Played: how many Steam users have stopped buying new hardware for their computer?

Hi, Geektimes! This is the second post from Playkey - the Russian cloud gaming service.

To play new games, you need a computer with a good hardware: a powerful processor, a modern video card, and enough RAM.

But what do most gamers play and what games can they run at least on the "minimum salary"? To find out the answer, we studied the open statistics on the hardware of Steam users - and figured out what the "iron" of an ordinary player looks like.

We also calculated the cost of a computer, where you can comfortably play modern games. And finally - selected a few games that came out or come out this year and studied their system requirements in order to understand what gamers are morally prepared for. Go!

What iron are the players using Steam

Steam has statistics on the hardware components used by the service audience. Of course, the characteristics are approximate, and the average temperature in the hospital cannot be considered the ultimate truth. Nevertheless, this gives a good idea of ​​the “average” Steam user and the capabilities of his computer.

Processors

According to statistics, the most popular processor configuration among owners of Intel "stones" is between 2.3 GHz to 2.69 GHz (21%). At the same time, half of the players (50.37%) have processors with three or less physical cores.

If you recall the "minimal walks" of the same GTA 5, then they indicate a quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 at a frequency of 2.40 GHz. If you roughly round it up (alas, you cannot see a cut in Steam by the number of cores and by frequency), then more than half of the entire audience Steam cannot start the game two years ago even at minimum settings.

We do not say that such users cannot play modern games or work normally at a computer (there is always a Hotline Miami - he and Pentium 3 are enough! We are serious ). But in recent years, the developers have noted that 4-core processors like the Intel Core i5 or AMD FX-8350 are needed to play on the recommended graphics settings.

67.01% of the Steam audience at best, plays in GTA 5 on the "minimum wages" - judging by the processor power

Video Cards

The most popular video cards are the GeForce: GTX 970, GTX 960 and GTX 750 Ti models. In fourth place, the integrated graphics core HD Graphics 4000 is integrated into Intel processors. At the same time, the average amount of video memory, one of the most important components of video chips, is only 1 GB, and 12% of the audience has frank firewood with 512 MB of video memory and less. These guys shine just something in the spirit of TES: Morrowind - not a reproach to the latter.

In general, about 45% of players do not reach the “recommended” GTA 5 settings (with 2 GB of video memory). At the same time, Steam statistics do not take into account another 9% of players who did not indicate the amount of video memory used. Speaking easier, almost every second looks at a beautiful GTA 5 image only in HD stream on YouTube or Twitch.

About 45% of players use video cards with 1 GB of video memory or less. This is enough to run the two-year-old games on the "minimum salary" in low resolution or, if lucky, at medium settings

RAM, HDD and other components

Let's start with the good news: most Steam players use 8 GB of RAM (33%). And about 20% of the audience is sitting at 12 GB of memory and above. We shake hands, guys!

What about the rest? More than 36% sits on 4GB or even less. You can forget about new products with such hardware, and the already mentioned GTA 5 will barely succumb to the minimum salary.

What becomes Need for Speed ​​2015, if you remove one memory bar and leave 4 GB instead of 8 GB, you can see from 2:00 here:

( spoiler: nothing good )

Other interesting information from the statistics is hard disk. But even more remarkable is not the average HDD volume, but the free space ... Which in 20% of players is less than 100 GB. To install GTA 5, 120 GB of free space will be required at the time of installation, after which the game will "eat up" the 60 GB put by it. It seems that someone has to be fooled every time with the installation?

So, what does the average "good" iron of the Steam player look like? Like this:

4-core Intel processor with a frequency of 2.3-2.69 GHz
Video card with 1 GB of video memory 1 TB hard disk
8 GB of RAM

And what is the equally popular "budget" option, on which 20-30% of Steam audience sit? Already like this:

2-core Intel processor with a frequency of 2.3-2.69 GHz
Video card with 1 GB of video memory
250 GB hard drive
4 GB of RAM ( sympathize )

Most Popular Steam Games

Also on Steam there is open statistics on the most popular games. Dota 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, not the most demanding of iron, are expected in the first places.


')

Of the more voracious in the top ten most popular are GTA 5. Imagine we need to build a computer that pulls these games at the recommended settings.

Now compare this configuration with the one that the average Steam user has:

And at the same time GTA 5 was released on Windows two years ago - April 14, 2015, Karl!

20-30% of users do not have enough "budget" computer assembly to play games even two years old

But let's not talk about sad things. Let's better build a computer that pulls GTA 5 on the recommended settings and calculate how much it will cost in the best (budget) case.

Putting the computer for popular games on Steam

We will collect on the basis of the processor AMD FX 8350, which is cheaper than its counterparts on Intel. In addition, motherboards for AMD processors cost less. We chose the minimum necessary hardware, trying to save on everything. We chose a site for assembly from one of the federal network of computer equipment stores.

