Hardware Requirements Exposed

[Prince Xaine]

Test PC Specifications:

1. Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

2. Mainboard: Dell Inspiron 530S

3. Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 @  3.3 GHz

4. Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GT 1030

5. Memory: 4 x 1 GB DDR2 @ 800MHz

6. SSD: Kingston A400 120 GB [Windows]

7. HDD: Western Digital Black 720 GB [Games]

 

At a resolution of 1280x1024, this PC was able to run each and every game I was able to conjure, at a framerate of at least 30FPS. These games included, but are not limited to:

GTA V, The Witcher 3, DOOM, No Man's Sky, Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 4

 

While the settings needed to be 'dialed' back in some cases, such as DOOM, the game was entirely playable, with very few jitters. But this shouldn't make any sense right?

 

DOOM REQUIRES:

• 64-bit Windows 7/Windows 8.1.
• Intel Core i5 @ 3.3 GHz or better / AMD FX-8320.
• 8 GB RAM.
• Nvidia GTX 670 2GB/ AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2GB VRAM)
• 6GB HDD space.
• Steam account.
• High speed internet connection.

 

The test system only met a couple of the requirements, and had a vastly under-equipped processor.

 

Tell me what you think!

Are hardware requirements being inflated?

[PlayStation 2]

It's kinda necessary to inflate the hardware requirements, otherwise you'll have people complaining that their computer can't run the game.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, Prince Xaine said:

While the settings needed to be 'dialed' back in some cases, such as DOOM, the game was entirely playable, with very few jitters. But this shouldn't make any sense right?

 

 

DOOM REQUIRES:

• 64-bit Windows 7/Windows 8.1.
• Intel Core i5 @ 3.3 GHz or better / AMD FX-8320.
• 8 GB RAM.
• Nvidia GTX 670 2GB/ AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2GB VRAM)
• 6GB HDD space.
• Steam account.
• High speed internet connection.

These are the recommended requirements, meant to indicate what kind of hardware you'll need to run the game without problems at decent settings.

 

1 minute ago, Prince Xaine said:

Tell me what you think!

 

Are hardware requirements being inflated?

No, games are getting more demanding. My GTX 780, which was king when it was released, is only a midrange card now due to that.

 

Again, recommended requirements will obviously vary from what's needed to just run the game at a playable framerate.

[Prince Xaine]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

It's kinda necessary to inflate the hardware requirements, otherwise you'll have people complaining that their computer can't run the game.

While I agree to this statement, the processor requirement was DOUBLED, as well as the RAM needed!

[Prince Xaine]

Minimum Doom system requirements:

• 64-bit Windows 7/Windows 8.1.
• Intel Core i5 @ 3.3 GHz or better / AMD FX-8320.
• 8 GB RAM.
• Nvidia GTX 670 2GB/ AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2GB VRAM)
• 6GB HDD space.
• Steam account.
• High speed internet connection.

[Onboard87]

3 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

These are the recommended requirements, meant to indicate what kind of hardware you'll need to run the game without problems at decent settings.

 

there are so many different system configs that the chance of computers having the same brands and configs are nill. and my 2ac8 HP MOBO is running a 1070 AMD FX 8350 and while i can run modern games on CPU intensive games i see bottleneck that my 8 core has placed on it by a HP Gigabyte board.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Interesting test. I imagine those are the minimums for 1080p gaming, 1280*1024 is a lot less

[Paul Rudd]

24 minutes ago, Prince Xaine said:

But this shouldn't make any sense right?

Makes perfect sense. When you put your mind to it, you can accomplish something you've never accomplished before. I once got an i5 paired with a GTX 1060 3GB to run a stable 35 fps in GTA 5 at 4k! And no, all my settings were not set to low either. In fact, a lot of them were set to high.

[Onboard87]

4 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Interesting test. I imagine those are the minimums for 1080p gaming, 1280*1024 is a lot less

if i was to bet it would be med to low at 720p

[Prince Xaine]

Thanks! I am glad you liked the test! I would have tried 1080p, but the monitor was only able to do 1280x1024. My Graphics card was able to scale the monitor to 1920x1080, but it looked worse than 1280x1024. Honestly, I don't think the system is much capable of running the game in 1080p anyways.

 

This test basically proves you don't necessarily need to update your entire PC in order to play a new game. Sure it may not look the greatest, but for those looking to be just able to run the game, this system passes the test. The total price of this build was only $200. 

