How long until we all start needing a super computer to run games? A few years ago all we needed was a single core cpu with a decent gpu. But nowadays if you want ultimate gaming you need to have at least a dual core and an awesome gpu.

'Supercomputers' are becoming standard. The industry is moving forward as always, and we have to upgrade every few years to keep up. It's the circle of life. Console players have to buy new consoles, we have to upgrade video cards every now and then. If a game can't be run on the general public's computers, then the game won't sell, so as long as you keep up, you shouldn't have a problem with games being too system intensive. Sure, you may not be able to play at the highest settings, but many companies put those super high settings in games so that the game can stay relevant in a few years.

I think that if anything, PC games are actually going the other way.

Yes there are some ridiculous games out there, but for the most part, there are few if any games that actually take advantage of multiple cores. The best gaming machines are still the powerhouse single core CPU. The multi core systems are more for running the OS than anything else.

The graphics cards are constantly moving forward however, and do require updating at a pretty decent rate. Strangely enough however since there is almost nothing out there that needs the latest DirectX 10 hardware, you can still run these games on older cards with lower settings.

With the increase in install base of consoles, those companies that are still making PC games, are having to make their games more available to those who do not have the top end hardware. Yes, if you wanted to you could upgrade your PC every couple months. Do you have to? Nope, absolutely not.

We may have at one point what we currently think of as super computers but as the industry moves forward so will the super computers

So what you guys are saying is that we are already in the super computer phase? I think we kinda are in the beginning part of the transition. With cpu's that have 4+ cores becoming available to the public and to be honest the most we will ever need is 4 cores if that. I think that in the future instead of standard computers only having 1gb-2gb of ram most will have atleast 4gb.

So what you guys are saying is that we are already in the super computer phase? I think we kinda are in the beginning part of the transition. With cpu's that have 4+ cores becoming available to the public and to be honest the most we will ever need is 4 cores if that. I think that in the future instead of standard computers only having 1gb-2gb of ram most will have atleast 4gb.

The desktops of today are the supercomputers of yesterday. The supercomputers of today will eventually shrink enough to fit in the same cases as our modern computers. What you "think" we need will become crap specs in the future. ("You only had quad-cores and 4GB of RAM back then? And no quasi-phase moleculizers? Geez, Gramps. You're OLD!") Everything's just going to keep moving forward, with games always at the cutting-edge of tech. Everything else just plays catch-up.

In the "future", GB and TB will become the new KB and MB...and why stop at Terabytes? Yottabyte, anyone? (That's like, 1x10^21)

Actually, surprise surprise, hexa-core (6 cores) will unleash itself onto the general public (its already in use for servers) within the next couple of years. Not only that, if you take a look at intel and AMD roadmaps, the future is in smaller and smaller cpu's with AMD hard at work on its CPU+GPU single die called fusion, and intel trying to develop its own GPU, called Larrabee. All this, within the next couple of years. Dual core is set to look like a thing of the past very soon, with AMD just releasing the first $100 quad core.

The requirements needed to run games at Max settings has actually become much more staggered since 2006. Game requirements are about 3 years behind current tech, if not more.

A high end dual core is not expensive at all now, nor is a GPU capable of running Crysis on reasonable settings. And that's all you really need.

Anyone buying high end quad (or higher?!) core cpu's or some of the more expensive GPU's out there is throwing their money away for no reason. Games don't need that stuff, and most could not take advantage of it anyway.

You can build a really nice $1000 gaming rig that will play any current game at high to max settings right now easy. And then only need to think about a possible GPU or single item upgrade every year and a half to two years. Which is fair, and light years better than what PC gamers faced in the 1990's.

Most of the new tech we are seeing is not meant for gaming. And won't be for a while yet.

Well if you look at the games from 3 years ago and tech from this year should be able to run those games without a problem and yet we have videos in youtube of video cards only getting 30fps on crysis when that game is old and the specs on the computer far surpass the needs of the game. If I look at a game on steam and I have the recommended specs I expect my computer to run it on high settings. And yet when I play it I am no where close to high settings.

Well if you look at the games from 3 years ago and tech from this year should be able to run those games without a problem and yet we have videos in youtube of video cards only getting 30fps on crysis when that game is old and the specs on the computer far surpass the needs of the game.

Well then they obviously screwed up somewhere. There's a lot more involved in getting the best performance out of your system than just having the right tech.

If I look at a game on steam and I have the recommended specs I expect my computer to run it on high settings. And yet when I play it I am no where close to high settings.

Again, if you have the tech required, I don't understand how your having problems. Especially with the games available on Steam. Few are very demanding on a rig at all.

In your defense, a lot of problems performance wise can sometimes be the result of the game itself not working properly with things it's supposed to.

I am just saying if the tech from this year cant run games from a few years ago then we have a problem. I agree they probably messed up somewhere but still old games should work on new hardware without a problem.

