PC Gaming Website

Speedway

(apologies to the Mods if this is a bit off topic but I couldn't find anywhere better to post this)


hey everyone, just looking for some help.

I've been working for GameStop for about 5 years now part time. I'm in my final year of college and one module for me this year was to find a problem within a company and to design & implement a computer system to address that problem.

I have designed a website for GameStop which allows less technically minded customers to find out if their PC has the minimum requirements needed to run a PC game. It's called www.willmygamerun.com .

It works by automating the DirectX Diagnostics tool in windows, creating a text file with all of your PC info and sending this to my website.

I am going to be examined on this project in a week or two in college and I was just wondering if some people on boards would mind using the website and creating an account on it (it's free).

You don't need to give any personal info or anything but the more accounts that are on the site the better it will look for me when I am presenting the project in college.

So if anyone that reads this would please go to www.willmygamerun.com and register their PC on the site I would REALLY appreciate it. (for the moment if you could use Internet explorer because I have a compatability issue with FireFox using asp.net and c# that I am trying to iron out )

anyway sorry for the long post and if it's a bit off topic but if anyone had the free time to spend 5 mins creating an account I would really appreciate it.

Thanks again!

ThE_IVIAcIVIAIV

i think will create a website called www.willmywebsiterun.com just for you because its all messed up and i cant even see a register link... and all the text is overlapping more text etc

Speedway

did you use firefox?

Speedway wrote:

(for the moment if you could use Internet explorer because I have a compatability issue with FireFox using asp.net and c# that I am trying to iron out )

vasch_ro

it works fine in explorer

Speedway

vasch_ro wrote:

it works fine in explorer

thanks vasch_ro

Silverfish

This is really, really good.

I presume it was thought up due to the amount of people who try to return games that won't run on their pc's, even though they were asked at the time of purchase.

Could it have an FPS section?

Speedway

thanks very much Silverfish. Ya that's exactly why because a lot of parents etc at Xmas wouldn't know what their PC had when buying presents etc and this gives them an easy way to check and also if the website prints out their report which says the game should run but it doesn't then they can return the game with the report to their gamestop store.

at the mo all FPS's are in the Action section but I might look at dividing up the genres a little bit more.

thanks again

Mr. Presentable

Top idea speedway. Great job! Get it licenced to other game shops and watch the cash roll in. College? Pfah!

aidan_walsh

If you're keeping this on as a project, then might I suggest some professional webdesign, and a small rethink about the application's delivery? Do something with a proper GUI, rather than this command line thing that doesn't give any real information on whats going on.

Other than that, its a pretty cool idea.

Speedway

thanks Aidan. at the moment the scope of this is purely for a project. If i do move any further with it then I would add a lot more detail. At the moment the command line process was the best I could do because I would have to move more into Web Services and grabbing info from dll files on the user's pc and I wouldn't have enough experience for that at the moment.

thanks for the input though from everyone.

Creamy Goodness

the scan will not work with windows vista. when downloading that file to test it says that a "createfile.bat file cannot be found please ensure it's in the .zip file"
also very uncool in account settings that passwords are not masked.

so anyways it tries to guess my pc settings...


what it gives me back
=============================

PROCESSOR INFORMATION

---

Processor Speed : 2900MHz
Number of Processors : 1
Effective Processor Speed : 2900MHz

MEMORY INFORMATION

---

Memory(RAM) : 2046MB

GRAPHICS INFORMATION

---

Graphics Memory : 256MB

HARD DISK SPACE INFORMATION

---

Free Disk Space : 83.4GB
===================================

now for what i actually have

---

core2duo E6600 2.4ghz
2gigs ram
512mb x1900xtx
398gigs free

it may not make a difference now but the inaccuracy of losing 256mb of graphics card ram would potentially stop people buying games if the site said that it wouldn't run on their pc's.

po0k

Vista doesn't work.

Speedway

I haven't actually had the chance to test it in Windows Vista at all yet so thanks for the feedback.

Cremo the reason your specs are off is that its reading in the last persons scan because your one didn't run correctly. The file that runs is based on DirectX 9 and I haven't had the opportunity to run it in Vista at all yet purely because I don't own a copy and nobody in college with me owns a copy of Vista yet.

So thanks and i'll look into getting it running in Vista

christophicus

Thats a really good Idea and is well implemented . My only gripe aside form the ones already mentioned would be that with teh harddisk sapve. it only detects teh pation that windows is installed on.