[Prince Xaine]

7 minutes ago, A Random Dude said:

Makes perfect sense. When you put your mind to it, you can accomplish something you've never accomplished before. I once got an i5 paired with a GTX 1060 3GB to run a stable 35 fps in GTA 5 at 4k! And no, all my settings were not set to low either. In fact, a lot of them were set to high.

A 1060 is actually a really powerful card, and at 4K, the graphics card basically does all the work so the i5 would keep up. Higher settings also transfer to the graphics card. I would be very surprised if you didn't have much texture pop-in due to overloading the graphics card.

[Paul Rudd]

1 hour ago, Prince Xaine said:

I would be very surprised if you didn't have much texture pop-in due to overloading the graphics card.

Very minimal texture pop in. Distance scaling and Extended Distance Scaling both at 20%. It's just enough when you put the right other settings off or on low. In GTA 5 that is. I spent hours upon hours tweaking the settings in GTA 5 alone. I mastered them.

[xAcid9]

2 hours ago, Prince Xaine said:

Tell me what you think!

Are hardware requirements being inflated?

Hardware requirement didn't include at what settings and resolutions those spec they listed is capable off. They're never really accurate anyway. 

[Taja]

4 hours ago, Prince Xaine said:

Tell me what you think!

Are hardware requirements being inflated?

Maybe a bit, but not really. Every requirement is arbitrary, and the baseline resolution is 1080p (unless when said otherwise, some games have reqs for 720p 30 fps).

You just have to keep in mind that most configurations can play most games, but the user experience will change drastically...

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

I can think of two reasons why hardware requirements tend to be "inaccurate"

• Having "it technically runs" doesn't really work out so well. I tried playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the minimum spec. I may as well have been playing something the equivalent of Turok on the N64. Windows XP on minimum spec (at least for RAM) was a slog to get through.
• Developers don't want to support hardware that isn't supported by the manufacturer anymore. The Core 2 is basically abandoned by Intel. AMD no longer cares about anything older than Bulldozer or the Radeon HD 6000 (at the very least, the Radeon HD 5000). Anything older than GeForce 600 is no longer supported by NVIDIA. So if there is a legitimate issue caused by the unsupported hardware and your development team likely doesn't have the resources to help, then what can you do when you've advertised your application is supposed to work on it?

[Prince Xaine]

3 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I can think of two reasons why hardware requirements tend to be "inaccurate"

• Having "it technically runs" doesn't really work out so well. I tried playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the minimum spec. I may as well have been playing something the equivalent of Turok on the N64. Windows XP on minimum spec (at least for RAM) was a slog to get through.
• Developers don't want to support hardware that isn't supported by the manufacturer anymore. The Core 2 is basically abandoned by Intel. AMD no longer cares about anything older than Bulldozer or the Radeon HD 6000 (at the very least, the Radeon HD 5000). Anything older than GeForce 600 is no longer supported by NVIDIA. So if there is a legitimate issue caused by the unsupported hardware and your development team likely doesn't have the resources to help, then what can you do when you've advertised your application is supposed to work on it?

This is all true, and I get it. Unsupported hardware is well, hard to support. No developer of a game is going to buy every card from 10 years ago to make sure it works. But honestly, I think they should have a 'theoretical minimum' and 'supported minimum'.

 

Why is this so important? There are several people out there who, honestly, just can't afford the constant 'upgrades' to minimum specs or beyond each time the graphics get a little shinier. I think it's important to have these people in mind, giving out the minimum specs the game could theoretically run at minimum. It doesn't have to be accurate. It could even be a little beefier than what is actually possible. But honestly, I think people would be a bit happier knowing, at 720p and maybe even 480p, they could run the next big game albeit with compromised graphics.

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 minutes ago, Prince Xaine said:

This is all true, and I get it. Unsupported hardware is well, hard to support. No developer of a game is going to buy every card from 10 years ago to make sure it works. But honestly, I think they should have a 'theoretical minimum' and 'supported minimum'.

I don't think that'll work so well because people don't read. Myself included. Or they'll just confused.

 

4 minutes ago, Prince Xaine said:

Why is this so important? There are several people out there who, honestly, just can't afford the constant 'upgrades' to minimum specs or beyond each time the graphics get a little shinier. I think it's important to have these people in mind, giving out the minimum specs the game could theoretically run at minimum. It doesn't have to be accurate. It could even be a little beefier than what is actually possible. But honestly, I think people would be a bit happier knowing, at 720p and maybe even 480p, they could run the next big game albeit with compromised graphics.

