Am I the only one who thinks that PC Gaming requirements are... doctored?

[Deleted member 9306]

Like I'm sorry, but some of these new games that are coming out don't look that much better than games that came out last year or etc, yet they require super high requirements just to run at 1080p. I can't think of any specific examples right now, but we were able to run games like Crysis 3 fine back when it released, and that game's graphics hold up very well. But to play some of these newer games, that barely look as good as that one, they're recommending 3070s?

It just seems like they're purposely making PC gaming more expensive than it needs to be. Does anyone else feel this way...?

 

[Okabe]

I mean sys requirements are always to be taken with a grain of salt.

iirc godfall required 12gb of VRAM ?

Only used like ....7 MAX ?

 

[ILikeFeet]

system requirements are usually bunk anyway

 

[Plasma]

They always overshoot it so people can't complain when their PCs can't run it.

 

[Lant_War]

Some official requirements are definitely exaggerated. Even a 1050TI can run today's most intensive games just fine - as long as you don't expect stuff like 60FPS or maxed out graphics.

 

[Deleted member 9306]

Some official requirements are definitely exaggerated. Even a 1050TI can run today's most intensive games just fine - as long as you don't expect stuff like 60FPS or maxed out graphics.

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I had a feeling I could've been doing all of this with cheaper components...

Like I was really out here stressing because of the new 5000 Ryzen series and the new 3000 series cards when I have a i5 10600k and a 2070 Super... man this hobby plays mind games on you big time.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I had a feeling I could've been doing all of this with cheaper components...

Like I was really out here stressing because of the new 5000 Ryzen series and the new 3000 series cards when I have a i5 10600k and a 2070 Super... man this hobby plays mind games on you big time.

Click to shrink...

when you have all these outlets doing benches on the highest end equipment and whatnot, it really skews your perception. check out LowSpecGamer, and you'll find you can play all the latest games on some potatoes if you really wanted

 

[Nessus]

Yeah, I've been able to run plenty of games on my GTX 780 that I shouldn't have been able to according to posted minimum requirements.

 

[Ra]

I can't think of any specific examples right now, but we were able to run games like Crysis 3 fine back when it released

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You sure about that?

Not even the Titan of the time could hit 60fps at 1080p/Very High settings.

I think you have the history of system requirements a bit messed up. Give some examples of requirements being overblown or I call bullshit.

 

[Deleted member 9306]

You sure about that?

Not even the Titan of the time could hit 60fps at 1080p/Very High settings.

I think you have the history of system requirements a bit messed upp.

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Woah, yeah this thread is showing me that I've been remembering things badly. I could've sworn I remembered watching youtubers playing that game back then at 60fps and 1080p, maybe they had dual titans?

And I wasn't aware of low-end gaming at all. I guess I need to get re-educated.

 

[Executive Taxi]

Yes, obviously it's in developers' best interests to reduce the number of people able to play their games with high system requirements

 

[Cyclonesweep]

I recently played Phasmophobia and I didn't meet the minimum specs yet I was running 25-140 fps. Makes no sense

 

[Deimos]

PC requirements are useless.

 

[martincrimson87]

Publishers should up their game regarding game requirements. We are not in 1997 anymore...

Yeah, most of the time system requirements are bullshit. I still remember the 3770k recommended to play metal gear rising... an xbox 360 port.

 

[headspawn]

What games are you referring to?

 

[dunkzilla]

It goes both ways really, the exaggerate on both ends. But really they're just guides, not to be taken too seriously.

but also, just because a game doesn't look fancier graphics wise doesn't mean it's not more demanding on the hardware.

 

[karnage10]

As someone that come from poor family and am now a doctor i went from office desktop with 50-70€ GPU to mid range with my 1070 (which cost around 450€).

My experience is that as long as you met minimum requirements you should be able to play the game on low settings relatively well (30-60 FPS), specially if you lower the res to 720p.

To this day i don't get what recomended settings are suposed to be. Most my experience recomended system don't allow to play at high/very high settings with a satisfactory framerate. But it is also overkill for something like medium quality at 1080p

I'll be blunt and say that unless you are rich most high end components are very slow to evolve and thus not worthy buying; despite whatever most people here and whatever media says. for example the 3070 cards don't seem to be a worthy upgrade for my 1070. My 1070 seems to do around 55FPS on warhammer 2 and the 3070 should do around 70 FPS. 15FPs aren't worth 500€ or thereabouts. At least to me since saving that much money requires quite a bit of effort.

Obviously your miliage will vary as a GPU can be much more than just a console and these GPU have much more features like DLSS that might be important to you. As a mostly PC gamer I highly recomend not upgrading unless your PC performance isn't what you want/need.