I am just saying if the tech from this year cant run games from a few years ago then we have a problem. I agree they probably messed up somewhere but still old games should work on new hardware without a problem.

I should not have to tinker with my settings every time I want to play an old game, I'm with ya.

Only the gaming gods know how rough Supreme Commander 2 is going to be on my rig...thinking of the future.

I should not have to tinker with my settings every time I want to play an old game, I'm with ya.

Only the gaming gods know how rough Supreme Commander 2 is going to be on my rig...thinking of the future.

The reason im asking this is because of MW2. I wanted to know if ill be able to run it no problem. So I thought they are using the same engine so if I raise the specs from mw1 then I should be able to get a reasonable answer to what specs are going to be needed. I far surpass the specs needed but I can 100% gurantee you that when the game comes out I will not be able to run it on max settings. Even though I have specs on my pc that are way better than are needed.

The reason im asking this is because of MW2. I wanted to know if ill be able to run it no problem. So I thought they are using the same engine so if I raise the specs from mw1 then I should be able to get a reasonable answer to what specs are going to be needed. I far surpass the specs needed but I can 100% gurantee you that when the game comes out I will not be able to run it on max settings. Even though I have specs on my pc that are way better than are needed.

Until they release the game, we simply will not know.

HOWEVER in general:

1) I can speak from experience, Im running on a 3 year old dual core CPU with a 2 year old (at the time) on X-mas sale for $100 GPU. THe ONLY game Ive had issues with at all is NOT even Crysis... but Mass Effect (poor coding/design... I firmly blame there when you have a game that basically says on the box X800 only card of each series they support).

2) Laptops are NOT gaming rigs. Sorry, but if you are trying to play on one... well, the GPUs tend to be designed to save power, not be power houses. You pay the price for that.

Yea im sure everyone knows how to assign priority to things on task manager. And Some laptops are good for gaming.

I think we are getting to the root of the problem. The majority of the games that are a couple of years old or so and still run like crap is because the coding is terrible. It's not optimized properly, because people have so much space that programmers feel they don't have to.

While I don't completely agree that laptops can't be gaming systems, the ones that are, are REALLY expensive.

Yea like the Asus ROG are expensive as hell and along with alienware.

I can actually run quite a range of games on my laptop, although it's starting to not be able to run the newest stuff.

My co-worker helped me put together a (kick-posterior) list of parts, and I can build an amazing gaming rig for about $800, with monitor.

Crysis was built to last a while, I think. It may be 'old', but it still takes a good PC to play it on high. I play everything on the highest settings possible without any problems whatsoever (I've got a quad-core and two Radeon HD 4800s doing Crossfire). Build a computer with the best parts on the market, and then you'll be fine for the next few years, then acceptable for the years after that.

Halokilla, I see you're actually getting "overworked" about the game running perfectly on your system. Well, rest assured, YOU CAN run 100% of your games on that 4850. As for max settings, you will be able to reach maximum settings for ALL games(yes even crysis) at a resolution of 1280 x 800, and most for 1680 x 1050.

EDIT: If you play at a resolution lower than these, just stop worrying k? :undecided:

EDIT2: If you dont believe me go to http://www.yougamers.com/ and run the check on your system.

some of us have super computers now, compared to the early 2000. all of us have super computers no compared to the 1980s. LOL

didnt mr bill gates say that WINDOWS would never need more than 640kb of ram? :lol:

Fixed

Fun fact:
Today digital watch is more powerful then a computer 40 years ago

Considerably so. People don't realise how far things have come in sheer ability and processing power. You have to consider that my first gaming computer (which still has some awesome games) didn't have enough RAM to hold this post.

The rate of advance is slowing somewhat (impressively enough due to the limits of physics itself, our construction technology is actually bumping up against the problem of quantum uncertainty), but trust me, you'll still find what you've got now primitive in ten years time.

1-2 Years i guess

but Dual Cores thats nothing (i have one of those lol)
Soon you will need a 6 Core CPU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i9

I don't think you'll NEED one for a LONG time.

1-2 Years i guess

but Dual Cores that nothing (i have one of those lol)
Soon you will need a 6 Core CPU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i9

Concidering Ive seen very few games demand more then 1 core, Im going to call false on this (not that you will eventually need it, but that you will soon... when you start needing any kind of multi-core on anywhere near half the games that come out, we can talk about it being soon).

Sure you won't NEED one for gaming but CPUs are used for much more than just gaming alone and in these other areas(Encoding, servers.. etc) the introduction of multi core CPUs have brought considerable improvement. AMD already has Magny-Cours a 12 core server CPU in the pipeline for a 1st quarter 2010 release.

Larrabee(release 1st half 2010) which is a multi-core gpu probably ranging from 24-48 cores which is already showing near linear performance scaling with the number of cores in gaming benchmarks. I'd say we will start NEEDING multi core technology for gaming very soon.

