Specs getting stupid?

dreamers75

Are game specs getting stupid or are games not being optimised looking at some of the recent spec announcments for poor looking games:

Evil Within
Assassins Creed


Are we getting screwed by having to go over the specs of a console because the game is not optimised for PC?

None of this years game come close to being a good looking as Arma3 (best looking game out atm imo on high everything and its a year a bit old)

Gbear

I'd say it's mostly bollocks tbh.

Most of what I've read about Shadow of Mordor's supposed need for 6GB RAM is that it actually makes no difference.

dreamers75

Every now and then a Far Cry comes along that forces you to upgrade your PC, i dont see it in these games. When that game comes you sorta realise "**** playing in 1024x768" because its a good game.

Anyone care to speculate what that game will be?

Im going with Witcher 3.

TerrorFirmer

Game minimum requirements are usually a load of rubbish.

My latest example, Alien Isolation says a minimum of an Intel E8500 is required (a 3.16Ghz Core 2 Processor).

I installed it on an E6850 processor machine with a GTX650Ti (The E6850 is a 7 year old 3Ghz Core 2 Processor and considerably below the E8500).

80fps.

Baked.noodle

Alien Isolation runs pretty good at the preset settings on my modest rig (3Ghz Q6600, 4GB DDR2, 6870), and the only other recent game I tried was Watch Dogs, which was a pig. I say tried because I hated the driving model and it just didn't entice me to put up with the poor performance. To be honest I'm not playing much games these days anyway any most of them have zero appeal when I look at let's play videos. I think the PC games industry have a vested interest in promoting expensive hardware with eye candy, and I think that is why console games ports have ridiculous recommended specs recently. If you have a 1080p monitor, a half decent graphics card and a processor from the last 5 years your set up. As far as I can see, the only substantial difference today is texture resolution and audio which has seen game data sizes jump from 8-10 GB on last gen titles to 25-50 GB on some new games. There has been very little innovation in physics, AI and game design. Alien Isolation is a breath of fresh air, and reminds me of the first Bioshock, which was the best in the series and a fine game.

Taylor365

Skyrim requires 6-8gb of VRAM...with the right mods :P

If you want pretty, its gna cost pretty...

jumbobreakfast

I suspect that the high VRAM requirements are for 4k monitors

dreamers75

Taylor365 wrote: »

Skyrim requires 6-8gb of VRAM...with the right mods :P

If you want pretty, its gna cost pretty...

Thats the mods tho, which we should allow them to be poorly optimised as they are mods to make a 3 year old game look stunning.

Its the console games that are made on PC that annoy me.

cherryghost

Evil Within specs are rubbish. I played on a lowly laptop without problems, well below its minimum spec. I would say half the 'minimum specs' requirements at utter garbage, its down to the fact they never bother to test across the wide spectrum of hardware.

Tesco TripleChicken

I don't go by the listed min specs, I think it's better to just search your specs on youtube to see how people with similar specs to you could run the game

Sierra Oscar

It seems that developers don't put as much effort into highlighting the actual required specs these days. I guess they are trying to cover themselves.

cherryghost

CoD Ghosts last year was a prime example

Nabber

I thought 8GB was standard gaming rig.
You can never have too much RAM. I speculate that they increase RAM sized based on the average user not shutting down unnecessary programs, rebuilding image and basically letting their PC go to the dogs.

To be honest I don't blame them aiming high. Plus if you are willing to spend €60 on a game why wouldn't you have an 8GB machine?

Taylor365

Nabber wrote: »

I thought 8GB was standard gaming rig.
You can never have too much RAM. I speculate that they increase RAM sized based on the average user not shutting down unnecessary programs, rebuilding image and basically letting their PC go to the dogs.

To be honest I don't blame them aiming high. Plus if you are willing to spend €60 on a game why wouldn't you have an 8GB machine?

8GB VRAM sets you back the best part of €1000 if not a lot more on a card capable of running it at a decent speed.

The Titan is 6GB and would struggle to use all of that. By the times games catch up to utilizing this much VRAM, it will be too slow to run them.

The exceptions are Skyrim modded or 3 monitor set-ups.

