>> During dev, a game requires much more power because it hasn't been optimized yet, and you may have any number of quick and dirty hacks to get things done.

i always try to keep the framerate at an acceptable speed at all times on the target PC. so i optimize as i go along, as needed, when needed. in Caveman i only really had to deal with pairwise range checks for target section from hundreds of entities in close proximity (round robin to the rescue), and writing a data oriented render queue. as the game grows, you get a feel for which bits are probably eventually going to need optimization. when that framerate starts dropping, you take a time out, fix the problem, then move on. this tends to reduce or eliminate last minute optimization during crunch time, allowing you to concentrate on getting as many of those final features in as possible before going gold. right now, realtime collision map and terrain chunk generation are the only two things that look like they may need some attention before all is said and done. and they're not quit bad enough to make me do anything about it yet. so its still wait and see.

one really needs the survey results from 2 to 4 years from now, not from right now

Well like I said on the CPU side if you get an intel 5820k you can overclock, underclock, disable cores, and disable hyperthreading. The only thing that you can't make like a less powerful CPU is the L3 cache size, but to be honest there might be a BIOS setting to disable that completely. Also like you said AMD's new Zen architecture is due out in Q4 of this year.

As far as the steam survey is concerned it is a data point for you to use to project what system spec's might be like down the line. If you assume an upgrade cycle of 2 or 3 years for enthusiasts and 4 to 6 years for average users you might be able to get a rough idea of what hardware what you'll be dealing with.

BTW - are you only going to have recommended spec or min specs as well?

BTW - are you only going to have recommended spec or min specs as well?

hmm...

if you define minimum spec as "less than this and its not really playable or wont run at all" - then all games have a minimum spec.

you have the spec the game is designed for, and then you have how much the game can be dialed down and still provide the same basic experience - the minimum spec.

on my current project Caveman 3.0, i'm in a rather unusual position. the game is largely done except final graphics. so release is within 1 year for sure. so today's mid-range would be the recommended spec. but right now the recommended spec is just one core at 1.3Ghz and a Dx9 GPU. odds are the minimum spec right now is about the same. not only that, but my target FPS is just 15, not 30, 60 or as fast as possible. a rock solid 15 fps is all that's required for a simulation to be sufficiently responsive. everything else is just smoother animation.

>> Personally I don't believe in CPUs with less than 6 cores. I figure 4 cores for the game, and 2 for the system and background/idle applications.

so if i'm fullscreen dx, and have no background processes running - not even anti virus - you're saying windows 10 will still be trying to do stuff in the background? so i should get extra cores? and so should my users? i know OS overhead tends to get worse, not better, but it can't have gotten that bad - has it?.

its seems to me that if its just windows and the game running, windows would grab a timeslice from time to time, check the job queue, see there's nothing else that needs doing, and return control to the game.

>> If you've designed the game to run on a single core, with 1.3GHz I doubt you need to worry about the system's other processes.

that just happens to be the minimum spec at the moment, and i haven't "cranked up the volume" yet.

from taking a look at steam, it seems the average PC right now is 4 cores at 3+ Ghz, and 2-4 gig vram with a nvidia 900 series or AMD r9 series GPU.

and the next step will be 4 cores at 4+ Ghz, and 4-8 gig vram.

and the step after that will be 6+ cores at 4+ Ghz and 8-16 or 32 gig vram.

so far i've found a 6th gen i7 6700 box at $700 (lenovo - newegg, as i recall - just goto cdw.com - best supplier on the planet), and vidcards are of two basic types: good (GTX 970) for $200-300, and very good (Ti's and other hot stuff) for about twice as much. the average game ready rig has a "good" card, but not a killer one.

so for Caveman 3.0, recommended should be 3+ Ghz, not 1.3+. and a vidcard comparable in speed to a decent GTX 900 or 700 series GPU, with 2+ gig of vram, not an AMD HD 6310 with 1 gig.

and for the game after that, it should be 3+ Ghz (or maybe 4+), GTX 1080, and 4gig vram (or maybe 8?).

i need to check the recommended specs for current games again. those numbers may still be low when it comes to vram.

i was surprised to find the 1080 wasn't that much faster with today's games - then again, they aren't designed for it.

as for extra cores and users running multiple apps - that's their problem, not mine. i really have yet to find a good use for extra cores. you can't really use them for mission critical stuff, which means they're really only useful for BS chrome. and i'll spend dev time on gameplay before chrome - every time. its a better long term value to the customer.

from taking a look at steam, it seems the average PC right now is 4 cores at 3+ Ghz, and 2-4 gig vram with a nvidia 900 series or AMD r9 series GPU.

and the next step will be 4 cores at 4+ Ghz, and 4-8 gig vram.

and the step after that will be 6+ cores at 4+ Ghz and 8-16 or 32 gig vram.

so far i've found a 6th gen i7 6700 box at $700 (lenovo - newegg, as i recall - just goto cdw.com - best supplier on the planet), and vidcards are of two basic types: good (GTX 970) for $200-300, and very good (Ti's and other hot stuff) for about twice as much. the average game ready rig has a "good" card, but not a killer one.

so for Caveman 3.0, recommended should be 3+ Ghz, not 1.3+. and a vidcard comparable in speed to a decent GTX 900 or 700 series GPU, with 2+ gig of vram, not an AMD HD 6310 with 1 gig.

and for the game after that, it should be 3+ Ghz (or maybe 4+), GTX 1080, and 4gig vram (or maybe 8?).

i need to check the recommended specs for current games again. those numbers may still be low when it comes to vram.

i was surprised to find the 1080 wasn't that much faster with today's games - then again, they aren't designed for it.

as for extra cores and users running multiple apps - that's their problem, not mine. i really have yet to find a good use for extra cores. you can't really use them for mission critical stuff, which means they're really only useful for BS chrome. and i'll spend dev time on gameplay before chrome - every time. its a better long term value to the customer.

The lower your system requirements the greater potential audience you have since people with weak PC's can still play your game. So your minimum and recommended system requirements should reflect the minimum system you need to play the game at a certain quality level. Going by the average isn't necessarily a smart thing to do, you should try to maximize your potential audience. Also AMD mhz does not equal Intel mhz as Intel has a higher IPC than AMD processors. Related to multi-threading the only reason current AMD processors keep up with intel is they have more cores at a higher clock. As far as clock speeds go 4ghz is around the maximum you're going to get for a while the come so you should shoot lower for recommended specs. Also the survey has intel cpu's at 3.3 to 3.69Ghz at 16.75%, so I think you should look at the survey again. Also AMD might be lowering there core count and clocks with the upcoming zen processor so 6 cores might not be a prevalent as you think in the future. Alot of videocards still have 2gigs of RAM now but in two years 4 gigs would be a safe bet.

As far as the PC you found did you see how big the PS was? Usually pre-built systems come with 300Watt power supplies.