Relationship between PC specification & games

V8xks

V8xks

V8xks

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Could help me out – I’m trying to understand how a person would focus on a particular specification for a gaming machine. (Disregarding cost and availability for the time being)

I understand how a PS2 needs PS2 games and how every one of them will play perfectly well on that machine, in the same way an Xbox needs Xbox games and so on.

It doesn't seem to apply to gaming machines?

Is there a range of games that play perfectly well on a particular spec of PC but not on a lower spec?

Do all games play on the highest spec machines?

Thank you
 
Pc gaming.

For a game to run at a certain settings it needs hardware to achieve that level required.

Example a game mite need a graphics card low level to run at 1080p resoloution but at 1440p it needs a better graphics card to achieve that higher resoloution because the higher resoloution is more demanding. That's why there is a vast diffrence in price of graphics cards due to there performance.

Games will have a minimum requirement for it to run at a certain level so older games tend be less demanding than newer games on a pc.
 
Thank you for that,
Is the machine requirement shown on the game packaging, and in what way ... how is it quantified
 
V8xks said:
Thank you for that,
Is the machine requirement shown on the game packaging, and in what way ... how is it quantified
Click to expand...
You can Google a game system requirements and research what resoloution hardware level you need to achieve that.

Example. Minecraft system requirements


What games do you want to play and at what resoloution?
 
I hope you’ll stay with me after I tell you I don’t want to play any games, I’m trying to understand why you focus on a particular spec.
 
V8xks said:
I hope you’ll stay with me after I tell you I don’t want to play any games, I’m trying to understand why you focus on a particular spec.
Click to expand...
Well now you know it's all about levels of performance , hardware required to meet that level the Game demands at a certain resoloution.

Wont be staying with you unfortunately I'm off to bed.

Goodnight.
 
mickyflinn said:
Pc gaming.

For a game to run at a certain settings it needs hardware to achieve that level required.

Example a game mite need a graphics card low level to run at 1080p resoloution but at 1440p it needs a better graphics card to achieve that higher resoloution because the higher resoloution is more demanding. That's why there is a vast diffrence in price of graphics cards due to there performance.Games will have a minimum requirement for it to run at a certain level so older games tend be less demanding than newer games on a pc.
Click to expand...

mickyflinn said:
Well now you know it's all about levels of performance , hardware required to meet that level the Game demands at a certain resoloution.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping to understand what you are saying ... and I don't... yet.

Is it the case PC games can be run at different settings say low med & high?
Or is it just low and high ... 1080p & 1440p resolution?
When you say - at a certain level - can all individual games run at a range of levels?
Does the level automatically set itself to suit the machine?
 
Thank you, I’ll have a look at some point - I was hoping someone would be able to give me an understanding without trawling the Internet.

What form does a modern PC game arrive in ... a CD ... a download?

I watched the Video - Thanks for the link
 
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V8xks said:
What form does a modern PC game arrive in ... a CD ... a download?
Click to expand...

pretty much just downloads at this point. most PC cases don't even have space for an optical drive anymore.

The most common answer to any PC hardware question is "it depends..." which isn't very helpful but does give you a sense of it. Different games play differently on different hardware. The faster more powerful hardware you have the wider the scope of games and game options you have. And this being a hardware enthusiast forum a lot of people here will go for the most powerful hardware just to have it. So that tends to skew our view of things.

PC games can also have quite a wide level of difference within their own settings. A good example of this is fortnite which i recently tested on a 2200g, which is a budget cpu with integrated graphics from a few years ago. So more or less the lowest end of PC gaming hardware and with the settings at their lowest I got really good performance 90ish fps at 1080p, But the same game with all the settings turned up to the max, including the new raytracing options and it can bring even really high end machines to their knees.

On top of that PC gaming has a very long tail. you can go to somewhere like GOG.com and buy games that were designed and built to run on PCs from the late 80s or 90s or 2000s or something like cyberpunk which even on the latest most powerful hardware can struggle to run if you turn up all the settings to max

For me the big advantage of PC gaming is options. You have decades worth of games of all styles and genres and you can throw as much or as little as you want at it and there's always something for you. But with that comes the chance for confusion. There often aren't clear yes and no answers, certainly not ones that will work in every case. "is this PC good for gaming?" the answer is going to be "it depends" Any PC will be good for some games and less good for others
 
V8xks said:
Is it the case PC games can be run at different settings say low med & high?
Or is it just low and high ... 1080p & 1440p resolution?
When you say - at a certain level - can all individual games run at a range of levels?
Does the level automatically set itself to suit the machine?
Click to expand...

