Comment by cess11
12 hours ago
I haven't played Beyond All Reason but looking at the system requirements I'm not surprised it is more fulfilling. 0 A.D. runs on a potato if you look at it threateningly, which makes it a good option to have on a throwaway machine for kids or somesuch.
Those are lowball system requirements too.
You can easily play or spectate a low-unit count game of BAR on any decent 2010+ quad core.
Such a computer won't allow you to play 8v8 that goes into the late-game stage. Sometimes not even 4v4 or 2v2 with players scaling to high unit counts. Some players try anyway. Ignoring player disconnections, half the drama of large-scale games is the one player who's lagging because they're on a potato computer. If the sim doesn't lag, the game will at least be down to single-digit fps.
That means you can't really play multiplayer comfortably, at least not beyond 2-4 players.
For that, you need a recent ryzen or intel. I'd estimate recent as post-covid.
I don't know what combination of things is important; there's larger cpu caches, faster sustained CPU frequencies (TDP and cooling matter there), hardware mitigations for speculative execution bugs, faster ram, resizeable BAR support... but in my experience going from a 6-core skylake-era cpu to a ryzen 9xxx, with the same gpu, made a massive difference. I saw no massive improvement going from a 4-core 2010-era cpu to a 6-core skylake-era cpu; I'd classify both as potatoes for BAR purposes.
My experience is the opposite: 0ad will lag on my laptop once thing become big. BAR will warn that it’s not compatible with my low end intel integrated potato gpu, but it works just fine..
BAR runs fine on low end CPUs...until you have like 2,000 units on speed metal
I had problems with lag years ago but not lately, though I don't do big multiplayer matches with several players and the like.
I'll check BAR out.