how can you tell if one part is better than another?

[charlie8686]

For PC requirements, there will be minimum and recommended requirements. How can you tell if your parts are better or worse than the requirements state?

 

[grana92]

It is presumed that you know what are the specs of your PC.. If you don't know you can look it up in Control Panel/System for a basic overview. For a more in-depth list - right click on My Computer (Or Computer depending on your OS)/Properties/Device Manager. There you'll see the exact name of your components such as GPU, CPU, RAM, Storage drives, etc..

 

[Maarsch]

There are different ways of measuring if something is better/worse. Generally higher clockspeed is better and of course more RAM is better than less RAM. If you want to learn the specifics, you can start reading around this site and work your way forward googling specifics. Ask specific questions in the forum.

Easier is to find a comparison site, there's things like cpuboss and gpuboss, which give you a combined score. At a very basic level that will tell you exactly that. For purposes of min/recommended specs they'll do the job.
Or you could use a site like this one

At Tom's we have these lists:
CPU hierarchy
GPU hierarchy

If the minimum requirement of the game is a CPU/GPU above you in the hierarchy you will have issues. If it is on the same tier or below you, you're good.

 

[Cryio]

Both the minimum and required specs are every time, all the time, bullshit.

What you need to know.

All games will run if you have a DirectX11 GPU. Basically all GPUs from the past 6 years.
All games will run if you have at least a dual core CPU released in the past 4 years or any Intel Core CPU from the past 5 years.
All games will run if you have 4 GBs of ram (doesn't matter what ram) and Windows 7/8.1/10 x64.
All games will run if you have your Windows OS up to date.
All games will run properly if you always have the latest GPU driver.

If a game states it requires an i5 minimum, that is a lie. Certain CPU power is required only in direction proportion to how powerful your GPU is.
If a game states it requires a GPU for maximum, that is a lie. There is no "maximum". You may play the game in 720, 1080p, 1440P or 4K. Recommended GPU doesn't tell you if the game will run at what resolution, at what FPS or at what AA level.

The only thing a game requirements will REALLY tell you is how much HDD space is requires to be install (and not even that, all install from Steam are at least 25% smaller than recommended specs) AND how much VRAM your GPU needs to run the game. That is usually something you can't dodge.

 

[Cryio]

You need to do some searching on your part to learn what is faster than what usually.

 

[charlie8686]

Thank you for the answers. There should be some better way to figure out how good your PC is.