For example I plan to keep my 1070 until i can find a X070 card (or the AMD equivalent) that can at least double the performance of a game I am playing (of around 100 FPS on warhammer 2)

 

[eraFROMAN]

At the very least, if the game ends up not running on your set up, they can just point you to the recommended and minimum req's and leave it at that, I guess

 

[Dusktildawn48]

I recently played Phasmophobia and I didn't meet the minimum specs yet I was running 25-140 fps. Makes no sense

Click to shrink...

25-140? That's a wide ass range.

 

[Merv]

I had a feeling I could've been doing all of this with cheaper components...

Like I was really out here stressing because of the new 5000 Ryzen series and the new 3000 series cards when I have a i5 10600k and a 2070 Super... man this hobby plays mind games on you big time.

Click to shrink...

Are you concerned with core count? Pretty much any CPU released in the last two years is good for over 100fps in current titles. I bought a 3700X, because 8C16T with cooler was great value. I knew it wasn't tops in games, but I was more comfortable buying an 8C16T, because of the consoles.

I'm super concerned with geting a new GPU. My 1070 is ready for hand me downs.

 

[Cyclonesweep]

25-140? That's a wide ass range.

Click to shrink...

Game is buggy as hell and the frame rate is allll over the place as you can tell lol

 

[Dolce]

It's not that they're doctored, they're just almost too vague and don't give framerate targets. Lots of times you don't even get a resolution target.

 

[nampad]

I guess they just want to make sure that no one can complain afterwards.

 

[Tatsu91]

As someone that come from poor family and am now a doctor i went from office desktop with 50-70€ GPU to mid range with my 1070 (which cost around 450€).

My experience is that as long as you met minimum requirements you should be able to play the game on low settings relatively well (30-60 FPS), specially if you lower the res to 720p.

To this day i don't get what recomended settings are suposed to be. Most my experience recomended system don't allow to play at high/very high settings with a satisfactory framerate. But it is also overkill for something like medium quality at 1080p

I'll be blunt and say that unless you are rich most high end components are very slow to evolve and thus not worthy buying; despite whatever most people here and whatever media says. for example the 3070 cards don't seem to be a worthy upgrade for my 1070. My 1070 seems to do around 55FPS on warhammer 2 and the 3070 should do around 70 FPS. 15FPs aren't worth 500€ or thereabouts. At least to me since saving that much money requires quite a bit of effort.

Obviously your miliage will vary as a GPU can be much more than just a console and these GPU have much more features like DLSS that might be important to you. As a mostly PC gamer I highly recomend not upgrading unless your PC performance isn't what you want/need.

For example I plan to keep my 1070 until i can find a X070 card (or the AMD equivalent) that can at least double the performance of a game I am playing (of around 100 FPS on warhammer 2)

Click to shrink...

That is sort of true the 3070 does not outperform the 1070 enough to where you won't be gaming at decent settings for a few years im convinced I'll get several years out of the 2080 on high settings.

 

[Deleted member 20831]

It just seems like they're purposely making PC gaming more expensive than it needs to be. Does anyone else feel this way...?

Click to shrink...

The minimum requirements aren't a common standard, it is heavily dependent on the game engine and what different devs define as minimum requirements to run the game (putting effort to make performance profiles/benchmarks, then use some settings in the game booting/auto profiles with predefines based on the later).

Note: Also the first thing you would do is lock API feature set, example DirectX level and OS.

 

[Abysmal]

Aren't all the specs kinda arbitrary and dependent on what the devs have access to for testing on?

 

[RedSwirl]

I don't even look at official system requirements as the end-all-be-all. Look up benchmark charts to get a better picture.

 

[Twister]

Yeah, I have a 1660ti and an i5-9400f and I can play Black Ops Cold War at pretty much the highest settings possible at 1080p/60fps (barring 4K and raytracing). And I'm sure people with lower-end hardware or that would favor performance rather than graphics could do pretty okay with the game too, but they recommend such expensive hardware for it for some reason.

 

[Ra]

I'll be blunt and say that unless you are rich most high end components are very slow to evolve and thus not worthy buying; despite whatever most people here and whatever media says. for example the 3070 cards don't seem to be a worthy upgrade for my 1070. My 1070 seems to do around 55FPS on warhammer 2 and the 3070 should do around 70 FPS. 15FPs aren't worth 500€ or thereabouts. At least to me since saving that much money requires quite a bit of effort.

Obviously your miliage will vary as a GPU can be much more than just a console and these GPU have much more features like DLSS that might be important to you. As a mostly PC gamer I highly recomend not upgrading unless your PC performance isn't what you want/need.

For example I plan to keep my 1070 until i can find a X070 card (or the AMD equivalent) that can at least double the performance of a game I am playing (of around 100 FPS on warhammer 2)

Click to shrink...

