C&C Red Alert 3: Graphics settings compared plus system requirements

C&C Red Alert 3: System requirements
Command &Conquer Red Alert 3 is based on the SAGE Engine (Strategy Action Game Engine) that has been used for Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth or Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars for example. Because of its age the SAGE Engine is not very demanding as the system requirements reveal:

Minimal system requirements

• Internet connection required (Authentication)
• Operating system: Windows XP SP2 or Windoews Vista (32 Bit)
• Processor: 2.2 GHz (XP) / 2.6 GHz (Vista)
• RAM: 1 GiB (XP) / 1.5 GiB (Vista)
• Hard drive: 10 GiB
• Graphics card: Geforce 6800 or better / Radeon X800 or better (each with at least 256 MiB VRAM)

C&C Red Alert 3: Graphics settings compared - The graphics options
The graphics menu of Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 offers the options typical for the SAGE Engine like texture quality or shadows. Depending on which setting you change, Red Alert 3 offers the following possibilities.

Command and Conquer - Alarmstufe Rot 3: The graphics menu • Ultra High
• High
• Medium
• Low
• Very Low
• Off

Furthermore there is a switch controlling the preset graphics settings. This affects all the subordinated options like shadows, water details or texture quality at the same time. For our comparative screenshots we choose those predefined graphics settings. All screenshots were taken at 2,560 x 1,600 on a Radeon HD 4870 1,024 MiByte, but considering slow internet connections, we downsized them to 1,280 x 800.

On the following pages you can find the comparative screenshots. You might want to pay extra attention to the water, the shadows and the textures.