You may or may not know that games can become more or less demanding over time, thanks to the likes of feature additions, updated textures, driver updates, etc. Since we’re all about offering gaming systems tailored to your needs, we’ve reviewed a number games and their requirements. Some games have had major updates or expansions, while others have changed slightly.
Have you checked out our game database to see how your next gaming PC can expect to run the latest and greatest games? Don’t forget, once you customise a PC you can also see how it will perform in every game we have in our database right from the summary page (just scroll down a little)!
Most games get released, have a big surge of people playing it, and then it will die off eventually. A lot of online focused games have stronger staying power, however. As hardware generations come out, we need to ensure our suggestions match the hardware we sell. So, it’s more important that we keep these up to date.
Virtual reality has been around for a while – there are those that are right into it, and those who still haven’t experienced much of it. The requirements have stayed much the same, decent i5 teamed with a middle-to-high end graphics card will do the trick.
It’s no real surprise that this game is still in the top 10 games played on Steam. GTA games have always had so much depth to them, even in just single player. GTA V’s online multiplayer which is continually getting updates keeps players coming back, and new players coming in.
Thanks to developers paying the PC version special attention, the game looks better and better over time, while demanding just about all PC hardware has to offer.
When we first added Rust to our game database, it was still in early access. It’s come a long way since then, and was officially released in February this year. The amount of players has remained fairly stable growing from 2013 to now, which indicates happy gamers!
A bit of a quiet achiever, PoE has maintained a steady amount of play time since 2013. In the last 12 months it appears to have risen in popularity, now higher than ever before.
WoW first released late 2004, meaning it’s approaching it’s 14th year. Love it or hate it, WoW is one of the most successful games of all time. The latest expansion “Battle for Azeroth” launched just last month. We figured, what better time to review the requirements!
Starting off once again in early access, PUBG has now officially released. While it’s still quite resource demanding, we should expect a better quality of gaming to be possible.
In early access when we added it back in 2014, with an estimated late 2015 release date… is still in early access. It may be one of the most ambitious games ever attempted on a large scale, with a lot to like about it. But, its future doesn’t look as bright as it once was. Right now, there’s a lot of bad press relating to some ticket sales being charged for even though people were subscribed – and there’s even an active lawsuit against them from their game engine developer.
We’ve been through a lot of survival games together. DayZ, Rust, 7 Days to Die, Alien: Isolation, Ark: Survival Evolved, Dying Light: Bad Blood, and of course the ever-popular Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), and Fortnite.
But, things are about to get a whole lot more interesting…
Enter SCUM: A game that promises to evolve the survival game genre with unprecedented focus on character customisation, control, and progression.
As the player, you’ll have to choose an avatar to represent you: pick your gender and race. This is just a visual choice, and won’t have any influence on your performance.
Clothing
At the start, all characters are dressed in the same orange prison jumpsuit. Players can change clothes as they find them. The clothes are not just visual, the complexity of the game begins right here. Certain clothes can offer some camouflaging which helps reduce your visibility. Secondly, clothes provide protection against weather conditions and extreme temperatures. Some options are better for protection from rain and therefore reduce the chance of illness. Wear warmer clothes in cold weather, etc.
Attributes
The four main attributes are: Strength (S), Constitution (C), Intelligence (I), and Dexterity (D). Each of these attributes range from 1 to 5. “3” represents an average value, while numbers above or below indicate above or below average respectively. You will have a fixed number of points to distribute between attributes. During the game, these attributes can be increased or decreased for a limited time or even permanently (if the player gets wounded, falls ill, is drugged). It’s much more demanding to change the attributes in the longer run. This usually happens if the player manages to survive long enough for the body to evolve to the next level.
Age
Age will also impact your attributes. For example, a young player will get a (D) boost, as they are generally quite agile. mid-twenties players start getting some (S) and losing their (D), early-thirties sees (D) dropping even more, but gaining on (C). Older characters will have more (I).
Strength Attribute (S)
How much weight you can carry without being slowed down; if load capacity is exceeded, you will perform at a slower pace
How fast you can move a heavy object. If object is too heavy for your character, you will not be able to move without help from another player
How much damage you can inflict on opponents during melee combat
More calories burned by your player daily
Constitution Attribute (C)
This refers to everything related to physical endurance and stamina.