We took into account that some of the components that are in our “minimal computer” are no longer commercially available. Therefore, we selected the closest to them from those that are sold now. It turned out like this:

Processor: AMD FX 8350 (~ 10 000 ₽)
Motherboard: Asrock N68-GS4 FX R2.0 (~ 3 000 ₽)
Cooler: DEEPCOOL GAMMAXX 200 T (~ 1 000 ₽)
RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury Black Series HX318C10FB / 4 4 GB (~ 2500 × 2 = 5 000 ₽)
Hard disk: WD Caviar Blue WD10EZEX, 1Tb, HDD (~ $ 3)
Video Card: PALIT GTX 1050 StormX, NE5105001841-1070F (~ 8 000 ₽)
Case: mATX AEROCOOL Qs-240, Micro-Tower, (~ 2 000 ₽)
Power supply: AEROCOOL VX-600 (~ 2 500 ₽)

Total: ~ 35 000 ₽

As a result, the system unit cost us 35 thousand rubles. If the user does not have a monitor, keyboard, mouse and acoustics, then at least 15 thousand rubles can be safely added to this amount. But for the purity of the experiment, we will leave the current value of 35 thousand rubles.

Imagine that such a computer is purchased with a margin of 5 years. Of course, knowledgeable people will say that in a year or two he will hardly pull the games at the minimum settings, and in three or four he will not support the outgoing toys at all. But still. We divide 35 thousand rubles for 60 months - we get about 583 rubles. Against 390 rubles for 70 hours of game time per month from Playkey.

The computer, which is now pulling at the recommended settings, in a year or two will pull new items at the minimum.

It turns out that an ordinary user who does not want and in most cases will not be able to collect piece by piece of a game monster is more profitable to pay for the service of streaming games and save almost 200 rubles per month. For 5 years, the savings will be 11 580 rubles. With this money you can buy a good gaming acoustics, keyboard and mouse. Or four keys to cool new products.

System requirements for 2017 games and builds for them

We have chosen three games that will be released or have already been released this year and studied their system requirements.

Resident evil 7

Release date: January 2017

The seventh part of the popular horror shooter came out on January 24 of this year, so we can already evaluate its system requirements for PCs. The developers recommend Intel Core i7 3770 processors running at 3.4 GHz, 8 GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 1060X video card with 4 GB of video memory.

To assemble a computer for minimum settings, we needed about 33 thousand rubles. It is obvious that the assembly for the recommended settings will be much more expensive: only a video card costs 20 thousand rubles, and the processor - 20-24 thousand rubles.

For honor

Release date: February 14, 2017

The game studio Ubisoft just released, and in the recommended system requirements - a computer based on the processor Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD FX-6350, video card GTX 680 and newer or Radeon R9 280X and newer with 2 GB of video memory. Memory requirements are standard: 8 GB.

For Honor is not the most demanding game. To build a computer that pulls the game at the minimum settings, we had 30 thousand rubles. In order to play the game at the recommended settings, you will need a processor worth 7.5 thousand rubles and a video card, which costs about 9 thousand rubles.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

Release date: April 2017

The new part of the game series Mass Effect, which is popular with gamers, is coming out in April of this year. It is already known that the game will use the Frosbite 3 engine - the same as in Battlefield 1. Therefore, you can rely on the recommended system requirements for this game.

For Battlefield 1, developers recommended an Intel Core i7 4790 or AMD FX-8350 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 1060 video card with 3 GB of video memory or an AMD Radeon RX 480 with 4 GB of video memory. We made the assembly for the minimum and medium-high settings: it turned out 33 and 61 thousand rubles, respectively.

See also: We are building a computer for the latest games (Playkey blog)

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To comfortably play the titles that come out this year, you need a sufficiently productive hardware. If you take the upper level of the assembly for medium-high settings Battlefield 1, which is likely to be suitable for Mass Effect Andromeda, you need about 60 thousand rubles.

We did not take into account the game, the system requirements for which have not yet been published. Obviously, future games will be even more demanding. Also, manufacturers each year update the hardware, which with each new iteration costs more and more.

The results of our research:

1. 20-30% of users do not have enough "budget" computer assembly to play games even two years old

   
   

2. In order to comfortably play two-year-old games, like GTA 5, you need a computer for at least 35 thousand rubles .

   
   

3. An average computer with a margin of 5 years in terms of months will cost about 600 rubles per month for 5 years (60 months). Subscribing to the Playkey - 200 rubles cheaper.

   
   

4. To comfortably play the games that come out this year, you need a computer worth about 60 thousand rubles.

   
   
5. In due course games will be more exacting, iron is more productive, and the minimum "pulling" computer - is more expensive.

And, traditionally, a small bonus for those who read to the end and have not tried Playkey in action - we have prepared a promotional code for you for a day (24 hours from the moment of activation) - GeektimesPlayFree24

Activate time to 03/25/2017. Valid only for new Playkey users in the Russian Federation and the CIS.