Anyone who likely wants to play games but has a hard time upgrading to something more modern likely has tabs on how well their hardware performs anyway. And at some point they realize that requirements aren't really useful anyway.

 

I mean, you don't see an average Joe driving around in a 70s Mustang. It's usually someone who really knows a thing or two about the car.

[Prince Xaine]

I've seen quite a few people with 10 year old systems who ask me "will it run?" or go to sites looking to see if their hardware would be able to run the game, only to find out they don't reach the minimum specifications. And the worst part, a system that would costs $500+ which they can't afford at that point in time. Now wouldn't it be nice if I could show them a $100 upgrade that doesn't meet the specifications but would run the game? I think a lot of people just get disheartened and just end up playing on a Playstation or Xbox. I'm not saying your argument is invalid at all. Mileage definitely varies and matters. But not everyone is proficient in technology and have no idea the ways they could save money, or find a workaround to be able to play (Like lowering resolution). I think for this reason, the minimum requirements are too brutal.

[Mira Yurizaki]

19 hours ago, Prince Xaine said:

I've seen quite a few people with 10 year old systems who ask me "will it run?" or go to sites looking to see if their hardware would be able to run the game, only to find out they don't reach the minimum specifications. And the worst part, a system that would costs $500+ which they can't afford at that point in time. Now wouldn't it be nice if I could show them a $100 upgrade that doesn't meet the specifications but would run the game? I think a lot of people just get disheartened and just end up playing on a Playstation or Xbox. I'm not saying your argument is invalid at all. Mileage definitely varies and matters. But not everyone is proficient in technology and have no idea the ways they could save money, or find a workaround to be able to play (Like lowering resolution). I think for this reason, the minimum requirements are too brutal.

I guess that depends on where you live too. If you're in a country where access to up-to-date hardware isn't easy, then sure, I could understand more people who want to game with older hardware.

 

But on the other hand, these people aren't likely to be the target market for a lot of games anyway. Publishers will aim for what most of their market likely has. Once source of this data comes from Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/. Even from this information we can see a majority of users have quad-core CPUs running at a base clock speed of around 3.5GHz. Which means from this sample, most people are using at least a 2nd generation Core i5. On the video card side, most people are using something that's within three generations. So if I were a AAA publisher, I'd probably be targeting no less than that to find a balance between maximum market potential and minimum support costs.

 

And if people are penny pinching anyway for hardware, I'm not expecting them to buy my $60 (or whatever the equivalent cost of living wise) AAA game either. Even if I were a developer, I may not have my hands on that kind of hardware or that setup since businesses tend to cycle through hardware regularly.

[Prince Xaine]

3 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I guess that depends on where you live too. If you're in a country where access to up-to-date hardware isn't easy, then sure, I could understand more people who want to game with older hardware.

 

But on the other hand, these people aren't likely to be the target market for a lot of games anyway. Publishers will aim for what most of their market likely has. Once source of this data comes from Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/. Even from this information we can see a majority of users have quad-core CPUs running at a base clock speed of around 3.5GHz. Which means from this sample, most people are using at least a 2nd generation Core i5. On the video card side, most people are using something that's within three generations. So if I were a AAA publisher, I'd probably be targeting no less than that to find a balance between maximum market potential and minimum support costs.

 

And if people are penny pinching anyway for hardware, I'm not expecting them to buy my $60 (or whatever the equivalent cost of living wise) AAA game either. Even if I were a developer, I may not have my hands on that kind of hardware or that setup since businesses tend to cycle through hardware regularly.

This is true. I suppose it just shocked me that a processor that is less than half the requirements was able to play the game. It made me feel like developers for games are trying to force people to buy their sponsor's hardware.

[Aetheria]

On 9/5/2018 at 1:01 AM, Prince Xaine said:

Are hardware requirements being inflated?

No, I just think you have a very generous idea of what playable means. It's pretty unusual to still have a 4:3 or 5:4 monitor. Hook that PC up to a more modern monitor or TV, then see how playable things are.

 

On 9/5/2018 at 1:01 AM, Prince Xaine said:

While the settings needed to be 'dialed' back in some cases, such as DOOM, the game was entirely playable, with very few jitters. But this shouldn't make any sense right?