Speedway

thanks very much christopicus appreciate the input

kjt

Nice idea, I don't have the time to register but from a website point
of view theirs no validation on your contact form and the logout
buttons always there even if your not logged in. Just little things, all
the best with the project.

thelordofcheese

Just a few little things

firstly, this works in Opera 9.02 fine, which is good. But i'd recommend a few changes, i'd have people register first, then do a test. I'm sure it'd be easier to tie results to A/C's that way.

Second, i would prefer to see if my PC will/won't play a game without having to press a button, maybe give a pass/fail on the game description, then give the option to see more, as opposed to having no idea untill you click the button

third, maybe a margin of error on results, for example, according to the results, i have 510Mb of ram, and the minimum for alot of games is 512MB, now i dunno why 2Mb of ram has been cast into the void by DXDiag, but it should give me a pass for the RAM.

Speaking of margin of errors, maybe less of a binary pass/fail, but more of a result on a scale of will work -> might work -> no chance.
After all, HDD space can be cleared out if needs be, it shouldn't be a deal killer.

Other than that, nice idea, fairly well done. Like others have said, if you want to be serious with it, then a few more tweaks and a GUI for the PC test would be in order, but i think you've got a solid notion there.

Now, look over there while i steal it.

koneko

I'm pretty sure I've seen this before, on another site. Does this ring any bells for anyone? I think it was even discussed here. This is all very familiar, I'll have this bloody deja vu feeling all morning now.

Speedway

I know the site isn't perfect by any means so thanks very much for all of the input. I'll try to address some of the issues over the next few weeks.

koneko

Found the site I think came up here before, http://www.srtest.com (sr=system requirements). There might have been another one. Can't find the thread from before on here.

PixelTrawler

http://gameadvisor.futuremark.com/gameadvisor/service/

Same idea, just done with loads of cash behind it!

Nice idea for a college project though - will look useful on the cv

It keeps stopping here on my machine though

"200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for dxdiag.txt."

Speedway

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

It keeps stopping here on my machine though

"200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for dxdiag.txt."

Thanks for the input. The reason this might be stopping is if you are behind a proxy that has FTP disabled. For example in your office or in a college network some students have FTP disabled and this site uses an automated FTP connection to send the info back from your PC

Cuddlesworth

Dual core E6600,

2.4ghz, 2 effective cores.

Comes up as 4.8ghz in the analysis?

I don't think you should count 2 cores as twice the speed, since even a game coded for dual core wont show 200% improvements.

Maybe a rule like, when effective cores =2, clock speed =1/2.

If you wanted you could put in performance ratings based on benchmarks for various processors, eg; a core2duo at 2.4ghz is better than a p4 at 3.4ghz, so it should be rated higher.

PixelTrawler

Speedway wrote:

Thanks for the input. The reason this might be stopping is if you are behind a proxy that has FTP disabled. For example in your office or in a college network some students have FTP disabled and this site uses an automated FTP connection to send the info back from your PC

Running it at home. Connecting with NTL BB. Running sygate firewall. I checked sygate but it doesnt appear to be blocking it...

NTL was hit and miss last night so ill give it another shot for you...

Edit: It worked tonight, i knocked off sygate for a moment - not sure if that was the issue. It got the specs right too, but i guess it should since its dxdiag providing the information...

I'm more impressed by the idea now. I appreciate its a college project and you probably don't have the time to make it look and behave more professional for now but you have the bones of a nice idea. Its probably worth developing further...

If the scan could be done without an .exe, instead say as an activex component from within the browser ( like the gameadvisor site ) the experience would be a lot nicer...

Speedway

thanks very much Joe, appreciate you taking the time to give it a go again. If I had another month or so I would def make it look better.

I did look into ActiveX but it is actually very complicated trying to get that working so the .exe file was the best way really without requiring a lot of user interaction

DemonOfTheFall

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/games/gameadvisor/default.mspx Here's another pretty high profile one, I'll give your one a go when I get home, sounds pretty good.

Rockshandy

hey speed,

having worked in gamestop for the last rew years...this is a great idea. i used to hand out cards with instructions on how to check which worked great, bu tthe new system doesn't allo me to print off labels so this is a greatidea man!

well done!

PixelTrawler

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/games/gameadvisor/default.mspx Here's another pretty high profile one, I'll give your one a go when I get home, sounds pretty good.