Uh, I'm sorry but I have to point this out because your numbers are waaaaay off.. The 3070 is averaging almost 110fps at 1080p in TW: Warhammer 2 right now.

 

[PS9]

You need a 3080 for high

What is high

High

 

[TheDeadlyHound]

I think the reason is poor optimization by lazy developers... I recently tried The Pathless on PC and my RX580 couldn't even handle 60fps while I can go over 60fps on Resident Evil 3 Remake and never experience a dip during the whole game.

 

[TheMadTitan]

I think the reason is poor optimization by lazy developers... I recently tried The Pathless on PC and my RX580 couldn't even handle 60fps while I can go over 60fps on Resident Evil 3 Remake and never experience a dip during the whole game.

Click to shrink...

The reason is due to the lack of available hardware. No one keeps around 60+ GPUs except for tech youtubers because they pay for warehouse space. A development team is going to keep around the most recent stuff because it's more readily available, and that's the average spec sheets go on.

You can always see analogous performance based on whatever tiers you're looking at. Nvidia, for example, has normally been one tier below for equal performance the next generation, except for this year of course. The 3070 is on par with a 2080ti, which would've been a Titan(esque) card for the 10 series. If you can gauge all that, you'll know what you'd need at minimum to run the game on the 900 series if the 3070 was the minimum system required card

But now we're four cards deep for a system requirement sheet. Add in the 3080, 3090, step down for all of the other 2000 series cards and (and including their analog performers from the previous series) on top of doing that for AMD, that's an ungodly amount of cards to test; not to mention the CPU pairs for each, their previous series performing analogs, and RAM.

Shit isn't about laziness and isn't really about optimization all the time, either. These are programmers of various strengths and weaknesses working with unique game engines with their own strengths and weaknesses paired with hardware configurations with their own strengths and weaknesses. Pathless could've been coded in java for all we know because that is what those developers were most comfortable with that would lead to the fastest development time with RE3 was coded in C++. Both could be equally optimized for how they were designed, but perform differently on the same exact hardware due to how that specific hardware configuration translates that code into what you see happening in the game on your screen.

 

[Filipus]

I think the reason is poor optimization by lazy developers... I recently tried The Pathless on PC and my RX580 couldn't even handle 60fps while I can go over 60fps on Resident Evil 3 Remake and never experience a dip during the whole game.

Click to shrink...

I would edit this post since "lazy developers" just shows how much you understand of game development. And you will be reported pretty sure. Post above me explains it great.

 

[Black_Stride]

This thread?
What the fuck is going on?

I havent seen a 3070 be min spec so far.
I havent seen a 2070 be min spec so far.
Hell I havent seen a 1070 be min spec so far.

I think the highest min spec ive seen is a 1060......which means a 970 easy work......likely means a 770 couldnt hand the game.....which means a 680.

I think people are taking min spec as it used to be when GPU/CPUs had specific feature sets that games needed to actually run, so min spec was literally the minimum PC requires to run this game, if you PC doesnt meet them the game wont boot.

And then rec spec....what does that even mean, atleast devs now give us more detailed breakdowns of whats needed at Low/Med/High.
But even then its not blanket truth because a 2500K....yes SandyBridge is still alive can* get you to 60fps in a lot of games still.
Even if min spec hasnt listed SandyBridge in a very very long time.

 

[Tenck]

What game is asking for a 3070 at 1080p?

 

[JaxiPup]

It's less a factor of the requirements, and more a tendency to focus less on smaller optimization techniques as hardware gets more powerful. Add diminishing returns to that as well; what may appear on par with an older game might be more advanced on closer inspection, just not as noticably so, therefore more power is used for less and less benefit.

 

[trashbandit]

I always assumed that the implicit understanding of system reqs is that they represent the minimum/recommended experiences, not necessarily the technical minimum. I mean, you could probably run next gen games on on a 900 card if you crank the resolution down to 720, but no developer expects or wants you to do that.

 

[trashbandit]

I think the reason is poor optimization by lazy developers... I recently tried The Pathless on PC and my RX580 couldn't even handle 60fps while I can go over 60fps on Resident Evil 3 Remake and never experience a dip during the whole game.

Click to shrink...

Those are two completely different games; performance isn't just dependent on how shiny the graphics are.

 

[Roshin]

I honestly have not looked at PC requirements for games in years.

 

[Deleted member 20831]

I think the reason is poor optimization by lazy developers... I recently tried The Pathless on PC and my RX580 couldn't even handle 60fps while I can go over 60fps on Resident Evil 3 Remake and never experience a dip during the whole game.

Click to shrink...

I think the real reason is that people very poorly understand what game development actually is* and base a lot of inaccurate or poorly misguided assumptions from the perspective that they ultimately know everything.

 

[KamiCrit]

6 year old me from early 2000's can verify that pc gaming requirements are bunk. Still salty about burning a gift on a Hot Wheels PC game that didn't work.

