Which Games truly have the highest MINIMUM SPECS?

[Grovest]

There have been many threads talking about how demanding this game or that can be IF the settings are maxed OR some obscure patch or hack is added to the game. As for vendor provided 'minimum specs', much of the time they are based on the assumption that everyone wants to play the game at its graphical best NOT the real minimum requirements.

So, which games even on lower settings really push the hardware to simply be 'playable'? Which games really can't be played on that old dual core laptop with Intel HD graphics and a 720P display?

Just because a game can't be played at 90fps at 4096x2760 resolution with 48x Anti-Aliasing, 64x Texture Filtering, etc. without a high end system doesn't make them unplayable on an older laptop with nothing more than a Pentium processor, and Intel HD graphics driving the notebook's 720P display. Often they are even able to maintain a very playable 20fps on lower settings BUT some simply can't be played.

For those games which are true beasts, are they CPU, Memory OR GPU killers? I am trying to decide with a new low end laptop if it makes more sense to go with one with better graphics (AMD HD 8650 but an older dual core processor) or one with faster processor (Intel i5 but with only Intel 4200 graphics).

 

[masterdam17]

Crysis 3.. thats it

 

[Grovest]

Crysis 3.. thats it

Crysis 3 seems to be a real oddball... a truly crappy port. If the game is able to run fine on xbox360 which has no better hardware than a typical 'modern' tablet yet can't run on a Windows system something is truly sad in how it has been brought across ESPECIALLY considering the graphics in the game (when the settings are set to low) are terrible.

Not sure if it a case (like the higher settings with GTA 4) of the developers of Crysis using too many textures and hence being a video memory hog yet not allowing the user to decrease the objects displayed, or if it is a case of loading a much larger play space than loaded when running on xBox or what BUT it makes absolutely no sense why it would be so high while newer games which are more complex graphically and unable for that reason to be ported to xBox 360 (i.e. requiring a newer platform as a minimum such as xBox One to run) are far less demanding on the PC. It is almost as if the port was intentionally done poorly in order to sell people on the continued need for console games.

Are any newer games as hardware demanding?

 

[cats_Paw]

Id say stacraft 2 as far as CPU goes is a decent example or shogun total war 2.
In GPU... and not beeing a terrible port?.... Metro 2033?
A bit hard to say really 😀.

 

[Danimal1q2w3]

"Very playable 20 fps"

 

[manofchalk]

The minimum specs is pretty much just another way of saying "this will run the game like a Powerpoint Presentation at least", no real consideration for play experience. Recommended Settings is probably more what your thinking of. Because I really doubt Crytek recommend a Pentium Dual Core and a GT520 for good gameplay with Crysis 3.

As for the most demanding game at the lowest level, probably Star Citizen at this point. From what I have heard about it, its basically gearing itself as another "Crysis", where it wont be possible to max it out on current hardware.

 

[Troll1337]

Minecraft, elma, lego starwars and so on absolute beast in terms useing extreme computing power

 

[Grovest]

"Very playable 20 fps"

FPS unfortunately isn't the best bar perhaps to use. I have found that GTA (which I use to use to check out machines) plays well and without much stutter as long as the game maintains 20 fps, but some new games (Raymon Legends for example) stutter and plays pathetic at much less than 40+ fps. It is too bad that a better benchmark doesn't exist which truly captures if the game is able to play without stutter... My first 'high performace' video card was an ATI X1950 which today would be blown away by just about every video card on the market YET myself (and many others who purchased one at the time) were very happy that the card was able to achieve 30fps playing the rather crude games of the day.

Not that long ago the standard frame rate for motion pictures was only 24fps and traditional animation doesn't get unbearably jittery until you drop below 8 fps. What gives with games today which 'need' high frame rates just to be playable?

 

[Grovest]

Minecraft, elma, lego starwars and so on absolute beast in terms useing extreme computing power

Thanks! What gives with Minecraft? The graphics are crude (actually I have only played it on xBox so I am assuming that the graphics are no better on the PC) and the complexity is fairly simple (when compared even to classics like SimCity) yet the game seems to be an absolute pig when it comes to CPU/Memory requirements.

 

[Grovest]

Id say stacraft 2 as far as CPU goes is a decent example or shogun total war 2.
In GPU... and not beeing a terrible port?.... Metro 2033?
A bit hard to say really 😀.

Thanks!

I had been meaning to purchase Metro 2033 as it is the type of game I like, just picked up a copy today and your right... it seems to be a great benchmarking game. Funny thing about the game is that it crashes after the initial video on my soon to be upgraded again desktop gaming system (AMD Phenom / Radeon HD 7950) but at least ran on a friends i3 laptop (HD 4000 graphics) but a little too slow for my liking. Doing a little digging it seems the game has a glitch in that it won't run on previous generation processors (i.e. those which don't support certain newer graphics commands).

Shogun Total War 2 looks interesting as well, but from the reviews has a little less storyline than I like to justify buying.

 

[Rally0078]

try X plane 10 and PC will die. Xplane 10 kills CPU and GPU