if my cpu is slightly below the minimum specs, is it still playable?

[Farhan12]

my specs :

case : NZXT S340 Elite
mo : gigabyte B250M Gaming 3
cpu : Intel Core i5 7400
gpu : Gigabyte 1050Ti
storage : WD Blue 1TB
PSU : Corsair VS450W
RAM : Hyperx Fury 1x8GB 2133Mhz

http://www.game-debate.com/cpu/index.php?pid=902&pid2=2454&compare=Intel%20Core%20i5-3570K%203.4GHz-vs-Intel%20Core%20i5-7400%203.0GHz

As you can see, my cpu is slightly below the minimum cpu. Is it still playable? Also, how much less should it be for it to be not playable?

 

[dshort01]

Probably but you may have to lower the graphics resolution in the game settings. I find in general he cpu is rarely the bottle neck. It is the other components that often choke off the performance. Or other things that consume the resources, including amount of memory and the speed of the memory. 8 gigs of ram is probably considered the bare minimum these days. Processes running in the background that you are not aware of. The list goes on and on...

 

[jawlesspython04]

You might need to lower the settings a bit as you are running with Single Channel RAM and your CPU is near the minimum requirements.

 

[richardvday]

As long as your close its OK, its still a quad-core CPU and the clocks are very close the performance is very similar.
The HDD you have is more likely to bottleneck you than your CPU.
And only 1 stick of ram is a no no also. Dual channel is not a gimmick. Quad channel doesn't show much outside of synthetics except for specific workloads over dual channel but you should add another stick preferably the same as your existing or buy a kit and sell this or use it elsewhere.
But really your GPU is the most important thing for games typically.

 

[cryoburner]

An i5-7400 should be very close in performance to a stock 3570K. And what game are you even looking at the specs for? The i5-7400 is a mid-range quad-core CPU that just came out a little over a year ago, and should be able to run any modern AAA game rather well. I can't think of any games that such a processor wouldn't meet the minimum requirements for.

And single channel RAM shouldn't actually make any major performance difference on that processor. At least, it shouldn't hurt gaming performance by more than a few percent or so, unless someone were using the integrated graphics rather than a dedicated card. I wouldn't bother upgrading your RAM until games really start to benefit from having more than 8GB. Currently, practically all games still get by fine on 8GB, so long as you are not multitasking with web browsers and things running in the background at the same time.