Its the same one - i think ms and futuremark have linked up on the idea

Speedway

cheers thanks Rockshandy, hopefully it will be picked up by customers and used now.

Ivan

Not quite sure why you ask "What type of game would you usually buy" but the inability to select more than one game probably leeds to askewed results.

Otherwise, fantastic, great job. Hope all goes well

Speedway

Ivan wrote:

Not quite sure why you ask "What type of game would you usually buy"

The reason I ask that and then ask the question about whether or not you want to be contacted by GameStop about new games is because if you select your genre of game and then say "yes" you want to receive emails from GameStop,

when a new game is released that matches your genre selection GameStop can use this site to send out an email about that game to you so you can pre book the game.

That's the plan anyway Thanks for having a look at it and for the compliments everyone!

jonski

I have an AMD64 3000 it shows up as a 1700 on the site and says I fail the test for company of heroes , whereas other site report my cpu as a 3000 efective speed and passes the test . No idea how this works but thought I would say it .

Speedway

jonski wrote:

I have an AMD64 3000 it shows up as a 1700 on the site and says I fail the test for company of heroes , whereas other site report my cpu as a 3000 efective speed and passes the test . No idea how this works but thought I would say it .

Jonski here is the entry from your directX diag report

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000 , MMX, 3DNow, ~1.7GHz
Memory: 2560MB RAM

So your Windows DirectX picks your processor up as 1700MHz

jonski

Speedway wrote:

Jonski here is the entry from your directX diag report

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000 , MMX, 3DNow, ~1.7GHz
Memory: 2560MB RAM

So your Windows DirectX picks your processor up as 1700MHz

Indeed , but it is generally accepted that an AMD running at 1700MHz is equivalent to an Intel @ 3000 MHz , so if the min req for a game is a p4 2.8 then my machine should pas the test , but the site says it failed . My tech knowledge is limited at best , my knowledge of how website like yours works , even less so , but ,aybe if it could factor in the way that the AMD's are classified it would give a more accurate pass/fail .

Speedway

jonski wrote:

Indeed , but it is generally accepted that an AMD running at 1700MHz is equivalent to an Intel @ 3000 MHz , so if the min req for a game is a p4 2.8 then my machine should pas the test , but the site says it failed . My tech knowledge is limited at best , my knowledge of how website like yours works , even less so , but ,aybe if it could factor in the way that the AMD's are classified it would give a more accurate pass/fail .

jonski that is in no way accurate. If the CORE CLOCK speed required by a game is 2.8GHz and your AMD has a core clock speed of 1.7GHz then it isn't fast enough.

The reason that people say it is "equivilant" is because AMD don't use a front side bus and have a direct memory link to RAM. But that in no way jumps the clock speed up to 3.0GHz. You can't simply say that the processor's core clock runs at 1.7GHz so then it is actually 3.0GHz like an intel.

jonski

Speedway wrote:

jonski that is in no way accurate. If the CORE CLOCK speed required by a game is 2.8GHz and your AMD has a core clock speed of 1.7GHz then it isn't fast enough.

The reason that people say it is "equivilant" is because AMD don't use a front side bus and have a direct memory link to RAM. But that in no way jumps the clock speed up to 3.0GHz. You can't simply say that the processor's core clock runs at 1.7GHz so then it is actually 3.0GHz like an intel.

I think you might be missing my point , which was , that your website says that my pc does not meet the minimum req to play certain games , when in actual fact it does . This is not an arguement about how intel or AMD classify/describe their cpu's speed . Your site tells anyone with an AMD 3000 not to bother going into gamestop to buy BF2 or Company of Heroes , because they fall way short of the mark .

Just trying to make a helpful suggestion here .

Speedway

No I understand what you are saying and I appreciate the input.

but what I am saying is that Company of Heroes requires a processor with an internal clock speed running at a frequency of 2.0GHz and the AMD does not run at that. So whether or not it is equivilant to a Pentium at 3.0GHz isn't what is being examined. It is that the games needs a certain clock speed (from any CPU) and that the clock speed of that AMD CPU is not above what the company of heroes box says it requires.


for example look at this page - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907884

the line says "A computer that has a 1.4 gigahertz (GHz) processor" therefore yours would be adequate.
but for something that requires a 2.0GHz processor yours would not be adequate regardless of whether or not it is equivilant to a Pentium at 3.0GHz

Matt Simis

Speedway wrote:

but what I am saying is that Company of Heroes requires a processor with an internal clock speed running at a frequency of 2.0GHz and the AMD does not run at that. So whether or not it is equivilant to a Pentium at 3.0GHz isn't what is being examined. It is that the games needs a certain clock speed (from any CPU) and that the clock speed of that AMD CPU is not above what the company of heroes box says it requires.

