UT3 Graphics evolution
The most visible technological improvements in UT3 come from the move to Unreal Engine 3. Environments now spring to life with rich shaders, and per-pixel lighting. All those fancy pixel programs require atleast a DirectX 9 compatible graphics card to be run at all.
First words on UT3 requirements
We have preliminary system requirements for UT3 which according to the german gaming magazine PC Games Hardware comes from a source inside Epic Games. The Requirements are very high by todays standard, but hardware has got some time to get better & cheaper before the games estimated release in 2007.
Epic on hardware requirements 2007-05-29:
Generally speaking, the game runs quite smooth with DX9 hardware released by NVidia and Ati since 2006. On high-end cards, including the DX10 models, UT3 runs incredibly smooth already. Additionally, we also support shader 2.0 graphics hardware, with only a few technical limitations.
It will be intresting to see benchmarks from UT3, to see how much processing power the Unreal Eninge 3.0 will require from our CPU's and graphic cards.
Preliminary UT3 System Requirements
Minimum Requirements
CPU: 2.8Ghz
RAM: 512MB
Graphics: Geforce 6 series
Recommended System
CPU: 3-4Ghz
RAM: 1024MB
Graphics: NVIDIA 6800GT/Ultra or 7800GT/GTX SLI
UT3 Technical features and requirements
* Dual-core CPU: Multi-threading is supported and should provide much better performance
* 64-bit version to be available with better textures
* Renderers: SM3.0, 2.0, possible DX8 renderer
* HDR supported
* Physics: Novodex Physics Engine
* AGEIA PhysX PPU supported.
Keep in mind that these are not official requirements from Epic, nor final. What we know is that the game will take advantage of technologies such as dual core processors, AGEIA compatible Physics chips and Shader Model 3.0.
Thilo Bayer, Editor-in-Chief PCG Hardware, adds:
As I clarified in a seperate e-mail with Mark Rein, we have some misunderstanding in the term "minimum specs". We mean "minimum specs for high in game detail" which is not the same as bare "minimum specs" so that the game runs at all.
Statements from Epic about requirements & performance
At E3 2005, Epic's Tim Sweeney suggested an NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra level card for decent frame rates at 1024x768 resolution.
According to Mark Rein, VP of Epic, Nvidia 7800 GTX runs Unreal Tournament 3 significantly faster than the Geforce 6800 generation of cards.
quite exciting and interesting. Following on from the previous thread about the release date, it seems they have put the date forward a bit with the video stating "coming in november" 
