Originally Posted by Scales & Fangs
Originally Posted by Blackheifer
Originally Posted by AusarViled
A SSD versus HD wont make that much of a difference for this game outside of loading times, this is not a game that is a shooter or a platformer [assuming your having a modern HD and not one of those HP Pavilions from 10 years ago, at 3200 rpm- if you do your going to have a very very bad time.] Games mostly store calls in memory, as long as you have 16GB of Ram you should be fine ... if not try to reduce page file limit in your system. DO NOT EVER INCREASE PAGE FILE LIMIT ON A HD, YOU WILL REGRET IT LOL.

This is not good info.

1. They literally state in the MINIMUM specs that you need an SSD.
2. It absolutely makes a huge difference having an SSD versus a regular hard drive - the "pipe" for an SSD is much larger and faster than for an a regular HD.
3. In the event of the system needing to create a swap file - which is a 100% chance with Bg3 - an SSD Swap file will wildly outperform a HD Swap file. The HD swap file may actually crash the system.

Also, if you have not played the full game or helped to make it why would you give advice against what the developers recommend?

I have also played with a video card (GeForce GTX 1650 Ti) that is a bit under the minimum requirements but the game runs fine. My reading is that the minimum requirements are for optimal minimum performance. The EA runs okay so the minimum requirements are not the Bible, they do allow for small deviations. Or at least so it seems.

I play on a laptop as it is more convenient for travel. I think I am going to give it a shot without an SSD (I have several other non-gaming programs that I need there). If I really struggle, I might try to see if my SSD can get upgraded from 231 GB to 1TB (I vaguely remember I was given that option at purchase and that it was possible to upgrade the laptop at a later point; I hope I am not wrong). For now I would not bother, though. I am a very casual gamer and I don't usually need so much memory.

I naively expected the requirements to slightly go down from EA (you know optimization and stuff) but it is what it is, so I guess I will work with what I have.

I really doubt they're going to lower the official requirements from the current EA listing. I do expect that further optimization will happen but it's more likely that they won't change the requirements so much as just offer a bit more performance for minimum-spec and possibly even lower-spec systems. Plus, GPU and CPU performance can offset each other so if your GPU is slightly below spec but your CPU is better than required the game will likely run fine at lower settings. More RAM will also be helpful.

As for upgrading your upgrading your laptop, it sounds like you have both an SSD and an HDD installed. That being the case, it may be easier and cheaper to replace the HDD with an SSD than replace your existing SSD especially if you have the OS on it. A 500GB SATA SSD that fits in a laptop drive bay only costs about $20-25 US, so it's not that big an expenditure.