>It's also nearly 2025 - for a desktop gaming rig, 32GB of RAM isn't really that unusual, and neither is 16 cores.
/r/USdefaultism
Plenty of people all over the world can't afford or don't want to spend so much money on a new gaming rig every few years.
I just upgraded from:
- core i5 2500 (from 2011)
- 8GB of DDR3
- nvidia 9500GT
to the following config:
- Ryzen 5 2600x 6 cores from 2018
- 16GB of DDR4
- Radeon rx570 8GB
- 550W PSU
Cost of the operation:
80€ for second hand mainboard + CPU + 650W PSU
40€ for new Corsair dimms
15€ for a second hand case (went from mini-ITX to microATX mainboard)
That is 135€ in total and there is no way I would have spent much more on a gaming computer right now. I have enough to spend on a trip on the other side of the atlantic, fixing my house, go solar + some bicycle and motorbike parts and maintenance.
I dare say you are not the target audience for 4K gaming then - which is where those recommended specs came from. The price of a GPU that can game in 4K is many multiples more than your entire system upgrade cost.
Your hardware will dictate what kinds of games you can play.
People who enjoy AAA titles and want everything on max settings - 32GB of ram and 16 core systems are not abnormal. On the high end, some folks are even starting to use 64GB of RAM.
Fair enough I have been staying off hidpu on purpose on all my devices[1] and don't necessarily look for the newest games: I only recently bought Red Dead Redemption 2 for instance and haven't launched it yet.
When you don't want to spend a lot of money on gaming, it is better living in the past and play games from several years or a console generation before. If you don't try the new ones and only keeps being loosely aware of new releases, you never feel frustrated and actually benefit from games that are finished and fully patched, decent offers for games + DLCs and sometimes well made mods.
[1] funnily enough except my mobile phone which has the biggest resolution of them all
Steam hardware survey indicates that <10% of the market has 16 or more cores. Consumer gaming-optimized CPUs also don't typically have that high of a physical core count. Not saying it is unfair for ultra settings, just not typical even for higher-end game rigs.
I would suspect a great deal of the "8 cpus" segment is really 8 physical cores with 16 vcores - but I could be wrong.
Either way, those playing on 4K are most likely to meet or exceed these hardware recommendations.
OTOH, I understand the GPU requirement but why would 4K need extra cores of CPU and larger RAM than 1080p. Shouldn't the graphical heavylifting be mostly done on the GPU?
Hopefully that is what they mean. I guess we'll find out what the actual performance needs are when it makes it to reviewers.
And around 10% of the market has a GPU that meets the same tier of requirements for Civ 7. The people who buy a high-end GPU often also buy a high-end CPU, because it's possible.
16 cores is pretty high end. I have a Ryzen 9 7900X which I bought last year and that is 12 cores/24 threads. It still retails for roughly $400.
A lot of gamer CPUs don't have 16 cores. Neither the 7800x3D nor the 7900x3d have 16 cores. In the latest gen, only the 9950x3d will have 16 cores (it will likely be a $700 CPU). The 9900x3D is rumored to have 12 cores and the 9800x3D is rumored to have 8 cores.
It depends how you count them; we're unsure what the game spec recommendations consider as cores.
The 7800x3D, for instance, is 8 physical cores with 16 threads. Many systems will report this as 16 cpus. The difference between cpu, core and thread has become blurry.
I'd bet the game recommendations mean 16 threads, not physical cores. In the PC gaming context, 16 is not unusual these days.
It should be noted that Civ5/6 bog down not because the AI is that good, but because the implementation is that slow. It's just a very poorly optimized game.
I also suspect they do not take full advantage of multi-core systems.
Recommending a 16 core CPU might imply that is no longer the case with the newest Civ title.
FPS death has also been the least !!fun!! way to lose a game of Dwarf Fortress, even before it had a GUI.