Performance

Whilst it does look like a pretty nice game, SupCom isn't too hard on your hardware, thankfully. If you're running a fairly low-spec machine, you should be able to get it to work, and to look pretty nice, providing you're not hoping to run any seriously high resolutions. Any mid-range enthusiast rig should be able to handle dual 19" monitors at medium quality settings, whilst a 7900/X1900 or higher will manage dual monitors on high quality.

Processor speed isn't such a big issue, and 1GB of RAM will do you just fine. However, be advised that if you want to run SupCom under Vista, you're going to be better off moving to 2GB of RAM and having a faster processor.

For kicks, we whacked in an 8800 GTX, Core 2 Extreme X6800 and 4GB of RAM, running on nForce 680i with dual 1920x1200 24" monitors. Because that's just the way we roll.

High Quality

We ratcheted everything up to High, including Fidelity, Shadows, Textures, Level of Detail. The visual effects are gorgeous, and everything looks super-crisp and radiant. Whilst the battlefield isn't necessarily as intricate as Company of Heroes, it still looks fantastic when pushed to the max.

The 8800 GTX barely broke into a sweat. We found that we could get a decent minimum framerate in the mid-teens, and spend most of the time in the thirties with dual 24s.

Opinion differed as to whether the frame rate was acceptable in the office. Tim is an FPS whore, and demands averages in the high 40s and minimums in the 20s. I'm far more lenient, and was very happy with the 8800 performance on dual 24s. It's worth bearing in mind that the 8800 will be the DX10 card of choice when the patch finally hits servers, and at that point, we doubt you'll be able to use dual 24s with the 8800.

With a 7800/7900 or X1900/X1950 card, you can play single-screen at High, with high 30s average framerates.

Medium Quality

Stepping down to medium quality, the big thing you'll notice is that the water doesn't look as good. The detail on the units and buildings is still pretty good, and explosions, battles etc don't really see much difference in appearance. There's a nice relief on the framerate, and anyone looking at 6800 GT card or X800 cards should be pretty happy playing at medium quality with 1280x1024, with averages in the low 20s and a minimum in and around 10. A little bit of tweaking and most enthusiasts should be able to get Medium quality on a single screen.

Low Quality

If you're system is so slow you have to pull back to Low quality, you're in trouble. It's not the lack of AA that will kill you; it's the fact that nothing looks anything like it should. Textures are barely visible on the terrain, water looks like a big green cloth and battles are chunky, ugly craptaculars. Sure, if you're running an Intel integrated notebook you can get away with running this at 800x600, giving you a mobile gaming fix on the go. But you really, really don't want to have to do that.