Sorry, another "can my video card run this game?" thread.

Hahahahaahaha.

Dunno , I suck at ATI card knowledge, but I will give you a BUMP

Yes, the minimum required is a Radeon 9600.
You should have no problem.
By the way, what are your others specs? Processor, memory?

dude i run on a amd 3200, 1 gig ddr ram and a very crappy x300 se. u should have no problem running sins as i run it with most settings on high with bloom, aa and vsync off.

What about an ATI Radeon X550?

Is the 9600 older or newer compared to my card?

newer. but mines older than urs.

The X550 is newer but less powerful than the 9600. It should still be fine though, provided you turn the detail levels down.

For weaker cards, it is useful to experiment :

1. Turn off all forms of AA (I do that, and I still find the game very beautiful : I do not notice the jagged edges.)

2. Turn off "bloom".

3. Outside of the game, in your ATI Catalyst graphical-management utility, find the "V Synch" option and turn VS off (I have a GeForce, and we do it there, in its equivalent utility program.)

4. I turn off a few minor features such as the planet "elevators", the "dust", the asteroid field. (I don't care for the tiny, zooming little vehicles moving around the planet, and seeing a few more (very small) asteroids floating around does not enhance my visual experience.)

5. You have a series of buttons, in the options, which define the level of texture quality of ships, buildings, etc. I set them at the "highest" level, but certainly, weaker videocards should have lower settings for those buttons (experiment).

6. Of course, the more star-systems and planets, and the more players you put into a game, the more complex data will have to be managed by your videocard, your processor, and your RAM. (When I play alone against the A.I., I always create a game with only one star and not more than 30 planets -- also for a quicker game.)

7. Start by setting the game in the "native resolution" of your monitor, and if you still experience framerate slowness despite having experimented with tips 1 to 6, lower your resolution (for the game, not the desktop!).

8. The game has 3 speed settings : slow, normal, fast. I do not know what effect the fastest speed might have on weaker machines, but my guess is that the fast speed must provoke a slow framerate when the game has reached a point where many ships are doing battle -- much more data must then be computed (by the CPU and the GPU) at each second. Try lowering the speed.

The 9800 Pro was *the* workhorse video card about 5 years ago and was *the* top of the line card in it's day. And it's still a pretty good card overall. I replaced mine when I got Oblivion a couple years ago with an ATI x800. I was barely at 25 fps and went up to 40+ with that pretty cheap upgrade. I can't really do that upgrade again since my MB is 4 years old and AGP only so I'll need to build a whole new system.

Anyway, with the 9800 Pro you should be just fine. In fact I believe it was the vid card that Frogboy/Brad used for all his screen shots and his demos.
Do a couple of the tweaks above like turning off Bloom (which it really doesn't support anyway) and AA I'll bet you can run at Medium and perhaps High effects.

This is all assuming the rest of your rig, in particular memory (at least 1 gig hopefully) are up to snuff.

just the fact that you HAVE a video card is enough to run sins on medium
it ran easily on my geforce 6200(6600 was min reqs) and i got very playable rates on all but the larger maps and battles

the only thing the video card really matters for it when u zoom way in to watch an epic battle, other than that u almost dont even need a video card

Thanks for all the replies. I'm going to buy the game today!

For the people curious about my other specs, I have 1.024 gigs of ram and a 2.8 ghz pentium 4 processor.

That is precisely what I have, and the game runs fine.

My videocard is a 2 year-old GeForce 6800.

I disabled AA, Bloom, and a few bells-and-whistles (like those "planet elevators"), and I can run the game in 1440 x 900 (the native resolution for my 17-inch widescreen).

A very beautiful game : buy it !

Hi, I'm a professional system builder, so I've got more knowledge about this particular kind of question than the average person. The 9800 pro was a pretty great card in its day, but I wouldn't say it's comparable to a Geforce 6800.

I checked some comparisons on Tom's Hardware for exact figures, and although they no longer list the 9800 Pro, they do list the x1300. That particular card I remember especially because I thought about making a small upgrade to it from my 9800 pro, and it was approximately 20-35% faster than my 9800p.

According to benchmarks of games I consider comparable to Sins, what you're looking at is performance approximately 45% as good as the geforce 6600 at best.

If the game specifies a 6600 as its minimum, your card is approximately 41% as powerful as it should be, at best. Compared to the guys above with a 6800, your card is about 30% as powerful.

I don't want to give you false confidence and say you'll probably be fine. That's not to say the game won't run, it probably will, but don't expect to be able to turn on any detail settings. Large battles will most likely slow your framerate down significantly.

Personally I'd recommend you make a small upgrade. Graphics cards in the 6xxx series or even 7xxx series are very reasonably priced nowadays, and you could probably pick one up off ebay or something without much trouble. Just make sure to get a card with an AGP interface or it won't plug into your computer.

Let me point out Caydr (where do I recognize that name from...) that Sins has proven, again and again, that even its minimum specifications are "excessive" -- you can go far, far under them and still play. As a result, those with sub-standard equipment should consider waiting for the demo before they decide to just make upgrades they might / might not be able to afford. (That said, if you can afford it, the graphics this game gives, especially on highest, are incredible!)