Spore System Requirements Unveiled

Publisher Electronic Arts has released the minimum system requirements for EA Maxis' long-awaited galaxy-spanning evolution simulator Spore.

Spore is slated to arrive on PC and Mac September 7, with a Nintendo DS edition, titled Spore Creatures, hitting on the same day.

The game's creature creator will be available for PC and Mac on June 17, a move meant to help populate the title's vast online universe.

FOR WINDOWS XP

• 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent

• 512 MB RAM

• A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0

• At least 6 GB of hard drive space

FOR WINDOWS VISTA

• 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent

• 768 MB RAM

• A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0

• At least 6 GB of hard drive space

Read on for further details on Spore's requirements, including video cards, Windows Vista warnings, Mac system compatibility and more.

When launching the game, some Microsoft Vista users may receive a warning about running out of address space along with a link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base. If you see this message, it is recommended that you follow the instructions and go to the website listed in the message to update your system.

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires at least:

• Intel Integrated Chipset, 945GM or above.

• 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent.

• 768 MB RAM

Supported Video Cards

• ATI Radeon series

  • 9500, 9600, 9800

  • X300, X600, X700, X800, X850

  • X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950

  • 2400, 2600, 2900,

  • 3650, 3850

• NVIDIA GeForce series

  • FX 5900, FX 5950

  • 6200, 6500, 6600, 6800,

  • 7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950

  • 8400, 8500, 8600, 8800

• Intel Extreme Graphics

  • GMA 950, GMA X3000, GMA X3100

Laptop versions of these chipsets may work, but may run comparatively slowly. Standalone cards that are installed in vanilla PCI slots (not PCIe or PCIx or AGP), such as some GeForce FX variants, will perform poorly. Intel integrated chipsets featuring underclocked parts, such as the 945GU, GML, and GMS, will not perform adequately.

Integrated chipsets such as the ATI Xpress and the NVIDIA TurboCache variants will have low settings selected, but should run satisfactorily.

Please note that attempting to play the game using video hardware that isn't listed above may result in reduced performance, graphical issues or cause the game to not run at all.

The NVIDIA GeForce FX series is unsupported under Vista.

MAC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Spore requires at least the following:

• Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher

• Intel Core Duo Processor

• 1024 MB RAM

• ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100

• At least 4.7GB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for creations.*

This game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems (PowerMac).

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires at least:

• Intel Integrated Chipset GMA X3100

• Dual 2.0GHz CPUs, or 1.7GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent

Supported Video Cards

• ATI Radeon series

  • X1600, X1900, HD 2400, HD 2600

• NVIDIA GeForce series

  • 7300, 7600, 8600, 8800

• Intel Extreme Graphics

  • GMA X3100

This game will not run on the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards.

*Install space subject to change.