ПРАВДА и МИФЫ о росте системных требований игр — разработчики зарабатывают на нас?

Perhaps one of the most unpleasant moments that overtakes a good half of buyers A PC after a couple of years is the release of AAA games, in which the once powerful video card stops please with the smoothness and beauty of the picture. And, of course, here users are divided as much as three camps. The first say that it would be better to buy a console and did not know grief for 7 years. The second believe that technological progress cannot be stopped, and that beauty requires sacrifice. Well, the last ones, of whom the majority complain that game developers completely forget about optimization.

True, 00:33 - of course, somewhere in the middle, and that’s what we’ll talk about today. System requirements don’t just grow - it’s usually tied to new graphics APIs. The developers of any heavy games face a difficult choice - on the one hand, the project should go on as many configurations as possible in order to collect as many money. On the other hand, sharpening the game for weak iron should not lead to the fact that that ultra-graphics settings look lackluster and soapy. So it turns out that from time to time you have to find a cutoff point and drop certain video cards.

Of course, their users don’t like it, 01:13 - but you need to understand that technical progress cannot be stopped - after all, once we switched from horses for cars, and then for planes. And of course there were, are and will be opponents of this, but I don’t think that any of the spectators would now want to travel by cart. And usually such a cutoff point is… no, not new consoles, but new graphics APIs, that is, in fact, graphics layers between the video card and the game. Take for example the well-known Crysis, which, thanks to the new at that time DirectX 10, pleased us with beautiful diffuse shading. And yes, it dropped fps even more abruptly than ray tracing now - even the top three at that time Nvidia 8800 GT often failed to take the game to ultra in a stable 60 frames.

02:01 - More than 10 years have passed, and what do we see? Shading comes in tons of games and in tons of different ways and on modern hardware, its performance impact rarely exceeds 10%. Going further - DirectX 11 and Battlefield 3 taking full advantage of the new graphics API. Here and tessellation, which gave realistic destructibility of objects, and normal support for multi-core CPUs, which made it possible to seriously improve physics and introduce massive matches, and support for high-resolution textures, which makes the game at times photorealistic. And, of course, all this tangibly backfired on system requirements - to get higher 60 fps for a comfortable ultra shooter game, either the latest top- end Nvidia GTX 680 or AMD Radeon 7970 was required. For example, the top of the previous generation, GTX 580, gave out only about 50 fps in FHD at ultra, which is slightly uncomfortable in a fast shooter.

03:01 - Again, almost ten years have passed, and what do we see? Destructibility has become the norm. Support for multi-core CPUs too. Often in games, even point-blank textures now remain clear. And not so long ago, APi DirectX Ray Tracing came out, and I did not talk about it except perhaps only lazy. Still - even the new Nvidia RTX 3080, when ray tracing is activated, often falls below 60 frames in 4K on ultra in Control, and without RTX it can produce a hundred or one and a half hundred frames. And yes, this again gave rise to the opinion that tracing is not needed, and that you can only see the difference if you directly compare.

03:40 - But, again, you need to understand that this is the future that requires huge computing power from GPU, and of course, getting it now for a reasonable price is difficult. And maybe only in 5 years we will get a full rendering of the scene using tracing, and not just shadow processing or reflections like now. Of course, not everyone likes it - we often want to get everything here. and now. But, alas, this does not happen with graphic technologies - years of running-in often take place before getting the perfect final version. Friends, before you go on, just a minute really useful advertising.

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Usually it comes from those who have not changed the video 05:29 - card for about 5 years and compares old games with high settings and modern games with low ones. because such an old video card is usually incapable of anything more. But if we take exactly the maximum settings, then the difference is shocking. Let’s compare, for example, Assassin’s Creed 3, released in 2012, and Odyssey in 2018. Here the progress is visible to the naked eye: the quality of textures has significantly increased, normal effects of fire and fabric, various glare and reflections.

