I don't think there's ever been a better time
to be a PC gamer on a tiny budget.
You only have to look at channels like RandomGamingInHD,
to realise you can squeeze surprising performace
out of even the smallest amount of cash.
CS:GO meanwhile, might not be the toughest
of games to run, but it's evolved a fair bit
in the half decade since its release, which
begs a question-
How do its listed minimum requirements hold
up?
Well, last year, Skazzy3 tested just that,
with the Triple-core AMD Phenom and a couple
different Radeon cards. He found it performed
pretty poorly in game, although the video's
now unlisted sadly.
I, on the other hand, have chosen to go the
route of the Core 2 Duo E6600, mainly because
that's what I had lying around. Though they're
not exactly expensive by any means.
The windows requirements list 2 gigabytes
of ram which is pretty small, and unfortunately
no video card is specified, instead just leaving
some vague capabilities.
Luckily on the linux page they're a little
more helpful, even if they do list 2 completely
different tiers of GPU from either manufacturer.
I decided to go with the GeForce 9600 GT,
which probably isn't helping my reputation
over on ayymd, but it was a good buy since
CEX seems to massively underprice them versus
the ebay second hand market. Ha!
Anyway, a couple days later my purchase had
arrived and it was time to assemble the system.
Can't help but wonder who thought it was a
good idea to make the card look like it's
on fire, but I digress.
I installed windows 7 from the DVD since the
PC didn't seem to like my win10 USB, then
got to business.
First impressions weren't great. The graphics
card ran its fan at vacuum cleander levels
until drivers were fully installed, and Windows
7 was awfully unreponsive with the pitiful
amount of RAM.
The real test, though, would of course be
counter-strike itself.
My method was to try 3 different popular maps
and run three one-minute benchmark passes
with FRAPS, hosting the game on my main computer
to simulate being in a match.
Then I'd average the results on each map to
draw conclusions.
All the graphics settings were on lowest with
resolutions at 1024x768, but I refuse to do
any further optimisations or command line
options as I believe the game should work
on its requirements out of the box.
So how was it, then?
Loading times were painfully long and there
was a coinflip chance that you'd be booted
out to main menu with an obscure error message,
but once you made it ingame, it was borderline
playable.
Dust2 averaged almost exactly 60 frames per
second, while overpass was a little below
that and the new Inferno also managed an impressive
60. That's not the whole story though.
Despite the respectable average framerates,
the game was often stuttery and inconsistent,
slowing down a LOT when action happened, meaning
minimum framerates were often in the single
figures.
It was clear that the graphics card was barely
stretching its legs, and the awful stuttering
was probably a result of our system's RAM-starvation.
I decided to give Valve the benefit of the
doubt and try again with 4 gigabytes of memory
instead, since that's apparently the minimum
for linux users.
This meant jumping ship to a different motherboard
since our old Intel one only supported 2GB.
This board has a few more luxuires, including
the decency to work with windows 10, so I
went with that this time.
Windows was much more pleasant to use this
time around, and the game had a massive performance
bump as well.
Now suddenly our dust2 average was 90fps,
with minimum framerates at a buttery smooth
65.
Overpass didn't fair quite as well, with averages
at about 70fps and minimums more in the 30
range, but was still a far cry from the stuttery
mess from before.
Inferno was pretty similar really, with the
average just at 60fps but minimums again at
a much nicer 35.
You can imagine my surprise at how well the
game runs all of a sudden, on the exact same
processor and graphics card, no less. For
the sake of science, I tested again with 2
gigs of RAM but
on the new motherboard and windows install.
Predictably, the minimum framerates were behind
the 4GB system, yet better than the windows
7 setup.
So I guess the newer operating system is actually
much more efficient at memory management,
though 4GB still gives the best overall experience.
So yeah, I was pretty impressed with these
so called 'minimum' requirements by the end.
The CPU is clearly the bottleneck, so if you
were actually thinking of building a system
like this I'd reccomend
a core 2 quad or perhaps a touch of overclocking,
but it's far from inadequate.
The graphics card proved more than enough,
and was barely topping 30% utilisation even
on Inferno. For �10 plus shipping I'd definitely
call it a steal.
Video memory never exceeded half usage either,
so I'm willing to support Valve's 256MB requirement
in that regard. The game's install folder,
meanwhile, ended up being 14.6 gigabytes,
just below the
advertised 15GB, so I'll give that a stamp
of approval too.
Were I valve, I would consider adding an actual
card model to the windows requirements and
upping the RAM to 3 gigabytes and also making
half life 3. Wait, am I even allowed to make
those jokes any more?
Oh well, either way I'm gonna declare the
minimum requirements playable and call it
a day. Thanks everyone for sticking with me
through this epic journey,
and also thanks because apparently I have
2,000 subscribers now. Huh, should probably
upload more often. Nah just kidding I'm out
of ideas. Bai
