Starcraft 2 Beta Opt-In Is Out!

System requirements:
• Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
• 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
• 1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
• 128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT / ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
• 1024×768 minimum display resolution
• 4 GB free hard space (Beta)
• Broadband connection

Unfortunately you need to sign up for a Battle.net account, opt in to participate in upcoming Blizzard Entertainment betas through Battle.net Account Management, and upload your system specifications using their quick system-snapshot software. If you’re selected, you’ll be notified in the coming months.

I'd rather wait for the final release. Meanwhile, I'm gonna have to enjoy the gameplay.

Pixel Shader, Shader Model

Pixel Shader is one of the most neglected main specification of a video/graphics card and Shader Model is often an ignored system requirement of PC games because it's new to most of us...excluding me.

Technically Speaking
A Pixel Shader is a type of shader program, often executed on a GPU. These programs are used to perform complex per-pixel effects. Moreover,
it is a computation kernel function that computes color and other attributes of each pixel. Pixel Shaders range from always outputting the same color, to applying a lighting value, to doing bump mapping, shadows, specular highlights, translucency and other phenomena. A Pixel Shader alone cannot produce very complex effects, because it operates only on a single pixel, without knowledge of a scene's geometry or of neighboring pixels. More info here.

A Shader Model is an instruction set that controls different types of shaders. One of which is the pixel shader. Shader Model is included in Direct3D.


Now, why the hell these became significant? Well, you don't want to spend your money on something that will be of limited use and you don't want to waste your bandwidth and time downloading games that won't even run on your rig. Also, that you will not wonder why that game you just bought won't run on your newly bought graphics card.

Some games will require your system with Model Shader support, and there are different versions that the game would require. Presently, Model Shader is on version 5 of Direct3D 11 and it comes with Windows 7.

So how would you know what Shader Model version that the game requires?
Check it's system requirements, and look for the Video Card part where it says "Shader Model".

How then would you know if your Video Card has Pixel Shaders?
Go to www.systemrequirementslab.com, choose "Assassin's Creed" game, and click on "Can You Run It" link. It will require you to install a component, allow it. It'll scan your system, and show you the results. Howevery it is not accurate, because I can run games that failed on its analysis. Or download GPU-Z, it will tell you everything.

Shader Model is hardware dependent. Even when you're on Windows 7 with DirectX 11, it'll still depend on your graphics card if it can support it. If your card was bought before Windows 7's release, then probably your card don't support it.

What's the difference?


No more polygons and the shades are smoother. Sorry XP users, you have to upgrade to Windows 7, and Vista users, you should be on the latest Service Packs.

So the next time you buy a game or a graphics card, be prepared.