How many health points you have initially
How well your body handles stress, pain, weather, shock, poisons, and physical damage
Endurance: how long it takes until you get tired, and how long it takes to restore energy
High (C) means calories are spent more efficiently, decreasing calorie consumption speed
Intelligence Attribute (I)
Refers to perception and capability of performing a task successfully.
Improves chance of you hitting the aimed target
Higher (I) adds additional skill slots
Able to learn skills faster
Dexterity Attribute (D)
Refers to everything connected with the speed of movement and reaction in general.
How fast you can move, walk, run, and sprint
How fast you can perform everyday actions such as crafting, eating, reloading, etc.
Improves your chance of performing complicated actions such as surgery, fixing electronics, etc.
There are so many more levels to this game than what I’ve outlined above – in fact, that’s probably just the first few minutes of gameplay in the character creation menus. The gameplay adds in a lot more complexity, but in a meaningful and fun way that will start to make sense. Once you learn the ins and outs, it can start working at your advantage.
I can’t wait to see what becomes of this game, and what other games will do to rival this. It’s not exactly the first time we’ve seen some of this – remembering GTA San Andreas with the eating, exercising, etc.
So you’re in the market for a new PC and perhaps friends have told you to wait until the great new RTX graphics cards come out first. Or maybe you’ve heard about ray tracing… and you’re wondering what all this means. Thankfully, we’re here to break it down.
Firstly, let’s start simple. Nvidia’s new generation of graphics cards is called RTX instead of the historical GTX, and it’s named this way as it focuses on Ray Tracing Technologies.
What is ray tracing?
There might not be many people who knew what ray tracing was prior to a month or two ago, but there were very few people in the world that haven’t already seen it in action.
Ray tracing is a modern technique that movies use to generate and enhance special effects. Think about the latest action movie you saw and the realistic reflections, shadows, and refractions. Compare them to a much older action movie you’ve seen. Good ray tracing results in convincing special effects which appear lifelike.
Ray tracing develops images that can be indistinguishable from real world photos. Live-action movies utilise computer-generated effects and images captured seamlessly, animated films digitally generate scenes in light and shadow creating an entire world of their own.
The easiest way to think of ray tracing is to look around you. Every object you’re seeing is illuminated by sources of light from your environment. Now, turn that around and follow the path of those light sources backwards from your eye to the object the light interacts with. This is ray tracing.
Why do we need it?
An example of reflections in games previously
Until now computer hardware hasn’t been fast enough to use these techniques in real time, such as for games. Movie makers can take as long as they like to render a single frame since it doesn’t need to be on-demand. For reference, Disney’s Frozen features a scene where Elsa walks onto the balcony of her ice palace. The scene is 218 frames long, which includes the film’s longest frame to render. A single frame took over 132 hours to complete (five-and-a-half days). This practise is extremely common with animated movies.
Gaming requires anywhere from 20 frames per second (FPS) to 240FPS – while between 40-60FPS is considered enough for most. As a result we don’t have the luxury of the 5 day render time. Instead, games have relied on rasterisation. Rasterisation is a technique that gets 3D objects onto a 2D screen quickly. This method has been refined over the years, and within game engines, and has gotten very good. It is not as good as what ray tracing can achieve.
Real-time ray traced reflections (note the reflection on the balls of the windows that are out of scene)
Ray tracing calculates the colour of pixels by tracing the path that light would take if it were to travel from the eye of the viewer through the virtual 3D scene. As it traverses the scene, the light may reflect from one object to another (causing reflections), be blocked by objects (causing shadows), or pass through transparent or semi-transparent objects (causing refractions). Each of these interactions are combined to produce the final colour of a pixel that is then displayed on the screen.
Where does RTX graphics cards come into this?
RTX capable graphics processing units (GPUs) include dedicated ray tracing acceleration hardware and use an advanced acceleration structure enabling real-time ray tracing in games and other graphics applications. Ray tracing acceleration is achieved by developers via Nvidia OptiX, Microsoft DXR enhanced with Nvidia ray tracing libraries, and the Vulkan ray tracing API.