Sure you won't NEED one for gaming but CPUs are used for much more than just gaming alone and in these other areas(Encoding, servers.. etc) the introduction of multi core CPUs have brought considerable improvement. AMD already has Magny-Cours a 12 core server CPU in the pipeline for a 1st quarter 2010 release.

Larrabee(release 1st half 2010) which is a multi-core gpu probably ranging from 24-48 cores which is already showing near linear performance scaling with the number of cores in gaming benchmarks. I'd say we will start NEEDING multi core technology for gaming very soon.

Multi maybe, but not 6.

Multi maybe, but not 6.

Multi = More than 1 = 6?

More then 1 ALSO = 2

Any application that scales well across multiple cores(2, 3, 4, 1000000, any amount) will utilise all of them fully. And unless you were living under a rock (or gaming on a console, for that matter), you would have realised that more and more games are taking advatage of MORE THAN 2 cores. 2-3 years ago (even last year) it would have been useless to have a quad core for gaming but not now. And DirectX 11 has come up with more sophisticated way of utilising the extra cores too.

well, If you think about it: according to moore's law, every year the power of the computer will double. The computer you are using right now would probably have been called a super computer 15 years ago

Any application that scales well across multiple cores(2, 3, 4, 1000000, any amount) will utilise all of them fully. And unless you were living under a rock (or gaming on a console, for that matter), you would have realised that more and more games are taking advatage of MORE THAN 2 cores. 2-3 years ago (even last year) it would have been useless to have a quad core for gaming but not now. And DirectX 11 has come up with more sophisticated way of utilising the extra cores too.

Want to point me to any other games that even requires more then 1 core aside from Fallen Earth or GTA 4?

However true your argument is (and it is) it is FAR from demanded yet. NOR do I think we will have quads demanded all over the place well before dual cores are. So when the HELL do you think it will be a demand to have 6?

Seriously.... 2015? Maybe?

Concidering Ive seen very few games demand more then 1 core, Im going to call false on this (not that you will eventually need it, but that you will soon... when you start needing any kind of multi-core on anywhere near half the games that come out, we can talk about it being soon).

What i meant is that in 1-2 years we are all gonna need a high-end Dual core or what we would call high end now ,+

but i would say 4-5 years until we will all have and need 6+ core CPU's to play our games

Want to point me to any other games that even requires more then 1 core aside from Fallen Earth or GTA 4?

However true your argument is (and it is) it is FAR from demanded yet. NOR do I think we will have quads demanded all over the place well before dual cores are. So when the HELL do you think it will be a demand to have 6?

Seriously.... 2015? Maybe?


Assassins Creed
Prototype

I think many developers list Pentium 4 as minimum requirement but lets face it.. you'd be stupid to expect more than slideshow fps with that on games like Farcry 2, Crysis etc.

OFP: DR to be released in October, already lists Dual Core @ 2.4GHz as minimum requirement and Quad Core as recommended.

Also with the way processors are now being released where the difference between high end models and low end models is not only clock speed but also number of cores, by 2015 we should be seeing way way more than 6 cores and I doubt that dual cores would still be viable by then. Haswell (Codename for Intels 2012 processor) will have 8 cores by default.

Diortem, seriously, you think only TWO games take advantage of quad core?

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=130262 should settle all doubts on the multi core debate. And that list is from 2007. Don't you think the number of quad core supported games would have increased significantly in the 2 years since then?

Sheesh.

Oh, and Mav, P4 isn't THAT bad, works well with a decent overclock, but its getting old anyway, so what the hell.

I think people are confusing the issue. Dioterm isn't saying that games don't make use of multiple core at the moment, he's saying they don't need multiple cores, which is true. Some recommend, but I can't think of any that won't run on a single core.

We will get there, though. The bottleneck in the last few years is that despite all the games that say they take advantage of multiple cores, few actually do more than just spread the load over multiple the different processors. It's taken a while to learn the tricks to using the cores for specific different tasks. One of the exceptions, as I remember is Supreme Commander. It's a brutal beast on a quad core system as it dedicates an entire core to handling the AI.

But yeah, the drive for bigger and more powerful PCs has slowed down quite a lot, as PC games are kept to the standards of the lower powered consoles by multi-platform releases.

Diortem, seriously, you think only TWO games take advantage of quad core?

No... I said need, not will take advantage. Big difference.

Some recommend, but I can't think of any that won't run on a single core.

Im assuming listing them as actual requirements means it wont... which would place these games on that list. Could be wrong since Ive played niether, but eh....

Just wanted to let yall know that I just played batman arlham asylum on max settings at 1280*1024 and it runs smooth at 45 fps. I know it isnt much of a benchmark but you gotta admit 45fps on a new game that looks that good is awesome for a 850 dollar pc.

Just wanted to let yall know that I just played batman arlham asylum on max settings at 1280*1024 and it runs smooth at 45 fps. I know it isnt much of a benchmark but you gotta admit 45fps on a new game that looks that good is awesome for a 850 dollar pc.

With AA, I presume.

aa*8 its on max everything I made sure of that