While investigating graphics card benchmarks for a new PC, I noticed that some of the games I've been playing on my current laptop list minimum specificaitons on Steam that are considerably higher than its hardware.
It's packing an old Nvidia 635M graphics card, which has a 3D Mark score of 1070. Yet I've been able to play Xcom2, which lists a minimum requirement of a GTX 460 (a 3D Mark score of 3530, fully 3 times higher than my current card). And more recently it's run Battlefleet Gothic, which lists a minimum requirement of a GTX 560 (a 3D Mark score of 3939).
At the other end of the scale, the GTX 770 is a fairly common sight in the "recommended" specs of a lot of recent AAA games. That's got a 3D Mark score of 11190. Yet the replacement machine I've just ordered has a 970M card with a 3D Mark score of 10000 and comparison videos would suggest it's pretty much on a par with the 770 in spite of the lower score.
What's going on here, especially in terms of my old rig being able to run these modern games? Is there a lot more to graphics card performance than benchmark scores? I'm aware that minimum and recommended specs are at the whim of the developer and aren't held to any specific standard, but if there's so much variation in performance, how can people realistically judge what I can and can't run before buying?
Best Answer
Hardware doesn't care what score some piece of software says they are getting... Instead what matters is stuff like clock speed and (in case of GPU) video memory.
VERY quick google search shows that the GTX GPU listed as minimum requirements has 1GB of video RAM, where your video card is supposedly 2GB of video ram. That's twice as many as the minimum requirements. Most likely the suggested GTX is only there as a reference.
Benchmarks like the ones you have used take into account many things, and for instance if you have 1gb of RAM you will get significantly lower score for the same system with 16gb of RAM. Online scores are usually run in best-case scenarios and aren't really relevant in this specific case - minimum hardware requirements.
What I'd suggest you do is find out what your Computer specifications are (written on the box of the laptop or with software like Aida64) - CPU speed (Ghz) CPU cores, etc, GPU speed and VRAM, System RAM, and compare that to specifications listings - in here for instance