My computer has fairly old hardware in it, but runs Tribes 1 just fine. I've never played T2 before, so I haven't a clue as to whether or not it'll run on this beast. How much of a graphical upgrade it is compared to T1?
Tribes was written for the glide language, with opengl support added later as an afterthought. It does play well under opengl anyway. Tribes2 was written in opengl from the start, with dx8 as the target dx level. Tribes being dx6. The dx8 as opposed to dx6 version means, more or less, the tricky shading effects written into the game such as reflections on water and shiny surfaces that dx8 allows in Tribes2(dx8) that are nonexistant in Tribes(dx6). When you install Tribes2 and set up your resolution and bit depth, the game takes into consideration what hardware and dx level you have. You can also disable the dx8 aspects for a boost in performance if you have older hardware, meaning a gf4 or radeon128 vid card. Or even a voodoo3. If you play at a reasonable resolution most cards made in the last 5 years or so will play Tribes2 just fine. Reasonable resolution to me means less than 1280x1024. Now if you have, for instance, a tnt2 vid card, you can play tribes2 at 32bit colour and 1024x768 resolution, but it'll probably be at 24fps or less. What this all means is Tribes2 is a good deal more demanding on hardware than Tribes is, but you don't need an nvidia 8800gtx or ati 4870 card to play. Those do make gameplay smoother and better looking though.
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http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/tribes2/