I’ve just read about the storm in a teacup surrounding EA’s new battle royale, Apex Legends, not running on the old AMD Phenom processors. These CPU’s are admittedly around 10 years old now, but that being said they will still quite happily play many modern games. Perhaps there’ll be a fix, perhaps there won’t, but my question is at what point should old hardware go without support?
These potentially six core CPU’s are still viable for low budget set ups - are gamers just too entitled these days?
Depends on if there is a decent reason for it. Like a missing core instruction set that the game requires to run. Older processors then, even if they might still have the raw processing power necessary, just wont be able to interpret the code properly.
Don’t know if that is the case here or just a matter of incompetency that can be addressed. But it’s an unfortunate reality that every now and then old hardware simply can’t be supported any longer as catering to it makes everything worse for ever one else.
Phenom support has been a problem for years. Quantum Break, Metal Gear Solid V, and even the Devil May Cry HD Collection have had this issue before. Phenom support requires ignoring all support for a certain later SSE instruction set (4.1) that pretty much any other processor out there can handle.
Often times, the Phenom is below minimum tested specs anyway.
I hope Respawn ends up fixing this for the sake of letting more users play, but it’s hard to be mad at a company for not factoring in a decade old processor that they never promised support for, especially in a free-to-play game.
I’m 99% certain it’s a missing instruction set, just like with every other game that supports everything but Phenom. This has been a problem at least since 2015.
But that’s the point really. Personally speaking I feel it’s gamer entitlement rearing it’s head, and not Respawn at fault here. After all, as you say these CPU’s are a decade old…if they add compatibility then great, otherwise there are plenty of other games.
I just wish you wouldn’t use that silly term. It’s not strange to be upset if you find that your machine can’t for some inexplicable reason straight up not run a game especially if the required specs does indeed appear to be fulfilled.
This seems to me rather to be a lack of communications from the developers, the minimum specs listed should list the phenom as unsupported so that people who pick the game up can abstain from doing so knowing their hardware is not supported.
Especially if this is, as @CptMold, mentions a reoccurring issue then either it needs to be solved or it needs to be communicated.
Edit: Well correcting myself a little
OS: 64-bit Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core i3-6300 3.8GHz / AMD FX-4350 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Processor
RAM: 6GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 / Radeon HD 7700
GPU RAM: 1 GB
HARD DRIVE: Minimum 30 GB of free space
Those are the on site specifications. I honestly do not know the AMD CPU progressions very well but they do specify an AMD FX-4350 (or newer I would assume). This, I’d also imagine, should mean that the old Phenom is indeed not supported. So don’t try to play this game on that then.
They will most likely add the instruction set support soon, if not, the CPUs are incredibly old. And it wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened, either.
However, given how support for older AMD products are dropping like hot cakes, maybe it won’t happen. Even support for GPUs is falling.
The problem is that as a business the company can do what it wants irrespective of what gamers want. Yes they lose sales, and in reality you’re supposed to try and keep your customers happy, but if the developers have been instructed, or chosen to target newer processors then so be it.
I understand that “entitlement” is a bit of a trigger/clickbait type of word, but as I see it the argument being brought forward has wobbly legs. It’d be nice to see all CPU’s being supported, heck Resident Evil 2 runs on Phenom II’s, but those PC’s having issues have most likely been updated in other regards (I don’t know about anyone else but I haven’t had much luck keeping hard drives alive and kicking for years when they are used and power cycled very regularly.) This argument, to me, smacks of a vocal minority (and this coming from someone who up until very, very recently was dependent upon a Phenom II 1035t).
And who even reads min specs and takes them as gospel, especially for free games. Heck I try the aforementioned Resi 2 on a GLU with 1GB of VRAM! (don’t ask…)
Per cpubenchmark, which uses Passmark benchmark to generate scores, the FX-4350 nets a score of 5341. Most Phenom/Phenom II processors are around 2000-4000. Only a few x6 Phenoms come close to/surpass the minimum. These are the 1075T, 1090T, and 1100T.
Honestly, I view this argument the same as when Dual-core requirement became a thing which caused me to be unable to play WoW. For me it was, “man this sucks, maybe I should get something better since this is going to continue happening and I would like to play the game.” Was I unhappy? Yes. Did I make a big stink and demand they support single core cpus? No. I don’t remember if Blizz released a warning to the public.
I think if Respawn and EA put their foot down, this will be a non-thing pretty fast.
I’m definitely in the boat of: That sucks, maybe you should upgrade your cpu. If you can’t, you should be happy with whatever games you can actually play. (cuz honestly, if they can’t afford a new cpu, they likely are playing F2P.)
It isn’t quite the same, though. WoW was a worse case because something previously supported was dropped. In this case, it’s a new game where no promises were made to begin with.