Nvidia’s RTX brings more than just ray tracing
RTX cards will bring a few APIs (Application Programming Interface) and SDKs (Software Development Kit):
Ray tracing (OptiX, Microsoft DXR, Vulkan) – covered extensively on this page
AI-Accelerated Features (NGX)
Rasterisation (Advanced Shaders)
Simulation (CUDA 10, PhysX, FleX)
Asset Interchange Formats (USD, MDL)
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The areas in white were intelligently filled in
NGX SDK is a new deep learning powered technology stack bringing AI-based features that accelerate and enhance graphics, photo imaging and video processing directly into applications. NGX features utilise Tensor Cores to maximise the efficiency of their operation.
Temporal Anti-Aliasing vs Deep Learning Super SampleUp-Res provides improved image clarity over Bicubic filterting
The Turing architecture’s new Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) includes advanced shading technologies, as well as new features designed to accelerate the graphics pipeline.
Making something both look and behaves as it would in reality. With more than a decade of development, the RTX platform features APIs such as Nvidia’s PhysX, FleX, and CUDA 10, to accurately model how objects interact in the real world in games, virtual environments, and special effects.
Asset Interchange
With the growing complexity of pipelines and application workflows, standard file formats significantly help creators and developers achieve better asset interchange between applications.
Who needs the RTX?
Architects and designers can showcase how light interacts with designs
Gamers who are after the most lifelike gaming experience the industry has on offer for consumers
Designers/Architects working with the likes of Autodesk to produce design mock-ups
Anyone after the new world’s most powerful GPUs
Now, it is important to note that ray tracing takes a significant hit on GPUs. Therefore, when turned on it will result in less frames per second, similar to the early years of Anti-Aliasing (AA). For competitive gaming it’s noteworthy that ray tracing is going to cause too much frame loss to make sense. Single-player picturesque games like Far Cry, Tomb Raider, Hitman, Doom, Fallout, and Resident Evil. These are certainly some examples of games you’d want to experience with ray tracing turned on.
Benefits of RTX cards now
A list of games that will feature real-time ray tracing
Assetto Corsa Competizione
Atomic Heart
Battlefield V
Control
Enlisted
Justice
JX3
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
Metro Exodus
ProjectDH
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Not an actual example – but, because who doesn’t love a meme?
A list of games to have ‘Deep Learning Super Sample’
Ark: Survival Evolved
Atomic Heart
Dauntless
Final Fantasy XV
Fractured Lands
Hitman 2
Islands of Nyne
Justice
JX3
Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
Remnant: From the Ashes
Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
The Forge Arena
We Happy Few
It won’t surprise us at all when even more games adopt some of the new technologies RTX cards bring to the table. Maybe at some stage in the distant future, perhaps even console gamers can get a taste.
The future of gaming is here
I’d be surprised if this wasn’t slowly but surely adopted across the entire gaming industry. As stated above, just like AA is now standard. Ray tracing would dramatically help the realism of virtual reality, but this is probably a little further off in the distance.
Sadly the ray tracing feature won’t be available right at the launch of the graphics cards as it will require a DirectX update from Microsoft. The update is expected within a few weeks of the launch date.
Conclusion
There you have it, that’s everything you needed to know about RTX cards, and the buzz around ‘ray tracing’ specifically. We’re eagerly anticipating the release of the new cards as they will be the most powerful gaming graphics cards in the world.
At the end of the day, who doesn’t want a more immersive, lifelike experience when gaming? Something that would really nail virtual reality gaming. Imagine a Grand Theft Auto world that looks like our own. All this, and more, coming to a screen near you.
We put high-quality graphics first and foremost, so if you want to get your hands on a gaming or workstation PC with the RTX graphics cards, be sure to check back with us regularly! We are already offering the RTX cards for pre-order, and will continue offering them once they are readily available.
Head on over to our website and customise yourself a gaming or workstation PC. If you have any questions, feel free to ask us.
This particular build showcases the efforts our techs will go to (without being asked) to create a theme that they pick up on from the components a customer orders for their build. This particular customer ordered red LED fans, and red PSU extension cables, so our tech selected red for the CPU cooler, and also changed the RGB case fans to red (front of case). The customer can of course change the RGB CPU cooler and RGB front case fans, but this out of the box experience is sure to catch the eye of our customer as soon as it powers on for the very first time in their home.
The black and red contrast really well throughout the entire build.
Most satisfying picture of the week!
Want to put your next gaming build in the hands of our highly sought after technicians? Just purchase your custom PC build from our website, and we’ll take care of the rest. Who knows, maybe we’ll feature your build on our blog!