There are more people on the streets 06:01 - faces became detailed, beautiful shadows from light sources appeared and much, much more. Or, for example, compare 2013’s Tomb Raider and the latest 2018 Lara Croft game. There are 5 years between them, but just see how beautiful the ray traced tombs have become - at times I really can’t believe this is a game and not a movie. Yes, and on the surface, the graphics are pleasing - and although there are tropics here and there, the detail of the jungle in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is much higher. Yet again there were a lot of different physical effects, glare and beautiful shading - in short, after that it’s just funny to hear that games have stopped changing graphically. Myth number 2.

Okay, persuaded, the games have become more beautiful. But system requirements have grown disproportionately! Okay, here’s a simple experiment. Take any picture and see how much it weighs. Now resize it in half - for example, transform 720p in 360r. At the same time, its weight will change 3-3.5 times. Okay, now resize it 4 times - then is instead of 720p do 180r. The difference in weight can be up to 10 times.

07:11 - Why am I doing this? And besides, the size of textures over the past 10 years has grown sometimes not even 2 or 4 times, but often 8 times. And given that their weight depends on the number of pixels, that is, from the area, it turns out that now the textures weigh an order of magnitude more, than at the end of the 2000s. And if the game then had enough 500 MB of video memory, now - a surprise - it already needs 5 GB. This is the price of the lack of soap. On the other hand, clear textures will do nothing if the object has few polygons - few people will be satisfied with a beautiful hexagonal wheel. But the more polygons, the higher the load on the processor.

07:49 - Do you know how many polygons the Master Chief from the original Halo has on Xbox? 2000. Is it a lot or a little? Well, Geralt from the first The Witcher has 10,000 of them. And Jack Joyce from Quantum Break already 75 thousand. That is, the difference over 15 years is almost 30 times. And do not forget that the number of objects in each frame is also noticeably growing from year to year - remember, how many smallest details are in the same Novigrad.

And all this needs to be processed 08:15 - by the processor, so it is obvious that the requirements for it are only actively growing. Myth number 3. I’m going through Detroit Become Human and I have 40 fps on RTX 2080. Of course, there are exceptions with poor optimization. And yes, these are often console ports. I think many remember the same GTA IV, which at the time of release worked crookedly on almost all PC hardware, although some supernatural graphics or physics did not please. And yes, do not forget that many developers began to play a game with gamers called “Beta test”, when you simply can’t play on a release due to constant crashes, bugs and other delights of latent early access.

Moreover, it often happens that this has 08:59 - nothing to do with optimization: for example, the same GTA 5 simply crashed at the start, if on the way to the game there were characters other than Latin and numbers, while even the owners of not the most top-end PCs at that time could enjoy the gameplay without problems. And yes, I once again urge you not to confuse heavy games with poorly optimized ones. Take the same Red Dead Redemption 2 - in 4K, you can get confident 60 fps only on the RTX 3080. But at the same time, it offers one of the most detailed and beautiful game worlds with a huge range drawing and physics of horse eggs - of course, on a Xeon on a 775 socket with some GTX 660 it is simply not necessary to expect its normal operation. Fact number 1. System requirements are written from the bulldozer.

09:46 - As is usually the case, before the game is released, its developers publish the system requirements so that users can understand whether the sale of one kidney is enough for them to build a PC. able to pull it. And here you need to understand that these system requirements do not always show the real hardiness of the game. Take Total War Troy for example. So, it has processors in the minimum system requirements Intel Core 2 Duo and… Core i7-8550U ?! Yes, the last one is still an ultrabook stone with a thermal package of all about 15 W, but it is still faster than the old “duo” at least 5 times. Why are they equated? Everything is simple - just below in the requirements you can see that the game will run even on integrated graphics, namely Intel UHD 620.