4k textures and a far draw distance on Skyrim requires a crazy amount of VRAM. My 2GB card crashes after a few minutes with it Hope to upgrade to a 4GB+ card next year when they go to a reasonable price and test her out again and see how i do

TerrorFirmer

R9 290's are now around the €250 mark. Best value card at the moment now.

I think he clearly meant 8GB ram, not vram. For the vast majority of games at 1080p which is still the overwhelming norm, 2gb is more than enough, let alone 4, 6 and 8gb vram.

Most games also run fine on 4gb of ram at the moment as well.

Taylor365

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

R9 290's are now around the €250 mark. Best value card at the moment now.

I think he clearly meant 8GB ram, not vram. For the vast majority of games at 1080p which is still the overwhelming norm, 2gb is more than enough, let alone 4, 6 and 8gb vram.

Most games also run fine on 4gb of ram at the moment as well.

Aye, he did, but we were talking VRAM to begin with :pac:

I'm hoping to pick up a gtx970 or 980 when they drop a bit next year

r9 290 is too close in performance with my 7870 to warrant the price.

TerrorFirmer

Taylor365 wrote: »

r9 290 is too close in performance with my 7870 to warrant the price.

Wha? The R9 290 is light years ahead of the 7870....the GTX970 is increasing in price while the 290 is dropping, with the result that at the moment you can get a high quality R9 290 that's the same raw speed as the 970 for €100+ less in price. You do realise that the R9 290 and the GTX970 are more or less the same performance? The 7870 trails way behind (still a grand card though).

I don't buy into this recommending the GTX970 like it's some sort of gaming revelation, sure if it was cheaper, but the R9 290 is the much better buy now at current prices. You could buy 8GB of ram, a 120GB SSD, or a host of other stuff with the price difference - for the same in-game performance really.

Skatedude

Also, what is minimum standard for a game. For me it needs to run at 60fps locked. smoothness first, eye candy second.

However, the minimum specs for a game should be that it will run at 60fps on a 1080p monitor at lowest settings.
And recommended should mean running the game @60 on 1080p at high settings.

There needs to a set standard for what minimum, recommened and max specs, what frp at what resolution.

But we would all still be using a playstation 1 or lower if it wasnt for pc specs be pushed higher by pc games

TerrorFirmer

Skatedude wrote: »

Also, what is minimum standard for a game. For me it needs to run at 60fps locked. smoothness first, eye candy second.

However, the minimum specs for a game should be that it will run at 60fps on a 1080p monitor at lowest settings.
And recommended should mean running the game @60 on 1080p at high settings.

There needs to a set standard for what minimum, recommened and max specs, what frp at what resolution.

But we would all still be using a playstation 1 or lower if it wasnt for pc specs be pushed higher by pc games

That's subjective though, and that would cut out a large portion of a market.

For me, minimum settings should mean that you can play the game - at decent framerate at low settings and resolution - and that's what minimum requirements usually mean. You can still go below minimum requirements and enjoy the game in most cases, but the framerate may just be that little bit on the low side to be able to stand behind it and say you'll get the full experience as it was intended. I don't mind playing at reduced visuals, but I cannot stand a low framerate.

Low settings @ 1080p can be demanding enough for some games that would run perfectly well at 1366x768 or 1280x800, etc. Setting minimum requirements at 1080p 60fps would be a disaster for developers/publishers.

I remember a friend back in the day - his PC literally just met the minimum requirements for Unreal Tournament (the 1999 one). You'd want to have seen the game - lowest everything, at 320x240 resolution on a 19" CRT monitor. It was an absolutely disgrace, don't know how he played it.

Thankfully, those days of PC gaming and 'low settings' is past. Games like Battlefield 4, Crysis 3, Call of Duty and so on actually still look fine at low settings and relatively low resolution.

I think that as long as minimum requirements cover a consistently decent framerate at low settings and/or resolution, then the developer has covered themselves and honestly.

Taylor365

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Wha? The R9 290 is light years ahead of the 7870....the GTX970 is increasing in price while the 290 is dropping, with the result that at the moment you can get a high quality R9 290 that's the same raw speed as the 970 for €100+ less in price. You do realise that the R9 290 and the GTX970 are more or less the same performance? The 7870 trails way behind (still a grand card though).