 

[Maturin]

I keep reading in specs my i5 3570k isn't good enough. And then the games run fine.

 

[Deleted member 20831]

I keep reading in specs my i5 3570k isn't good enough. And then the games run fine.

Click to shrink...

I am still on i5-4440 (4c 4t) and can play most games without issues, I sometimes record gameplay in the background all the while having the required store client running in the background, what ever DRM the game uses (Denuvo for few of them), DS4Windows, browser with some tabs opened up, probably with a YouTube/steaming video or two, explorer windows sometimes, etc

But encoding gameplay videos with x264(CPU) on Handbrake takes a lot of time, the NVenc on Handbrake doesn't support some advanced options and the quality is bad with NVenc if I set video bitrate low.

 

[Deleted member 30077]

As someone that come from poor family and am now a doctor i went from office desktop with 50-70€ GPU to mid range with my 1070 (which cost around 450€).

My experience is that as long as you met minimum requirements you should be able to play the game on low settings relatively well (30-60 FPS), specially if you lower the res to 720p.

To this day i don't get what recomended settings are suposed to be. Most my experience recomended system don't allow to play at high/very high settings with a satisfactory framerate. But it is also overkill for something like medium quality at 1080p

I'll be blunt and say that unless you are rich most high end components are very slow to evolve and thus not worthy buying; despite whatever most people here and whatever media says. for example the 3070 cards don't seem to be a worthy upgrade for my 1070. My 1070 seems to do around 55FPS on warhammer 2 and the 3070 should do around 70 FPS. 15FPs aren't worth 500€ or thereabouts. At least to me since saving that much money requires quite a bit of effort.

Obviously your miliage will vary as a GPU can be much more than just a console and these GPU have much more features like DLSS that might be important to you. As a mostly PC gamer I highly recomend not upgrading unless your PC performance isn't what you want/need.

For example I plan to keep my 1070 until i can find a X070 card (or the AMD equivalent) that can at least double the performance of a game I am playing (of around 100 FPS on warhammer 2)

Click to shrink...

The 3070 is twice as fast as a 1070, unless you're being CPU bottlenecked.

 

[Linus815]

I keep reading in specs my i5 3570k isn't good enough. And then the games run fine.

Click to shrink...

i mean.. it all depends on the games you play and the performance you expect.

most ubisoft open world titles of the last 4 years have completely maxed out 4c4t cpus to the point where maintaining 60 fps consistently with them is practically impossible. Watch Dogs2, AC origins, Odyssey, Watch Dogs Legion and the like. Hell, even 4c8t isn't enough for actual consistent 60 fps in Legion and Odyssey. Valhalla is a bit better, though 4c4t is still eaten for breakfast.

Red Dead 2 isn't that cpu bound but 4c4t is absolutely not enough for stable 60 fps in any towns. There's a lot of stutters and inconsistent framerates.

but even something like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which isn't an open world game has some pretty poor 1% lows with 4c4t, while 4c8t clears them all up.

 

[Patapuf]

System requirements need to be read with a grain of salt, that much is true. Especially nowadays, with the performance gap between 1080p and 1440p and 4k being so huge.

The thing is that modern games are made with a pretty big range of hardware in mind. When the pace of innovation was still high the minimum used to be much stricter. Nowadays, as long as you are willing to compromise on resolution and performance, you can make a lot of stuff work.

 

[Pyro]

I think the real reason is that people very poorly understand what game development actually is* and base a lot of inaccurate or poorly misguided assumptions from the perspective that they ultimately know everything.

Click to shrink...

 

[Gelf]

Looking up YouTube videos with roughly my specs has been more worthwhile when I have a lower end system, then you find more games can run fine on an old system than it appears from recommended specs alone. I went through a lot of the gen with a GTX 660 and an i7 860. A lot of the time I just needed to be realistic, sometimes locking to 30fps and 900p much like an Xbox One game would.

Making sure I bought from a store with a good refund policy was important though. If the game simply can't be made to work then at least I can return it. Rarely did I have to though as the YouTube vids made it clear enough what to expect.

 

[degauss]

"Purposely making pc gaming more expensive"

Its not a conspiracy. PC isn't even really a consideration for developers here. Most games are going to be targeted to console specs, and "ported" to PC. What you are complaining about is simply the drive to make games look better than ever that is aligning with a new console generation at 10+ TF

If your PC isn't moderately above those base nextgen console you might struggle soon.

Every time a new graphical effect is added and becomes commonplace, people will complain that it "barely looks better" or isn't worth the the performance hit.

But yet here we are in 2020 and all these things add up and games each year look on average better than ever.

 

[jediyoshi]

It's a conspiracy only every single person participating in can either reference or test for themselves with extensive and easily researchable documentation online.