What is the criteria for "Minimum System Requirements" and when is a game "Playable"?

[amantes]

Hello!
Something has been on my mind ever since I got a new graphics card and started playing Dying Light. The card I bought is a GTX 750, 2gb. I was very impressed by how it ran the game. I'm playing at Best Performance preset at 1280x720. Most of the time I would get 40-60 fps, in buildings 80-100, it would rarely drop under 30 and only when it was loading something from the hdd in a wide open area. I even tried surround at three times that resolution, and it did not drop the frames at all. Then I ran GPU-Z and realized it was not even using the card's full potential, running only at 75-80%. The bottleneck was the CPU, which was always at 100%. And here is where I start scratching my head.

The "minimum system requirement" for a cpu is listed as Intel Core i5-2500 @3.3 GHz / AMD FX-8320 @3.5 GHz . The one I have is a bottom of the barrel G1840 Celeron processor at 2.8 ghz. I understand that system requirements are a rough guideline, but isn't that worlds apart? My Celeron cost around $40, and the i5 costs around $200. How come I can play the game with a processor that's as far under the minimum as you can go?

I talked about this to a friend of mine and he told me the minimum requirement should guarantee that the game is playable, and it would only be that if it reaches 60 fps and never drops below 30. First of all, isn't that a little harsh? I've played many games that were choppy a lot of the time (Oblivion comes to mind). If I can play the game, is it not playable? Secondly, since I only get a slowdown in Dying Light when the hdd becomes audible, doesn't that mean the rest of the hardware is already providing enough power?

I know this is a very trivial problem that does not require immediate remedy, but I just wanted to share what's on my mind. Sorry for the long post ^^;

 

[Vynavill]

Minimum requirements indeed guarantee a game is playable, but they guarantee it so that the game can run without too much issues at all times and so that it meets optimization requirements. It's not a matter of framerate, as that can be considered a personal opinion at best (plenty of people consider 60 fps as a must, some other don't and go for 30), but rather a matter of running as intended without issues such as bottlenecks or framerate drops. All of that on a varying setup which usually standardizes itself around medium-low details at 720p or lower.
It's also not a matter of pure power and speed; some games advertise out of mind GPU combos, for example, due to their VRAM requirement. I've seen more than once games advertising (as recommended) either a GTX 760 or an R9 290; why? Because they deemed 4gb necessary, where a 270x likely wasn't enough and a 280/280x only had 3gb.
The same criteria can be applied over CPUs; why advertise an i5 over an i3 or even an old Pentium? Because the game is likely optimized for quad core operation, and lower setups will likely lag behind or bottleneck other components (as in your case).

Of course, it's a very general guideline, and as such shouldn't be considered an imperative statement about if the game will run or not. Reality is usually very different and much more random...
As a plus, it's also very much influenced by the market, so you will often see recent hardware, whereas an older equivalent or lower can still work fine.

Think about it as the layman's requirement list; for people with low or no knowledge in hardware, it's a quick way to understand if a game will run or not. You could also see it as the required expiration date of any edible product; if it falls under that requirement, it's (usually) guaranteed you can eat it, but that doesn't mean it's not edible anymore as soon as that day arrives

 

[cats_Paw]

The minimum requirements depend on the company.
The less optimization a game has, the higher the minimum requirements will be.
In some cases, if the game is very well optimized and very graphics heavy, you might see higher than common requirements.
In general, if the optimization would be good, in theory, minimum req should be as low as the ones on consoles (ps4/xbox one).
So, in general, if you see PC req. higher than console specs in any game that is both in console and PC, it means one of two things:
Bad optimization or better graphics (even on lowest settings).

Unfortunatelly, there is no standard to waht minimum requirements wishes to archive. Some may sai it is 30 fps in 1080p, settings at medium. Other is 60 at low...
Its too subjective.

 

[amantes]

Thanks for the insight, guys! Indeed, it does bottleneck my gpu, but it doesn't seem like I need its full power anyway as like I said, the game is running better than I'd ever imagine.
What feels like a blunder to me though is that the minimum requirements list 1GB VRAM as a requirement, which is too low for the game. If gpu-z is honest with me, the game was using up 1.4-1.5 gb of VRAM like it was nothing. I can't imagine it running very well with only 1gb. So on one hand, we have an overstated cpu requirement, on the other we have an understated VRAM requirement.
Btw, the game was about a month old when I started playing. It's a small window, but perhaps the optimization was patched?

 

[Archgaull]

I've noticed that for some things, optimization seems to be based on the user. For example, I've got the 750ti as well, and I can run Dying Light on ultra with no problems, around 40 FPS. On the other hand, I've seen people with GTX 970's complaining about how the game is unplayable unless they turn everything down to medium. I believe it's as Vynavill said, and merely a matter of preference or some other factor.

 

[amantes]

Ultra? Now that's something. Well, I'm using the non-TI version, so it probably lacks a little power, but I imagine it's possible with a good cpu. What's yours?

 

[Archgaull]

I've got a i5-4690K overclocked to 4.2GHz, and the EVGA 750ti FTW with ACX cooling. I max the game out aside from shadows which i turn down slightly, and I turned the film grain off, but that was cause it was giving me a headache and not for performance reasons.

 

[amantes]

Pretty impressive.