By: The Button Man
Last Update: July 17, 2001
Disclaimer: The information contained in this guide should be
considered as use-at-your-own-risk. OK, it's mostly pretty basic, obvious
stuff, but if you kill your PC in some way, we ain't buying you a new one.
You've been warned.
Introduction
This guide will hopefuly evolve as we start to know more about the Glacier
engine, its incompatibilities, and its general traits. I'll keep an eye on
the message boards for new problems, and new solutions - but if you have
had some problems, and have come up with solutions not mentioned in this
guide, then please e-mail
us so that we can create some sort of "knowledge base" for the game.
OK. You've bought Hitman. You love Hitman. You nigh on became Hitman,
until you realized that that might be going a bit over the top. But you're
plagued by slowdowns, choppy graphics, and the occasional kick back to
the Desktop. Well, this guide is aiming to help you. We'll go from the
basic tweaking of Windows right up to the best settings to run the game on.
First, let's recap with some edited system specs, and some general
performance benchmarks. Here the minimum specs probably are the absolute
minimum that you can play the game with (in 640x480 with Low Texture Detail).
Minimum Specs:
- Pentium II 266
- 64MB RAM
- 8x CD-ROM
- DirectX 7 compliant Graphics Card with at least 12MB RAM
Recommended Specs:
- Pentium III
- 96MB RAM
I've run the game on 3 machines.
Machine 1:
- PII 400
- 256MB RAM
- 10x DVD
- GeForce 256 (32MB RAM)
Machine 2:
- PIII 1000
- 256MB RAM
- 10x DVD
- GeForce 256 (32MB RAM)
Machine 3:
- Duron 800
- 128MB RAM
- 50x CD-ROM
- ATi Radeon (64MB RAM)
Machine 1 ran the game suprisingly well. This is most likely due to the
GeForce, which is a fairly meaty card (with a performance sometimes
exceeding the GeForce 2 MX). Although the processor is not particularly
fast, the high quantity of RAM, decent 3D card, and high amount of video
memory most likely keep this system from becoming too choppy (although it
was noticable on occasion). If there is any bottleneck, it is going to be
the processor, and it most likely occurs in highly populated levels.
Machine 2 runs the game like a dream. Here, the graphics card has become
the bottleneck, since slowdown only occurs at higher resolutions.
Machine 3 is a bit of an enigma. It has a fast processor, and a very meaty
graphics card, with plenty of video RAM. However, it has been seen to
become quite choppy at times. Whether this was the processor or the
graphics card (there have been some known incompatabilities with the Radeon)
is unknown. Feedback would be appreciated.
What can we gain from this?
- If you have a PII, you'll want a decent graphics card, in order to
enjoy the game at high detail. Anything above this, and you can start
ramping the resolution up.
- Personally, I'd say 96MB RAM is a minimum. Although the game states
that 64MB is the minimum, you really want more than that. Lets face it -
Windows can be a slug in 64MB RAM, so trying to run a graphics/processor
intensive game on top of this, and expecting good performance, is pushing
the limits. In addition, RAM is so horribly cheap these days that you
should snap up a bit more while the going is good. It'll improve all-around
performance no end.
-
If you have a PIII, then the only real bottleneck in your system is likely
to be the graphic card. However, as long as it is a relatively new one,
then this should only stop you from achieving higher resolutions
(than 800x600). The game should generally run fine.
