2.1 Hardware Constraints in AI Engines

Hardware Constraints in AI Engines

Hardware constraints will first be noticed by the user, how smoothly a game runs depends on the hardware components of the machine the game is tying to play on. To put it in simple terms, a game requires a certain specific requirements in order to run smoothly without any lag, freezing or crashing. What I mean by requirements, these are the recommend system requirements for Overwatch on PC:

Recommended (targeting 60fps on Medium settings):

• Operating system: Windows Vista/7/ 8/10 64-bit (latest Service Pack)
• Processor: Intel Core i5 or AMD Phenom II X3, 2.8 GHz
• Video: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 or ATI Radeon HD 7950
• Memory: 2 GB VRAM, 6 GB System RAM
• Storage: 7200 RPM with 5 GB available HD space  (3)

Now a PC running Windows 10 with an i7 processor, 500SSD and 8GB RAM will have no issue running a game like this, the frame rate will be running at a high fps resulting in the user experience being a fairly good experience. Now if the player was trying to play this game on a Intel Pentium 4 processor, with 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD and a standard Intel HD built in graphics card, then the player expirence would be slow loading, crashing and overall frustration. An older PC won’t have the processing power to run a newer game requiring higher spec, the modern PC game for example call of duty will require NVidia GeForce GTX 660 graphics card or AMD's Radeon HD 7850 to reach minimum GPU, the disadvantage of having an older PC will be the graphics card being a lower spec, a newer GPU can have more cores increasing performance, a more modern PC will be able to render 3D graphics at a faster rate. the GPU will have an effect on player performance as a machine with an old graphics card won’t be able to handle meatier games causing lagging, freezing and an almost slide show effect, this will be frustrating for the player.

"In many cases, the actual hardware is less important than the software and the quality of the hardware–software integration."(17)

Nielsen in this quote, I do have to disagree with him. I can not think of many cases in my life where the software I am running has not caused me problems because my computer was not a good enough specification. For me, if the computers old and very basic and your trying to run a game like Unreal Engine... Its just not going to work, period. He says software-hardware integration is key and yes he is right but just because you can install the software on a system doesn't me you should.