Call of Duty: Ghosts PC minimum spec questioned by fans

Gamers scoffed when Activision revealed the PC minimum spec of Call of Duty: Ghosts. Sure, it's running a new DirectX 11 engine. But, does it really need 6GB of RAM?

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Gamers scoffed when Activision revealed the PC minimum spec of Call of Duty: Ghosts. Sure, it's running a new DirectX 11 engine. But, does it really need 6GB of RAM?

Fans have created a patch that lets you run the game on systems that don't meet the minspec. A video shows that the game appears to run fine on a machine equipped with only 4GB of RAM. Could Activision and Infinity Ward be lying about the game's minspec? And if so, why?

We've contacted Activision for a response and for more information.

[Thanks for the tip George W.!]

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    November 7, 2013 12:30 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Call of Duty: Ghosts PC minimum spec questioned by fans.

    Gamers scoffed when Activision revealed the PC minimum spec of Call of Duty: Ghosts. Sure, it's running a new DirectX 11 engine. But, does it really need 6GB of RAM?

    • reply
      November 7, 2013 12:51 PM

      How else is quake3 going to run buttery smooth?

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      November 7, 2013 1:18 PM

      What a strange choice. Preventing people capable of playing your game from playing your game.

      And what happens when you try to play the game in 20 years on your quantum computer? It only needs 128MB of RAM because it runs at the speed of light.

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      November 7, 2013 2:33 PM

      Why did this story get deleted? It's interesting.

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        November 7, 2013 2:47 PM

        It's not? I still see it.

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          November 8, 2013 12:12 AM

          I don't see it in the list of news stories on the front page. It should be between "Slurpee giving away free Xbox One consoles" and "Lighting Returns trailer highlights shopping and customization" according to the timestamp.

          I think maybe because the video shows the guy using a pirated executable and explains about dlls that emulate steam maybe it was hidden for promoting piracy. Which I guess is sensible but I'm still interested if Activision has anything to say about the 6gb thing.

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            November 8, 2013 6:22 AM

            But.. it still appears for me too?

            http://i.imgur.com/osQimi5.png

            I think something's wrong with your browser, as this is how I even found the article.

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              November 8, 2013 10:43 AM

              Thanks. Yes, I can see it too now, maybe it was a bug, or maybe it went and came back.

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      November 8, 2013 12:33 AM

      Someone checked what Ghosts puts in memory and supposedly found 2.5gbs of garbage info stored to bring it up to that 6gb requirement.

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      November 8, 2013 4:34 AM

      The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Clearly the game can run with only 4gb of RAM and run well, at least in Singleplayer. I don't think that point is up for debate anymore.

      What I'm curious about is why. I can't think of any reason that makes sense. Companies may do some sketchy immoral crap but it's usually motivated by profit. This doesn't even make sense from a profit standpoint: they're limiting the number of people who can play their game, thus making LESS money, not more. It's not like driving sales of the PC version down helps anybody at Activision or Infinity Ward, barring some weird sort of revenge/hatred thing.

      Seriously, nothing I can think of makes sense. The closest thing to even remotely making sense involves someone at Activision being comic book levels of evil and having a hatred of PC users.

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        November 8, 2013 5:42 AM

        Some have guessed that it works as an incredibly crude anti-cheat measure. The game is made to artificially occupy so much space that hacks haven't room to function. Seems strange to me - how much ram does an aim-bot use? - but I've never used cheats, so I don't know.

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          November 8, 2013 7:01 AM

          Virtual memory was made so that programs don't get an "out of memory" error from the OS; the system will slow down as in-memory processes get paged out to the pagefile on the hard drive... but they won't get an "out of memory" error.

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        November 8, 2013 6:02 AM

        [deleted]

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          November 8, 2013 6:08 AM

          5. "My system requirements are bigger than yours! Ha!"

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      November 8, 2013 6:46 AM

      The texture quality setting flipping back to "Normal" is probably the game code saying, "Wait, I can't allocate enough space to guarantee a safe texture load into memory at that setting; I'm flipping back to the next lowest setting"... but then they apparently put their foot down and said, "NO! We're not allowing ANYONE with less than 6 GB of RAM to start this game!"

      This at the same time as Mark Rubin telling Eurogamer in the tech interview ( http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-08-making-call-of-duty-ghosts ) that the XBox one 720p call "wasn't made until a month ago." Wait... didn't the game go to cert a month ago? Unless the interview was held weeks prior to release, it probably was... even then, it sounds like they made some late calls about system resources, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 6 GB PC memory spec was made very late in development (it was announced on October 23: http://www.shacknews.com/article/81719/call-of-duty-ghosts-pc-requires-64-bit-windows ).

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      November 8, 2013 7:42 AM

      I was just taking a look at the specs for a few current and upcoming games and it seems like 6 to 8gb ram is going to become a more common requirement in future games. Battlefield 4 minimum is 4gb and recommended and optimum is 6 and 8gb and Watch Dogs requires 6gbs and recommends 8gb. Plus I may be wrong but you would not expect a game that requires 6gb if ram to use anything more than 3-4gb because it has to account for OS usage. More importantly does anyone one know if multiplayer runs with less than 6gb because requirements are not going to just count single player. Anyway, I can totally believe Activision (or anyone else for that matter) screwing up there system requirements but any kind of conspiracy to make people buy more ram is just silly.

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      November 8, 2013 2:16 PM

      I am going to play devil's advocate here... (Not talking as a COD developer but as a general person who works in gaming industry) Us as developers we make very sure that the game runs at 60 FPS. We check every corner of every level to make sure if we say it is running at 60, it IS running at 60.
      There has been even occasions that one small corner of the map has like 54FPS, and there are tools to show us what is causing that and then we might adjust some textures/models to make sure it is not dropping frames.

      Being 60FPS is actually one of the main bullet points for COD games. and this dude clearly said the game is going below 60FPS when he is having less than 6GB of RAM.

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