Generally speaking, a PC can be built from several different components produced at different times, which makes it very difficult to optimize games for this platform. With all the variety of models and characteristics of processors, video cards and memory, there is simply a huge number of parameters that need to be monitored.
But in this article, we will try to get around the complicated technical terminology and briefly explain how you can determine if your PC can handle a given game.
Minimum and recommended system requirements
After the announcement of a game for PC, at some point, its system requirements are inevitably announced. As you can see in the image above, it’s common for developers to specify minimum and recommended system requirements for a game.
These official requirements typically list key components such as the processor and graphics card, the amount of memory and disk space required, and some software requirements, such as supported operating system and DirectX versions.
Basically, the minimum requirements are the hardware and software needed to just run the game. This usually means that the game will run on the lowest settings and at a sub-ideal frame rate.
In turn, the recommended requirements indicate a configuration that should provide the ideal gaming experience that the developers intended – maximum or near maximum settings, stable 60 frames per second or higher.
Naturally, the minimum and recommended requirements are generalizations. They are not always absolutely accurate and do not always allow you to draw conclusions about what level of performance you can expect. After all, settings can be tweaked and different people have different performance requirements, not to mention that resolution and frame rate are important in today’s games.
Sometimes developers specify exactly the resolution and graphics settings that a given configuration should handle, but this is not always the case.
Where to find system requirements
If you suddenly do not know where to look at the requirements of the game for hardware, then it is very easy to find them.
In addition to being listed on the game’s official website, the easiest way to find the system requirements is on the game’s store page. For example, on Steam they are indicated at the bottom of the page, other legal online stores also do the same.
In any case, a quick Google search is enough to find the system requirements of any game.
How to find out the characteristics of your PC
If you suddenly do not know the characteristics of your system, then finding them is no more difficult than finding the system requirements of the game.
This can be done in several ways. You can look at receipts or warranty cards if you have them, but it’s easier to look at the system information directly on the computer. Just type “system information” into the search bar, and Windows will show you the application with all the information about the components you need, and a bunch of not quite necessary.
When you open the application, you are immediately in the root section System Information You will see the processor model, as well as the total amount of system memory and operating system version. As for the data about the video card and drives, they can be found in the sections Components – Display and Components – Storage Devicesrespectively.
With this data, you can easily compare your system with what is listed in the game’s minimum and recommended requirements.
But given the wide variety of processor and graphics card models, you may not know for sure how powerful your processor and graphics card are compared to what is indicated in the system requirements of the game.
In this case, you can use services like UserBenchmark.com. They collect data from hundreds of thousands of different computers to give you a general idea of how various components work using their simple testing application.
It’s worth keeping in mind that UserBenchmark isn’t the perfect tool for evaluating the performance of your computer’s components, but it can give you an idea of how two devices perform relative to each other. As already mentioned, this is especially useful if you are not sure how your processor or video card meets what is indicated by the developers in the minimum or recommended requirements.
For example, just because the PUBG minimum requirement lists an Intel Core i5-4430 processor, that doesn’t mean you need an i5 processor. The new i3-12100 is more powerful than the aforementioned 4th generation i5. This can be easily determined using UserBenchmark – which is why this tool is well suited for comparing different models of processors and video cards from different years.
However, if you are interested in performance in real games, it is worth looking for tests on the net or videos on YouTube that demonstrate the game on your video card. Please note that you don’t need to specify a specific graphics card manufacturer, so if you have an Asus ROG Strix RX 580, for example, you just need to look for tests for the RX 580. Searching for a specific model only narrows the results uselessly, and performance differences between different brands of video cards are usually small and reduced to a few frames per second.
Can You Run It
Another way to find out if you can run a game is to use a popular tool called “Can You Run It,” which translates to “Can You Run It?”
Can You Run It is a database containing the system requirements of a huge number of games, making it easy and quick to find them. In addition, it has a free application that automatically detects your computer’s specifications and uploads them to the site for easy and quick comparison with the system requirements of games.
Conclusion
That’s all you need to know if the question arises whether the game will run on your computer.
As already mentioned, system requirements are not some hard and fast rule, so even if your PC does not quite meet them, the situation is not necessarily so hopeless. It is possible that the game will run on your PC even if some of its components are not officially supported.
And if you have an outdated machine and are thinking about upgrading, take a look at our builds – there are many configurations among them, from budget to more powerful (and expensive) gaming machines.