Different games handle it differently. But the usual set up is the game will have a guess at what settings to use on first start up, some games guess better than others. Then there will often be a basic graphics options. usually just a pre-set slider with things like "low", "medium", "high" and "ultra" and a drop down menu with resolution options.

Then there will be an "advanced options" panel which will let you fiddle lots of options. Sometimes really insane options like how the game models character hair movement or how much foliage there is on plants, or how light interacts with objects in the game, or how much the screen blurs or shakes when you move the camera
 
You're a Star !

Thank you for that excellent explanation - I may have more questions, but in the meantime Q1. are you saying an up to date version of Fortnite runs reasonably well on a PC with an integrated video card? ... if so, Q2. I presume then, that all of the prebuilt gaming machines from £300 to £3000 will play all of the games reasonably well? ... Q3. Including my own Windows 10 64bit desk top Intel i3 with 8193MB RAM and an NVidia GeForce GTX650 video card and sound courtesy of a top of the range Technics Midi System?

Thank you for going to the extra trouble as I'm sure you are not used to answering such basic questions ... I thought I would number them to save on your typing.

Q4. For the majority of people is the main reason, and the main enjoyment coming from playing the games or is it something else?
 
For Q1-3 Within reason, yes to all of those.
Fortnite specifically added a "performance" rendering option relatively recently which uses much simpler 3d models in the game, which when enabled lets the game run on very low end hardware, and on my 2200g system going from the default rendering engine to the performance option gave me roughly double the performance, from a just about good enough 45 fps to a very good 90 fps. So...
Q1 Using those settings the vast majority of anything made in the last several years should work fine.
Q2 That said I will never trust people selling PCs to not try and fob off their less informed customers with complete rubbish products. I saw a little while ago argos was selling a super cheap laptop with a bunch of gaming branding on it that used literally the least performant cpu on the market and with it the worst integrated gpu. And I wouldn't want to play fortnite on that.
Q3 Here is a video of someone running fortnite performance mode with a GTX 650, though with a better cpu and more ram. Should still be in the ballpark of what to expect (the lesser CPU and ram will likely cause a few stutters and slowdowns, but in fortnite it shouldn't be too bad)

Q4. On this forum specifically a lot of the members are very much into the PC hardware hobby. So lots of buying the new and shiny things and comparing relative performance. Tweaking settings, overclocking hardware, playing with different cooling options etc. So for a lot of us we get enjoyment out of the hardware its self. But I suspect in the larger world most people really just want to play the games, with maybe some cross over into the "I want to play the games with the best settings and highest performance" way of looking at it which leads them into poking a nose into hardware.
 
@starshshock.

Question 2 op asked

"I presume then, that all of theprebuilt gaming machines from £300 to £3000 will play all of the games reasonably well? "

You said yes to within reason but a £300 machine is not going to play all games reasonably well unless I'm misunderstanding the question .
 
Ah yeah, sorry, read that as "will play fortnite reasonably well". So no. Some games are much tougher to run than others. Fortnite is an example of a game that will run on a very low end machine. I will say though you can get most games running to a greater or lesser extent on worse hardware than you would expect. But usually at the cost of some really terrible graphics I played halo infinite on the 2200g, and while it was playable. It looked like i was playing on the original xbox.

lowspec gamer on youtube has a bunch of great videos on getting games to run on extremely low end hardware, using things like custom resolutions and tweaking hidden settings, bit off topic, but really interesting for anyone who wants to look into it
 
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Thank you again.
Re Q4. I thought there must be more to it than simply playing the games otherwise the LED lighting on the machines wouldn't have evolved. Anyone likely to buy the individual parts to build their own Central Heating boiler wouldn't have a glass case and the cooling fans illuminated ... or maybe they would!
 
Lol an rgb boiler would be ace! Tbf, if wanting to rgbify your life, have a look at motion sensing toilet night lights - they are basically tat, but also do actually make using the toilet more fun, and give guests a shock the first time they use the loo :cry:
 
GreatAuk said:
Lol an rgb boiler would be ace! Tbf, if wanting to rgbify your life, have a look at motion sensing toilet night lights - they are basically tat, but also do actually make using the toilet more fun, and give guests a shock the first time they use the loo :cry:
Click to expand...
Just had a wierd thougt , rgb toilet roll :eek:
 
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