This post maybe can be a little off topic on this dev-blog, but "Hey! it's my blog!" so fuck off, I'll talk about alpaca if I want...
After this little preface we can start to talk about Ubisoft upcoming game Watch Dogs.
Some day ago Ubisoft
release on Steam the prerelease purchase options of Watch Dogs, and then also the all-want-system-requirements, and on this topic the gaming community start the nth flame about this game.
Because if the minimum req are accessible to almost all gamers, the recommended leave the community with their mouth open.
Recommended System Requirements:
- OS: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8 (Please note that we only support 64 bit OSs.)
- Processor: Eight core - Intel Core i7-3770 @3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 X8 @ 4 GHz
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 11 graphics card with 2 GB Video RAM - Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850
- DirectX: Version 11
- Hard Drive: 25 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers
- Additional Notes: Broadband connection and service required for multiplayer mode. Supported Video Cards at Time of Release: nVidia GeForce GTX460 or better, GT500, GT600, GT700 series; AMD Radeon HD5850 or better, HD6000, HD7000, R7 and R9 series Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200
If Graphics and memory requirements are the standard in this days, the community ask to herself why this game need to run properly an
Intel Core i7-3770 or an AMD equivalent, pointing, as fact instead opinion, that the modern games are all powered by GPU and the processor do not do much work.
So let start talk about "How games are designed".
I'm not a game developer, but as software developer, engineer, and last but not least, gamer, I know, or at least I imagine, how this work: The GPU and the video card do not calculate the algorithm needed by the AIs , the gpu simply elaborate the calculation needed for graphics, and all the powerful cards listed above are needed only for elaborate the HD texture of an "enormous" city, or at least a big part of it since the dev claim to don't love the load time present in many game so they reduce it to the minimum possible so, as you can imagine, if you want a fluid and smooth visual with synchronous rendering without texture-lag of an entire living city you need a massive card.
In WD they also claim to recreate a living city, with thousand of NPC, every of them will have his personal dialogue scripts, story and background, so every single NPC will run a separate AI.
The AI will not run on a thread on your powerful Nvidia Titan Black/AMD HD Radeon R290, the AI instead create a thread on your processor. This things is clearly visible in other game like Assetto Corsa, by the Italian Kunos Simulazioni, which is in a sort of beta since they choose the pre-release method to sell their game, in this game when you race against the max number of opponents, the game engine put the CPU usage up to 95% suddenly and often crashes as you can see in these topics on the steamcommunity forum
here and
here.
This happen with less than 30 AIs which all run concurrently on your processor, now imagine what can happen if instead of 30 there are more than 100 AIs + lot of cameras + who-know-what ?
If your system is not powerful enough or the game is not properly optimised IT BURN YOUR FUCKING COMPUTER.
Yeah this image is a bit strong, but in my experience I can tell you that is not so far from reality.
With my I7 2600 in the summer of 2011, which was a REALLY HOT summer, with stock Intel cooler the temp on the processor hit the 90°C and shutdown. After that I buy a bigger dual fan tower air CPU-cooler, and after that I don't have any problem.
So, little crying guys, instead of arguing on the fact which in your opinion your Intel Quad Core from 2006 is still enough for playing games since for you it's all a GPU work, buying a new system and start talking about which cooler is better to prevent your system to burn you, your house and your neighbourhood.
With the hope that you paid for a proper cooling system, I salute you.
Ygy Freezone.