I don't buy into this recommending the GTX970 like it's some sort of gaming revelation, sure if it was cheaper, but the R9 290 is the much better buy now at current prices. You could buy 8GB of ram, a 120GB SSD, or a host of other stuff with the price difference - for the same in-game performance really.

I don't know....might get the 290x though

Really want to hold out for a 980 but that probably wont drop too much in price over next year...

dreamers75

FC4 Specs out and they are way below what I expected.

http://kotaku.com/your-pc-needs-this-many-yaks-to-run-far-cry-4-1655632892

TheDoc

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

R9 290's are now around the €250 mark. Best value card at the moment now.

I think he clearly meant 8GB ram, not vram. For the vast majority of games at 1080p which is still the overwhelming norm, 2gb is more than enough, let alone 4, 6 and 8gb vram.

Most games also run fine on 4gb of ram at the moment as well.

Was toying with the idea of upgrading my GPU to get ULTRA smooth and high FPS on the new WoW expansion coming out.

i'm running a R270x, was toying with idea of Crossfire. Would I notice a big bump with an R290?

TerrorFirmer

TheDoc wrote: »

Was toying with the idea of upgrading my GPU to get ULTRA smooth and high FPS on the new WoW expansion coming out.

i'm running a R270x, was toying with idea of Crossfire. Would I notice a big bump with an R290?

Massive. The R9 290 runs pretty much anything at ultra/maxed out at 2560x1440 at solid FPS.

I used mine for 4K gaming and it even ran that pretty well.

TheDoc

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Massive. The R9 290 runs pretty much anything at ultra/maxed out at 2560x1440 at solid FPS.

I used mine for 4K gaming and it even ran that pretty well.

Interesting. I'd be interested since coming into a few quid buying a powerful card to get high, slick, FPS.

I think everything else in my machine is pretty good and shouldn't cause bottlenecks or problems

Might look into this.

ThrAx

I'm a R9 290 owner and its definitely a good buy. I'm considering a second now that they are lowering in price. I really hope AMD optimize the drivers for VR.

CruelCoin

Taylor365 wrote: »

4k textures and a far draw distance on Skyrim requires a crazy amount of VRAM. My 2GB card crashes after a few minutes with it Hope to upgrade to a 4GB+ card next year when they go to a reasonable price and test her out again and see how i do

Do you have a 4k screen?

The GPU crunching 4k textures is completely pointless if you are on a 1080p screen and can only display a fraction of it.....

CruelCoin

Taylor365 wrote: »

I don't know....might get the 290x though

Really want to hold out for a 980 but that probably wont drop too much in price over next year...

You could go for an OC 970.

The gigabyte windofrce 970oc has 95% of the performance of a stock 980 at a massive price saving.

ThrAx

OSI wrote: »

Do AMD have an equivalent of Nvidias game stream? I could probably pull myself away from 3D Vision, but the GameStream stuff has become a regular use for me.

I dunno, could you use Splashtop?

Donne

CruelCoin wrote: »

You could go for an OC 970.

The gigabyte windofrce 970oc has 95% of the performance of a stock 980 at a massive price saving.

I was wondering, does a 980GTX's overclocking give as much % speed boost as the 970GTX's overclocking does?

Taylor365

Donne wrote: »

I was wondering, does a 980GTX's overclocking give as much % speed boost as the 970GTX's overclocking does?

O_o


Anyway... with 20-50 quid in the difference, the GTX970 looks a much better option than an r9 290 which I've heard runs HOTT!

I won't be upgrading until next year and rumors are the AMD 3xx series is due out Feb-Mar next year. Hopefully drops prices all round

CruelCoin

Donne wrote: »

I was wondering, does a 980GTX's overclocking give as much % speed boost as the 970GTX's overclocking does?

Not sure!

But to add to the previous poster, the 970 runs at very low wattages (150 only, at full whack!), runs cool and with the windforce, runs quiet.

It'll max out all settings, in all games, for 2 monitors, so if you're gaming on a single 1080p screen you'll be set for years before needing an upgrade.