Wow, you are so far off on that statement, its scary you are actually putting this info out as consumer advise for the last 5 years... :eek:

"Gigahertz" is rating of clock frequency, not a pure and standardised performance metric. Actual Performance is roughly determined by
Frequency X Instructions Per Clock (IPC).

Intel P4s generally have a lower IPC than Athlon CPUs. Therefore a lower clocked Athlon64 is "punching above its weight" compared to a P4.

There is no such thing as a game that requires a specific "clock frequency" (any program that specifies a clock frequency without a CPU type beside it is a victim of poor copytext, nothing more), in this case the game is merely declaring a minimum performance requirement using a well known ball pack product (Intel P4 etc).

AMD products use a performance rating system that unofficially references their CPUs to Intels (yes, I know "officially" they claim they are performance rating compared to their own, old CPUs). Therefore Jonski is completely correct, if a program requires a CPU that performs at the level of a P4 3.0GHz, then an equivalently rated AMD cpu (Athlon 64 3000+ for example) is sufficient and any advise to the contrary is incorrect.

You will run into exactly the same problem comparing Intel Core2Duos to P4s btw, they too have much high IPC than P4s (somewhat higher than Athlons), your test would no doubt sell them short too.



Matt


PS: Site doesnt display correctly in Firefox

Speedway

Matt Simis wrote:

Wow, you are so far off on that statement, its scary you are actually putting this info out as consumer advise for the last 5 years... :eek:

"Gigahertz" is rating of clock frequency, not a pure and standardised performance metric. Actual Performance is roughly determined by
Frequency X Instructions Per Clock (IPC)

That is true yes, PERFORMANCE = frequency and number of instructions performed
BUT as far as i can see if a game has a requirement for a processor with a clock speed of a certain level then a processor should meet that level of clock speed, not performance because I don't ever recall seeing a game that has a performance measure on it related to its actual frequency.

Matt Simis wrote:

Intel P4s generally have a lower IPC than Athlon CPUs. Therefore a lower clocked Athlon64 is "punching above its weight" compared to a P4.

i agree again yes because of the lack of a FSB and using their crossbar controller on some of the x2 and 64 bit models the AMDs can give a higher IPC.

Matt Simis wrote:

There is no such thing as a program that requires a specific "clock frequency".

This is where I disagree. I do understand that yes performance is more than simply clock speed. But if you look at software requirements for games then it is based on clock speed purely.

Matt Simis wrote:

PS: Site doesnt display correctly in Firefox

Yes i know thank you i mentioned that in my first post

aidan_walsh

But if you look at software requirements for games then it is based on clock speed purely.

I think thats really just to give people a well known, advertised standard to work off.

Pretty soon we may be talking about applications in regard to Vista performance points (assuming of course that Microsoft aren't so short sighted as to only offer that kind of benchmarking to people who send their applications for certification - anyone willing to take bets? ).

tuxy

So Speedway would you say a core 2 duo e6600 (2.4 ghz)
would not meet the requirments for rainbow six vegas?

Requirments for rb6 vegas =
Processor:P4 3Ghz or AMD equivalent

koneko

Indeed. I'm not sure what the confusion is here, someone pointed out an issue with your test, they are correct, Speedway is incorrect, many many (MANY) moons ago you could have looked at clockspeed alone but those days are long gone.

OmegaRed

tuxy wrote:

So Speedway would you say a core 2 duo e6600 (2.4 ghz)
would not meet the requirments for rainbow six vegas?

Requirments for rb6 vegas =
Processor:P4 3Ghz or AMD equivalent

I dont think that is the issue as his site would give the e6600 as an effective clock speed of 4.8 ghz (2.4 x 2, as it is dual core) therefore passing the 3.ghz test on Rainbow six vegas.

Matt Simis

Speedway wrote:

That is true yes, PERFORMANCE = frequency and number of instructions performed
BUT as far as i can see if a game has a requirement for a processor with a clock speed of a certain level then a processor should meet that level of clock speed, not performance because I don't ever recall seeing a game that has a performance measure on it related to its actual frequency.

