ever handle, and an old driver is a common cause of a game crashing on start.

Before you install anything large, apply your operating system's pending updates, then update your graphics driver from the hardware maker's own site or through your system's update mechanism. On Linux, check which driver your distribution has active for your card. Do not download drivers from anywhere other than the hardware maker or your operating system vendor.

Then restart the computer. It is a dull instruction and it resolves a surprising share of first-run problems.

The worked example, continued

The invented household from Step 1 reaches this step with a five-year-old office desktop and a mid-range graphics card added later. They open the system panel, write down the four values, and find 42 GB free on a mechanical drive.

Comparing against a published minimum column, three values pass and the disk figure is marginal — enough to install, not enough to absorb a year of updates alongside two years of photographs. So their Step 2 ends not with a download but with a decision: move the photographs to an external drive first. That is what the measuring step is for. The example reports no result from any product; it only shows the order of the work.

Before you move on

You should now have four values written down, a pass or fail beside each, and a clear view of whether the machine in front of you is above or below the line. If it is below, stop here with no regret: you have saved yourself the download. If it is above, Step 3 deals with the account and the money before anything is installed.

Step 2 checklist

Boxes are printed for a pen. Nothing here is stored.

1. Record your operating system and its version, and confirm it is a desktop system — Windows, macOS or Linux.
2. Record the graphics processor name and its video memory.
3. Record installed system memory in gigabytes.
4. Record free space on the target drive, and note whether that drive is solid-state or mechanical.
5. Open the vendor's own requirements table and compare each value, writing pass or fail beside it.
6. Add a margin of at least a quarter again to the stated install size, for future updates.
7. Check whether your internet plan has a monthly data allowance, and whether the download fits inside what is left.
8. Apply pending operating system updates, update the graphics driver from the hardware maker, and restart.
9. Connect by cable rather than wireless if that is possible where the computer sits.
10. If two or more values failed, write down what you would need to change, and treat the download as paused rather than cancelled.