Lets be perfectly clear before we dive into the details. If nobody buys new gear then the industry goes stagnant and looses too much money. For those of you who have millions, feel free to buy a brand new machine and accessories every year to help keep the economy thriving. It is important to buy the things that you enjoy, be it; food entertainment or toys (yes PCs for gaming are toys). It is just good to understand how often we need to be a part of the solution or just funneling millions into C-level employee hands. Consider this a new article to coincide with our phone article.  Now for the rest of us, lets continue.

I recently ran some tests on a number of machines and have gathered some numbers on what type of hardware can still run today’s games with 1080P graphics and high to ultra settings. We take a look at some that work and some that don’t quite work so well.

The games tested were designed to be many different play types and graphic types while still being newish:

  • Rainbow 6 Siege
  • Friday the 13th
  • Riders of Icarus
  • ARK: Survival Evolved

First Processor up:

The first one was an old favorite of mine, and one that did me well for quite some time, the E6750. This processor was released back in 2007, and I was able to install all of the games but installation doesn’t mean its going to work.

Lets dive in: I ran my tests with 4 different video cards, starting with the oldest and moving to the newest one. I ran FRAPS on each game

With multiple tests of video cards I can confidently state that the processor is no bottle neck to being able to play most games at 30FPS, we will discuss the video cards used during my tests a little later. Though I can confidently say it can handle the minimums needed in most game types, with Riders of Icarus I was  not able to hit 30 FPS on high settings. Seems like the vast open game might be a little much

Round two:

Second up, we have a huge breakthrough from Intel that continues its naming scheme to this day. Were looking at the Core I-7 920. This was released back in 2008 not too long after our first processor. All applications installed like expected, now we want to look at the numbers. These are far higher than the E6750.

I averaged 75FPS in Rainbow 6 and hit a low of 63.

The game with the lowest score again was Riders of Icarus with the sprawling backgrounds. I averaged 31FPS and hit a low of 6 but that 6 was a very apparent drop while it moved to new regions while loading large amounts of content and only dipped for a second or two.

This really ends what we are going to look at for processors; since this ran so well lets take a look at video cards now instead since we found a few that work quite well for processors.

Video cards used in the tests:

I ran the test with 4 cards and found what works and what doesn’t work.

  • 9800+GTX
  • GTX580
  • GTX950

So lets start at the bottom:

First Video card up:

The EVGA 9800GTX+ is unfortunately not up to the task anymore. This had issues with launching the rainbow 6 games and had to have the settings turned down to a very minimal level for Riders of Icarus and Friday the 13th.

This card doesn’t meet the bare minimum on anything we would consider playable on current games. Were just going to stop now and call this one to old. Its release date was July 2008.

Second Video card up:

EVGA GTX580 was released in November of 2010. This card was able to play everything that we threw at it. While running our tests we had high settings on every game and didn’t see any lag. Hitting averages in the 40-50s in most games. We had a similar issue with Riders of Icarus as described above where we hit a low point of 5 FPS but the norm was in the 40s.

I can say that this card was up to the task. With highs hitting everything we asked for and the lows only being an inconvenience on rare occasion.

The Third Video Card:

The reason we ran tests on the last card is to help those budget conscience players get an understanding of what is available to them. The GTX950 is only $120 right now. Lets take a look at how well it runs.

Though this is about the bottom runner for the 9xx series and the 580 was the top of the chain when it was released. The sheer time difference is what makes the numbers make sense. Released in August 2015 This card was able to still hit fast speeds in every situation than the GTX580. With new technology inside and a more efficient processor I found that we had an increase of about 10 fps.

Summary:

I know this wasn’t a pretty article with lots of pictures and bells and such but its s pretty simple. An E6750 with a GTX 580 works great and didn’t give me issues.

Video cards need the most attention in your system and the most consistent upgrades. 4GB of RAM in a processor from 2007 doing a fine job it seems like 10 years is a good life for those parts. The video cards need a bit more love and consideration, these wont quite last a decade.