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Sega Rally

Not The Worst Console Port...

Performance-wise, the game is a mixed bag. On most of the game's tracks, a moderately equipped system is sufficient to run the game at a playable frame rate. To do so, you'll have to skip a generation or two past Sega's minimum requirements, which will leave your visuals in the gutter instead of the lush tropics. With the publisher's minimum specs, a resolution of 800 x 600 at low visual settings is all you'll get for graphics (and at less than 20 FPS to boot). Move to YouGamers' minimum recommended specs - an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ or Intel Pentium 4 530, 1 GB of RAM and either an 256MB ATI Radeon X1800-series or NVIDIA GeForce 7800 video card - and the experience is noticeably improved. With a system meeting these requirements, the game's resolution can be bumped to a comfortable 1280 x 1024 and the visual quality slider can be moved to Medium. If you're OK with the occasional frame rate hiccup, then such a system will suit you well in your off-road adventures.

Sega's minimum requirements are on the low side: 800 x 600 with all settings on 'Low' is less than impressive.

Another shot of Sega's minimum requirements. Note the lack of antialiasing and sparse environment detail.

A system meeting the YouGamers' minimum requirements allow for higher resolution and more environment detail...

...including improved shaders and effects.

If, however, you prefer visuals which rival (or better) the console version of the game, then more capable hardware is required. But it's your lucky day - YouGamers has you covered with some realistic recommendations. To bump the graphics settings to their highest, and to deliver a smooth frame rate at higher widescreen resolutions, a dual-core CPU is the starting point: an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 with 2 GB of RAM will do the trick. For a video card, an ATI Radeon HD2900 (512MB) or NVIDIA GeForce 8800 (640MB) are both capable of pushing the pixels at 1680 x 1050, but for higher resolutions only an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX can be considered.

With a YouGamers' recommended system, higher widescreen resolutions with 4xMSAA is feasible...

...and the visual experience of the PC version matches (or exceeds) that of the console versions.

Even on the best of hardware, Sega Rally (Revo) has intermittent frame rate drops on a few tracks. The culprit seems to be on-road reflections, which cause jarring and sudden hitching no matter what the hardware or driver combination. A stop-gap solution is to turn off reflections, though this disables all in-game reflections, including those on water and vehicles. Thankfully, this was the only performance-related anomaly in the game, and it may even be something a future patch could address.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: GameplayPage 3: Gameplay ContinuedPage 4: Performance and HardwarePage 5: Conclusion and Scores

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