I was thinking of something small to write today while I'm being a good (bored) student in class. I decided to browse the Steam hardware stats and see what the state of computers and PC gaming is today. While looking there I noticed an overwhelming percentage of mid--end GPU's and CPUS which does seem obvious. However to me it begged the question: How many people can actually run the most modern titles at ultra?
The game we will test is obvious to anyone who games... And no, it's not Crisis 3. Today I want to see how many PC gamers can actually run Witcher 3 at 1080p on ultra.
The Witcher 3
Source
I chose to compare at 1080p as this is still the most common resolution according to the Steam Survey:
The first job that we have to do is state assumptions and what the requirements for 1080p ultra settings in The Witcher 3 are. Here is a list of the assumptions I am making:
With those stated, lets get on with this! So the first task is to find what the TRUE minimum system requirements are. I state true as many games over-account for the specs they will need. GTA V claims to need 12gb of video ram on ultra... I could run it with 4gb (everything maxed). Therefore we need to first find the true specifications required.
I will be using this article and some forums such as this. The general consensus is that a GTX 970+ is required to max the game at 1080p. Further, a quad core and 8gb of ram is a minimum to reach this performance (in general use).
Since video card is the most important part of a gaming PC, I will start there. This is a list of every GPU with a market share of over 1% as according to Steam:
The next step is to find all of the GPUs that are equivalent or better than a 970. I know this is controversial, and compute benchmarks aren't the same as gaming. However it is a good indication, and I will be using Passmark to see which GPUs are better performing than a 970. Here is the list that I found:
Now, which of these cards are on the Steam list above? Let's have a look!
Adding the percentages for each of these cards together, we get a total of 18.96%, or close enough to 19% to be rounded. If we add a rough estimate of GPUs under 1% usage that are better than a GTX970, we can guess that the total will be under 25% (most likely around 22%).
So, assuming that each gamer with a GTX970+ Also has a quad core and 8gb+ of ram (which most do), then around 1/5th of all PC gamers on Steam can run The Witcher 3 on ultra settings at 1080p. Many more people can play The Witcher 3, but only few of us can play it in its full visual glory.
This was a rather un-official report and there are definitely more factors to consider. But I wanted to do a little something with the time I have spare in class. Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think too!
I'm one of the people who can run the witcher on my computer. It doesn't run the best but I'm using the r390. Haven't been playing it much these days though, due to me switching my habits from gaming to mining.
Me too, but I also don't run it fantastically. I have a GTX1060 (6gb), but it still stutters occasionally. Haha, what currencies are you mining these days?
These days, I've been mining smartcash and dinerocoin. I don't really make too much of a profit but I do it more because I love their communities.
That's a great reason in itself though :) Not many cryptos have communities that make them worth sticking around for!
I think we have to wait few months/years to raise these indicators. Nowadays there are more and more advertisements for computer components and gear so I think that it will have a big impact on people thinking that they should improve their PC to play more demanding games.
Hope it will change as fast as possible. Thanks for this article, hope you give us more informations about it. Keep doing!
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