Spore Hardware Performance Guide

By: Sarju Shah - Posted on September 10, 2008

Maxis games generally aren't as hardware-intensive as, say, a Crysis or Call of Duty 4. The company's previous blockbuster hits include such games as Sim City and The Sims--both run well on rudimentary computers, often functioning happily with onboard video adapters. Spore, Maxis' latest creation, is no exception. All the game really requires is a video card that's capable of Shader Model 2.0. To put things into perspective, we're up to Shader Model 4.0 in today's video cards. The first Shader Model 2.0-compatible cards, such as the GeForce FX and Radeon 9000 series, both came out five years ago. Intel's GMA950, an onboard video adapter found on many laptops, will work just fine with Spore (unless you have an older MacBook). But quite often, minimum specifications don't lead to ideal or even desirable results when it comes to games. We decided to put Spore through the gauntlet to figure out just how small you can go on the hardware and still have a great gaming experience.

We found it difficult to find an in-game test sequence that could represent the whole game because Spore has several mini-stages, which are quite different. The cell stage has no other counterpart visually, but the space stage is an even greater departure from the land-bound tribal and civilization stages. Zooming in and out of planet views incurs the biggest loading hiccups, but we didn't want to base our test on a single 2-second zoom. In the end, we found that the creature stage provided an accurate representation of the game, and it also seemed the most taxing overall, especially when we had several models onscreen. Our test consisted of spinning around the nesting area for 30 seconds.

Spore has a built-in frame limiter that automatically caps off at 30 frames per second. Excess power clearly won't come in handy here. There's a good chance that the game will stay at a solid 30 frames per second if you have a PC built in the past two years and you don't go crazy on the resolution settings. We found that having a consistent 20 to 25 frames per second was more than enough to have a good time.

Settings
Spore doesn't need much for hardware but if you're going to run the game on an older computer there's a few settings that you'll want to dial back.

Video Cards
Newer GPUs won't have any problem running Spore, but older cards might struggle. We tested 20 cards from the past and present to help you decide how much is enough.

CPU
We broke out our Intel Core 2s, AMD Phenoms, and Pentium 4s to see how the game scales on older processors. We found that Spore doesn't seem to care about processing power and could probably run off the computational power of a graphing calculator.

Memory
Spore is equally ambivalent about RAM--the game is happy with any amount. We tested the game with 1GB, 2GBs, and 3GBs of RAM. Even the 512MBs of RAM on our minimum spec machine ran Spore without a hitch.

Systems

Spore's minimum requirements are a paltry 2.0GHz Pentium 4, 512MBs of RAM, and a video card with 128MBs of RAM that supports Shader Model 2.0. For our video card, we chose the GeForce 6800 256MBs. That's the least powerful AGP card we had left in our hardware cabinet. The system ran the game quite well after we lowered the resolution and dropped down to medium quality. Our mid-range and high-end systems are simply overkill for Spore. Pretty much any computer with a marginally decent video card can run Spore quite well.

System Setup:

High-End System: Intel Core2 QX9650, eVGA 780i, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1. Graphics Card: GeForce 9800 GTX, beta Nvidia ForceWare 175.19.

Mid-Range System: Intel Core2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz, eVGA 680i, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1. Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GT, beta Nvidia ForceWare 175.19.

Minimum System: Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz, Asus P4C800, 512MB Corsair XMS Memory, Seagate 160GB 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional SP2. Graphics Card: GeForce 6800, Nvidia Forceware 175.19.

Settings

Most modern video cards are capable of running Spore with the highest image quality settings. To actually test the effects of the various settings we had to use an older GeForce 7600 GT. If you have a weaker video card, consider lowering the resolution to recoup a considerable amount of performance. Outside of lowering the resolution, ditching shadows will also yield a few additional frames. Shadows eat up a lot of performance, and the game's charm doesn't suffer greatly without them. If you find your computer struggling, you can lower the graphic effects to squeeze out a few more frames. However, dropping the graphic effects too low will make the game look quite barren.

System Setup: Intel Core 2 X6800, Intel Core 2 Duo X6800, eVGA 680i, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GB x 2), 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista SP1. Graphics Card: GeForce 7600 GT, Nvidia ForceWare 175.19.

Graphics Comparison

Quality Settings

Gallery

Shadows

Gallery

Graphic Effects

Gallery

Video Cards

Spore only needs a smidgen of graphics power to keep the frame rate pegged at a solid 30. A more powerful video card will really only be useful for increasing the resolution. Even then, you don't need to spend a whole lot to run the game with maximum settings on a 30-inch LCD. The game has a built-in 30-frame-per-second frame limit, so buying the best video card on the market won't necessarily improve the look or the performance of the game. Budget cards will provide more of a challenge but will still run the game fine if you're willing to sacrifice a few image quality settings.

System Setup: Intel Core2 X6800, eVGA 680i SLI, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1. Graphics Cards: GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB, GeForce 9600 GT 256MB, GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB, GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB, GeForce 7900 GS 256MB, GeForce 7600 GT 256MB, GeForce 6800 128MB, GeForce 6600 GT, GeForce 6200, Radeon HD 4870, Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 3870 512MB, Radeon HD 3850 512MB, Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB, Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256MB, Radeon HD 2400 Pro, Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB, Radeon X1300. Graphics Drivers: beta Nvidia ForceWare 175.19, ATI Catalyst 8.8

CPU

If it hasn't been made abundantly clear, Spore will run on practically any CPU rated at or above the minimum specifications. Don't bother upgrading to a quad-core CPU, much less a dual-core. Our prehistoric Pentium 4 ran the game just as well as our more advanced processors.

System Setup: Intel Core 2 X6800, Intel Core 2 Duo 6600, Intel Core2 E6320, Intel Pentium 4 3.8GHz, AMD Phenom X4 9600, AMD Phenom X3 8750, eVGA 680I, Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GB x 2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1. Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GT, Nvidia ForceWare 175.19.

Memory

We saw on the first page of the feature that our minimum test system loaded with 512MBs of RAM, Windows XP, and a 2.0GHz Pentium 4 also didn't demonstrate any adverse effects related to RAM deficiencies. Spore managed to run just fine on Windows Vista with a paltry 1GB of RAM, and adding extra memory didn't seem to add any extra performance. Going light on the memory didn't incur any long load times or excessive hard-drive churning.

System Setup: Intel Core 2 X6800, eVGA 680i SLI, 3GB Corsair XMS Memory (2GBx2), 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 1GB Corsair XMS Memory (512MBx2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit. Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GT, Nvidia ForceWare 175.19.