Despite the irrelevant talk of memory controllers and "crossbars", I dont think you are really getting the point of all this.

Interpret this statement:
Minimum System Requirements:
-Windows XP or Vista
-2.0 GHz Intel Pentium IV or equivalent or AMD Athlon XP or equivalent

This is from Company of Heroes. This game has decent copytext, its obvious they are claiming the minimum of 2GHz P4 level performance, regardless of the "clock speed". Even if you just take a step back and think about it, can you really say that if a game states "P4 3.0GHz" that an AthlonX2 5000+ (2.6GHz Dual Core) is "too slow".

The company I work for would hand off product text to a copywriter (standard practice) who "rewords" it for Joe Blogs. They would sometimes confuse MHz, GHz, GB, MB etc while having no clue as to what a K6, K7 P4 etc is. Games that do not list "or equivalent" or a specific CPU type simply have poor copytext, you cannot take these statements as gospel.

"Hello Kitty Island Adventure requires a 2.8GHz CPU" is an incorrect statement, full stop.

Matt Simis

OmegaRed wrote:

I dont think that is the issue as his site would give the e6600 as an effective clock speed of 4.8 ghz (2.4 x 2, as it is dual core) therefore passing the 3.ghz test on Rainbow six vegas.

Which is also complete BS as a dual core is not effectively two times a single cores performance (technically or in practice), even if the application was multi-threaded.

jonski

Speedway wrote:

This is where I disagree. I do understand that yes performance is more than simply clock speed. But if you look at software requirements for games then it is based on clock speed purely.

If I understand this correctly your site is a project , the idea being it is a service to consumers and to stores selling games . The results I received gives me the impression that I should keep my money in my pocket .

Once more I see this topic heading off into the Intel/AMD speed/classification debate . The other sites that offer this kind of service allow for the difference between the two . Also I note that it picks up my cpu as 1700MHz whereas others pick it up as 1877MHz , so I am wondering if you aimed the site more at the intel side of things .

At the end of the day , if this is just a site for your college project , then it is one hell of a job .

Speedway

jonski wrote:

If I understand this correctly your site is a project , the idea being it is a service to consumers and to stores selling games . The results I received gives me the impression that I should keep my money in my pocket .

Once more I see this topic heading off into the Intel/AMD speed/classification debate . The other sites that offer this kind of service allow for the difference between the two . Also I note that it picks up my cpu as 1700MHz whereas others pick it up as 1877MHz , so I am wondering if you aimed the site more at the intel side of things .

At the end of the day , if this is just a site for your college project , then it is one hell of a job .

Thank you Jonski I appreciate that.

tuxy wrote:

So Speedway would you say a core 2 duo e6600 (2.4 ghz)
would not meet the requirments for rainbow six vegas?

Requirments for rb6 vegas =
Processor:P4 3Ghz or AMD equivalent

no tuxy not at all

Matt simis and koneko ok if you are to look at gaming as simply more than clock speed then what would you do. If someone handed you a game that has a minimum requirements of a pentium IV 2.0GHz or equiv and you have a 1.7GHz AMD then what would you do as a programmer or as someone designing a website such as this.

I posted this thread for people to use the site and to pass on some advice. I am delighted that so many people are taking the time to use it.

But what would you advise so, if a game advises at least a 2.0GHz CPU then for and AMD 1.7GHz what should that be rated at so? should i add 500MHz to it to bring it to Intel terms? should i Add 700Mhz? there is no clear cut way to do that. The same as with dual core. One person suggested only adding half the speed again but that isn't accurate because it depends on whether or not the program is multi threaded and supports dual core etc.so should i add .5 of the speed again, should i add 1.5??

there is no clear way to do that so i went with what is easiest to explain to normal every day customers with very little technical knowledge. If windows tells them that their CPU runs at 1.7GHz and the game needs 2.0GHz then their CPU is failed according to this site. This site was designed to help non technically minded people and if you tell them yes on this game the 1.7GHz would fail but on this one if won't cause the AMD has a much better IPC then the point of this site is gone - simplicity.
I DO understand and AGREE that the AMD has a much better performance but for the purpose of this site there is no clear cut way to bring it to "Intel" ratings and say its not 1.7GHz its actually 3.0GHz.

