Next Gen PC gaming requirements (2021 update)

 

Way back in 2020 I started compiling a huge list of games and their recommended system requirements in order to track where we've been, where we are, and where we're going in terms of hardware required to play PC games as they are "intended" by their creators. I noted in that series that I planned to keep up this exercise on a yearly basis to see how things pan out in reality and to see how my predictions match up with that reality. 

It's a nerdy thing but I have not seen anyone or anywhere else try and track these sorts of parameters and I find it very interesting to think and talk about... plus, maybe could help someone make buying decisions based on what videogames are requiring of consumers to be able to play them.

Without further ado - let's go look at how 2021 panned out.

Before we begin...

I won't go into the caveats that apply to this data once more - those are covered in the previous posts. However, I will make another note that all the data I've gathered to generate these figures is located here for people to make use of as they wish. You can check which games I picked for this analysis, etc. Thanks again to the inimitable Shamus Young whose Steam data scraping post began this mad enterprise...

The other thing I wanted to note is that there's a significant increase in the number of games I picked for the period of 2021 compared to 2020. This is mostly because a lot of games were delayed from a 2020 launch and this is still continuing into 2022 with a lot of titles ready on my list, waiting for recommended specs to be released.

The Brains...

The upward trend was reigned in a little, likely due to a larger dataset...

This has been a tentpole year-and-a-bit for CPUs with Ryzen's 5000 series launching late last year, including the 5600X in November 2020. This year, we've had Intel's long-awaited 12th gen, bringing performance leadership back to the blue team in virtually every segment - but especially gaming. However, as I noted in my analysis, that leadership is very price dependent if you're interested in actually getting the best "bang for your buck" (aka value).

What I've observed this year is that, with a larger dataset to compare against, we see a slight reduction in a comparison between the end of 2020 and 2021. We're still coming in with a predicted single core performance in 2025 above all Intel 10th gen and Ryzen 3000 series SKUs but it's a little less extreme than we saw last year.

Multi-core performance sees a similar dip in trend, landing just below the performance of a 5600X which means my original advice to buy an 8-core CPU in 2020 still holds true.

From a multicore score perspective, you'll be likely be fine with most 8-core CPUs from the last generation for the next 4 years (ignoring 11th gen Intel ;) )...

Yes, I'm aware that coming back to the ill-fated adage that "8 cores" is beneficial for gamers going forward is going to remain contentious for many in the tech crowd. Yes, fewer, more powerful cores will likely be just as good but we're talking about newer architectures in the here and now. The 8-core debate (at least when I was having it) was about comparing what the then-Next Gen consoles were expected to bring in terms of performance requirements for PC games over a good couple of years.

As it now stands, the expected requirement is the multi-core performance of a Ryzen 5 5600X, which is slightly below that of a 3700X or 10700K.... let's see how that falls out because I am expecting multi-core performance requirements to ramp upward over the next two years.

The Brawn...

Compared to last year, we see the predicted performance in 2025 reducing a little back towards the RTX 2080 Ti...

The GPU predicted requirements also took a slight dip this year too. However, in absolute terms they increased very slightly. My prediction that you'll need RTX 2080 Ti-level performance in 2025 as a baseline is still on-target.

Worryingly, something that we've seen in the latest releases on PC, in the form of Deathloop, Icarus and Halo Infinite, is large increases in VRAM usage at 1080p. Deathloop is using ~7.0 GB at high settings (and I don't mean allocation [which is listed at ~7.3 GB] I have crash dump proof of this), and Halo Infinite allocating around ~6.5 GB at Ultra settings... along with Icarus allocating ~11.6 GB at Epic settings.

This means that 8 GB cards are not likely to be enough for mid-high settings in 2025 and that does worry me slightly because I have an RTX 3070 8 GB... but it's not completely unexpected.

The Guts...

Now this is a surprise...

The increase in memory requirements over the course of two years is quite dramatic...

Yes, sure. System memory increased to 16 GB quite drastically but that's not the issue - I had predicted that it would become the most required memory amount this year. However, I wasn't quite prepared for quite how much of the percentage share it was poised to take! 74% of all the games I was polling required 16 GB of RAM at 1080p recommended settings.

This is actually great news - I've actually been calling for games to utilise 32 GB of RAM and I'm wondering if this transition is going to happen very quickly over the space of one or two years instead of the more protracted increase that I was originally envisaging. Where I had predicted a relatively sedate increase in secondary and tertiary requirements to 24 and 32 GB respectively, I'm now left wondering if 32 GB requirements will suddenly jump on us by 2023 - perhaps driven in boldness by RAM capacity of DDR5 on both Intel and AMD platforms.

Conversely, we saw modest increases in VRAM requirements over the course of 2016 to 2019, then we saw a 30% increase in 6 GB VRAM capacity requirements at 1080p in 2020. I felt like that wasn't a surprise - it was overdue given the relative power of the Pro and One X consoles. Similarly, the increase to 18% of 8 GB VRAM requirements in 2019 seemed natural when you consider gaussian or other distributions. Moving into 2020 a further 14% increase didn't seem out of the norm as the bell curve shifted to higher capacities.

However, a further increase just one year later to 40% total for 8 GB and an actual decrease in 6 GB requirements lines up perfectly with my predictions. Yes, I'm off by a few percent of the games polled but in absolute terms, it's clear to me that the tide is turning and that more demanding games will be regularly requiring  8 GB VRAM at 1080p for their recommended settings going forward.

I am pretty accurate on RAM predictions, so far... (the real-world numbers are updated, the predictions in dashed lines are unchanged)

I was very slightly optimistic about the VRAM requirements increasing faster than they have done. However, it's pretty close... one game either way and I would havebeen spot-on!

In Summary...

We can see the flat requirements between 2020 and 2021 here for the CPU and GPU metrics...

For GPU performance requirements, the prior two hardware releases before the current gen consoles resulted in a jump towards near-performance parity the year after release, as seen in 2014 and 2017 where approximately 85% relative performance was required. However, we're not seeing that this generation and I do wonder if it's possibly down to two factors:

1. This generation's most graphically powerful console (the Xbox Series X) is so powerful that there's not a need to increase graphics requirements to this same factor.                                                      
2. The prolongued and continued cross-gen nature of the majority of these titles is affecting the overall recommended requirements for gaming on PC. 

I think that having to support the XBO and PS4 is really requiring developers to optimise and reduce performance targets in order to support those platforms. This consideration is and has been happening even before the issue of current gen GPU shortages with respect to gamer availability, though ultimately, I expect this problem to hamper longer term recommended settings increases.

CPU and RAM requirements are right on track for where I thought they'd be. Whereas VRAM requirements are very close, though I am slightly concerned that there might be an acceleration there, resulting in the vast majority of graphics cards being unable to run higher settings at 1080p within the next two years - something I was not expecting until at least 2025/26.

Just as a reminder: That's cards such as the GTX 1070 and 1080, the RTX 2070 and 2080, the RTX 3060 Ti and 3070; RX 5700 and XT, RX 6600 XT... and all the cards below those levels. That's practically every mid-to-high tier card over the last six years and that's quite a development.