And the frequency of the latter depends on the processor - for example, 10:36 - in the case of the Core i7-8550U, it reaches 1150 MHz, and in the case of a simpler Core i3-8130U - already only 1000 MHz, that is, the difference here is an impressive 15%. So it turns out that the game doesn’t need a Core i7 to run - if you have discrete graphics, a Core 2 Duo is enough. Or, for example, take Detroit Become Human, which recently appeared on Steam. To run it, you need an Nvidia GTX 780 or AMD HD 7950 graphics card. remember video cards from 8 years ago, I think you understand that Nvidia’s solution is noticeably faster. Even the GTX 770 will be faster.

But why then are the system requirements exactly the same? 11:18 - Because the limiter in this case is the amount of video memory, not the GPU - the game requires at least 3 GB. So it turns out that GTX 770 with 2 GB is faster in theory AMD HD 7950 with 3 GB, but due to lack of memory, the game will have noticeable freezes. And given that that the game is on Vulkan, the developers had to enter the top minimum wages from 7-year-old Nvidia, which is noticeably faster than the average AMD, which exchanged 8 years. Moreover, it is often not clear what the developers mean by the minimum and recommended system requirements. Whether HD at 30 fps, or FHD at 30 fps roofing felts 60.

And for the weak old 12:01 - video cards with a couple of gigs of slow memory, the difference in fps between these resolutions can reach 30%. Well, and the finishing fact - often the minimum settings are far from the minimum. Take the same latest single-coil game from Star Wars. It would seem that to run there you need an old one 2-core Core i3 and GTX 650 - hardware that is already extremely weak by modern standards. And, surprise, this is not a minimum - the toy was able to run on Athlon with integrated Vega 3 graphics from 30 fps.

Yes, had to go down to HD downscaled, but still it 12:36 - shows that quite often users of even office PCs can touch the novelties. What is the bottom line? Hammer on the system requirements. They are far from always reflect the real zhorosity of the game. It is best to wait for the tests on YouTube or IT resources, to be sure whether the novelty will work on your system or not. Fact number 2. Ultra graphics settings don’t always make sense. How many complaints there are on the net like “this is my top-end Nvidia GTX 1080 from three years ago pulls such and such a new tile on ultras, the developers have completely forgotten about optimization.

” Here you need to understand 13:13 - that there are enough games that are made with a margin for the future. This is what the Digital Foundry reviewers say about Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: In this game, “ultra-high” options really mean “ultra-high”. The maximum settings here exist in order to to make everything look as beautiful as possible. This is a reserve intended for the most expensive PCs or not yet released “hardware”, “for the future.” At the same time, the difference between “ultra-high” and simply “high” settings is often minimal and makes you carefully study screenshots to notice it.

For instance, 13:49 - in the case of shadows, this is the drawing distance - you will hardly notice that there is a bush at 50 meters the shadow is not clear from you. But the increase because of this, often a dozen fps, will be very easy to feel. And this goes for many other games. For example, ARK Survival Evolved is often bullied for poor optimization. But is it? For example, a twisted ground detail slider will draw you grass at a distance of about a hundred meters from you. And the improved shading will also draw the shadow under it at this distance. Is it really necessary? Hardly.

14:22 - Setting even 50% of the draw range on a GTX 1080 Ti increases fps at times by a noticeable 20% in 2K, and the difference can only be noticed by standing on a high hill. So it turns out that often the maximum settings are top and fat for the future. You can always twist a couple of settings to a high level, while minimizing the loss in image quality, but increasing fps by almost a third. Of course, the developers themselves could have done this, but they usually leave users with a choice. Which, obviously, is not liked by fans of “all ultras”.

14:57 - Let’s summarize - the race for cool graphics continues, and it will not spare our wallets. Progress cannot be stopped - as you have already seen, games are becoming more and more beautiful (or more beautiful), and this requires more and more powerful hardware. Yes, sure there are projects that are not at all pleasing to the eye with graphics, but at the same time require top-end hardware, but in general, these are the exceptions rather than the rule. Don’t forget to go to the description and check our VKontakte community, as well as visit our shop n ready to PC. See you soon. .