Again thank you for taking the time to look at my site and provide an opinion on it i do appreciate it

Matt Simis

Speedway wrote:

Matt simis and koneko ok if you are to look at gaming as simply more than clock speed then what would you do. If someone handed you a game that has a minimum requirements of a pentium IV 2.0GHz or equiv and you have a 1.7GHz AMD then what would you do as a programmer or as someone designing a website such as this.

Real Simple, instead of just reading the raw clockspeed, read the CPUID tag too and put some logic in on the server side to understand both the ratings and the MHz value, as a human should.
This is what the commercial and other freeware apps do.
You should not add virtual MHz... besides further confusion, games will drop this rating recomendation too as Intel have ended the "more MHz is better" campaign with the C2D.

Speedway wrote:

But what would you advise so, if a game advises at least a 2.0GHz CPU then for and AMD 1.7GHz what should that be rated at so? should i add 500MHz to it to bring it to Intel terms? should i Add 700Mhz? there is no clear cut way to do that. The same as with dual core. One person suggested only adding half the speed again but that isn't accurate because it depends on whether or not the program is multi threaded and supports dual core etc.so should i add .5 of the speed again, should i add 1.5??

Again, you are way over complicating things. Have a field that states "Requires Dual Core?" on the game side and check to see if a valid Dual Core CPU is installed. If yes, then state all is ok. There is no need to reinvent the wheel and add arbitary values to the CPU "MHz".

Speedway wrote:

there is no clear way to do that so i went with what is easiest to explain to normal every day customers with very little technical knowledge. If windows tells them that their CPU runs at 1.7GHz and the game needs 2.0GHz then their CPU is failed according to this site.

As it stands your site is potientially sending the completely incorrect message that X game will not work on a system that is likely fully supported to a huge number of potiential visitors. If the aim is to make their life easier, it has failed in this regard due to a relatively minor technicality. Also note that even Windows "System Properties" does not just quote a customers CPU frequency, the first line states the CPUID/Rating.

You should note that Valve's Gaming HW Survey (which is upto date as of yesterday) shows 48.8% of their massive user base are on AMD systems. None of which will show a realistic or expected result on your test, nor will many Core2Duo systems.

koneko

Speedway wrote:

I DO understand and AGREE that the AMD has a much better performance but for the purpose of this site there is no clear cut way to bring it to "Intel" ratings and say its not 1.7GHz its actually 3.0GHz.

That's not really what you were saying before, grand if you accept/see that now, but surely it is a big factor that you're essentially cutting a lot of customers out by doing that, only (certain) Intel-based PCs are compatible with the site then. I have an E6600 and the clock speed would be listed as 2.4Ghz, it would then tell me it isn's sufficient if the game "needs" 2.8Ghz. The site would be aimed at simple users and if they have an AMD-based system and check the site they won't buy the game because the site tells them it won't work, and they don't know any better.

Check out the site I linked to before (http://www.srtest.com), I just quickly ran on it on this system and it doesn't only factor in the clock speed figure. It lists the CPU speed and then "Performance Rated At...", and in this case it's an AMD CPU and does list a correct equivalent speed. Haven't checked the FutureMark one but it might be worth looking at that to see what they do.

Speedway

Matt Simis wrote:

Real Simple, instead of just reading the raw clockspeed, read the CPUID tag too and put some logic in on the server side to understand both the ratings and the MHz value

This website uses the directX diagnostics tool to run and that has no CPUID tag. The program extracts the clock speed from the DXDIAG text file that windows creates and uses that.

As i was saying if I was to extract the CPUID and say the processor was an AMD FX or an AMD 64 3000 how can I simply right logic that if that chip is in this machine x,y,z games will run otherwise it won't. You can't simply identify whether a game will run based on the CPU installed. That would mean using every single CPU on the market with everyone of those games to see if in fact the AMD CPU works even though it has a lower clock speed.

Matt Simis wrote:

Again, Have a field that states "Requires Dual Core?" on the game side and check to see if a valid Dual Core CPU is installed

There is no game that "requires" dual core.

Speedway

koneko wrote:

I have an E6600 and the clock speed would be listed as 2.4Ghz, it would then tell me it isn's sufficient if the game "needs" 2.8Ghz.

it would detect that your chip is a dual core 2.4GHz, set it to 4.8GHz and tell you that you CAN run the game