Again, the pixel refresh on an old LCD monitor like that probably makes the whole thing a muddy blur-fest. And if you're playing at 30FPS and dealing with that much blur, your mouse input is probably so disconnected that you can't feel or see poor frametime consistency.

 

Also doesn't help that you're testing games like GTAV and The Witcher 3. Both games are so up their own arse with animation priority that you might as well be commenting on the playability of SCUMM engine games. How can you judge whether a game is playable on given hardware, when the game is designed in such a way that you press a button, then go off and make a coffee while you wait for your animation to complete and for the game to relinquish control? I'm above recommended specs and GTAV still plays like absolute garbage, not because my hardware can't handle it, but because the game is fundamentally garbage. Likewise, Doom 2016 has really aggressive motion blur. If you completely disable it, then it is a reasonably responsive game which can be used as a yardstick.

[Prince Xaine]

7 hours ago, Aetheria said:

No, I just think you have a very generous idea of what playable means. It's pretty unusual to still have a 4:3 or 5:4 monitor. Hook that PC up to a more modern monitor or TV, then see how playable things are.

 

Again, the pixel refresh on an old LCD monitor like that probably makes the whole thing a muddy blur-fest. And if you're playing at 30FPS and dealing with that much blur, your mouse input is probably so disconnected that you can't feel or see poor frametime consistency.

 

Also doesn't help that you're testing games like GTAV and The Witcher 3. Both games are so up their own arse with animation priority that you might as well be commenting on the playability of SCUMM engine games. How can you judge whether a game is playable on given hardware, when the game is designed in such a way that you press a button, then go off and make a coffee while you wait for your animation to complete and for the game to relinquish control? I'm above recommended specs and GTAV still plays like absolute garbage, not because my hardware can't handle it, but because the game is fundamentally garbage. Likewise, Doom 2016 has really aggressive motion blur. If you completely disable it, then it is a reasonably responsive game which can be used as a yardstick.

1280x1024 or 1280x720 isn't what I would consider a "muddy blur fest". It isn't that long ago most people were playing all of their games at 720p. Secondly, you never "wait" for an animation to complete in any of those games. I don't know what "garbage" hardware you're running, but obviously you must have optimization issues if GTA V or DOOM doesn't run well on your machine. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't my main computer. It was simply a test, to see what games I could manage to get playable frame rates in with old hardware. My apologies if you didn't like the test because my potato did better than your computer.

[Aetheria]

13 hours ago, Prince Xaine said:

1280x1024 or 1280x720 isn't what I would consider a "muddy blur fest"

It's not the resolution; it's the age of the panels. Even when widescreen monitors were becoming the norm, most LCD panels were still of poor quality.

 

13 hours ago, Prince Xaine said:

Secondly, you never "wait" for an animation to complete in any of those games

In GTAV? What? There's no way to animation cancel in GTAIV or GTAV which magically transforms them in to responsive games.

 

13 hours ago, Prince Xaine said:

I don't know what "garbage" hardware you're running, but obviously you must have optimization issues if GTA V or DOOM doesn't run well on your machine.

Good job completely missing the point, and being an arse about it. If I knew you were going to be a shitbird, I would have lined up something sarcastic about playing a bloody Naruto game.

[Prince Xaine]

1 hour ago, Aetheria said:

It's not the resolution; it's the age of the panels. Even when widescreen monitors were becoming the norm, most LCD panels were still of poor quality.

 

In GTAV? What? There's no way to animation cancel in GTAIV or GTAV which magically transforms them in to responsive games.

 

Good job completely missing the point, and being an arse about it. If I knew you were going to be a shitbird, I would have lined up something sarcastic about playing a bloody Naruto game.

I tried a little bit of everything to see how it would run. Being completely honest, it really doesn't look bad at all. I mean it's not 1080p but it's not blurry either. Maybe you've tried some bad old monitors? Anyways, my apologies for the hostility. Not only did I misread like half of your post, but I was also already agitated before I even read it.

[Underi]

Dunno about requirements, I usually look at recommended specifications due to my system. I'd think that recommended are pretty spot on, most modern AAA titles recommend a gtx 1060 and a modern i5, practically my system. I play all of my games at 1680x1050 with high to max settings or not play at all. So far it has been working out.

 

Personally, I don't think 720p with 30fps is playable. To me playable means smooth and 30fps is not smooth.