I guess it falls on to me to do it – some people just can’t be honest with themselves. We’ll be using the Xbox Series X as baseline hardware (aka minimum reqs) because it’s the easiest to emulate with off-the-shelf PC parts. Here’s what that limited, opt-in only survey as of May 2020 tells us.
Steam Survey - click here.
And before you ask why not use Sony’s PS5 as baseline? Because Sony’s nontraditional use of clocks, + the custom hardware and super charged I/O and SSD make sustained performance as a whole unpredictable and unknown. Now you can strongly believe and think adding a component here or there could make a significant statistical difference but as you’ll eventually conclude after reading the walls of text below, it does not in the slightest.
Anyway, minimum reqs are a package of components
that must all be present in a configuration so that we can properly match performance to fixed console hardware. Example: You can’t have an equivalent performing CPU, GPU, and RAM but be missing an NVMe Drive yet claim an old Sata SSD is equivalent as a data streamer. It doesn’t work that way. Only components that provide equal or higher performance can only be taken taking into account. Components that are close to equivalent but provide lesser performance are in effect underperforming and thus defacto holding back the baseline hardware (The Xbox Series X).
Lets start:
GPU:
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER – 1.34%(gift)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 – 1.72% (gift)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 – 0.95% - baseline (MSRP: $800)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 ti – 0.79%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER – 0.55%
Total:
5.35% of PC Gaming users surveyed are comfortably ready for next gen GPU Wise.
Thus we can conclude that
94% of PC gaming users surveyed
do NOT have a capable and equivalent GPU to match the next-gen baseline. In other words, 94% of those surveyed will have to upgrade by November 2020, in 2021 or in 2022 or be left in the dust, and
it won’t be cheap, not even with
“discounts”.
Now don’t be surprised at these numbers and the numbers that will follow for other components because the price for those cards tell you everything and ALL you need to know about why adoption is so low. Feel free to google.
CPU (gift) :
As for CPU’s; we don’t have individual data for specific components but instead generalized data on cores and frequencies used which gives us literally nothing to work with. Even using blindly the flawed metric (as presented) tells us that the majority are woefully not ready. There is too much variation in performance within that data that makes it impossible for us to speculate the potential amount of AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (baseline - around $270) and Intel Core i5-9600k users within that survey.
Thus the only thing I can do to help the argument of the opposing view is to equate the same percentage of
GPU equivalent adoption with
CPU equivalent adoption.
In short:
6% are ready. I’m doing this as a helpful gift and not giving any thought to conventional wisdom which tell us that PC gamers cycle and upgrade GPU’s at a faster rate than CPU’s (because it’s less costly – and doesn’t require a motherboard upgrade). In other words, in all likelihood, if we had the numbers, next-gen ready, baseline matching CPU percentages would be lower than GPU percentages. Considering the mainstay of all old graphic card like GTX 1060 (and lower), most PC gamers are probably running on a CPU released around the same time (2016-2017-2018).
Thus we come to the conclusion that out of that survey,
94% of PC gaming users DO NOT have a capable and equivalent CPU.
Storage/ I/O:
Ohh boy….
Now the big question: How many PC gamers today own an NVMe 4.0 SSD? The answer to that is obvious: extremely, extremely few. Of those, how many own one that can push an I/O throughput of 2.4GB Raw/4.8 GBs compressed?
The closest on the market is a Sabrent 1TB NVMe 4.0 at $200.
How many PC gamers, even if they wanted and had the money to acquire said NVMe SSD would not only have to contend with the upgrade of a new SSD but also a new motherboard because it’s not ready to support it (due to slot space or bottlenecked architecture etc)? Thus the problem here is an avalanche of compounding costs (not cheap at all).
Now you ask, how in hell did you come up with the idea that
few PC gamers have an NVMe 4.0 capable set up? Same rationale as with the lack of concise data for a CPU. By looking at the GPU usage data, we can extrapolate the date and motherboards in use for the overwhelming majority of users (90-94% or so). We just then use the date of the new NVMe 4.0 SSDs released in the market and it all falls into place.
So we’re in the same position as with the CPU here. Just that in this case, the adoption rate to an equivalent SSD can be safely speculated to be even lower.
There is no velocity architecture at work here either. As for the PS5, well let just say it’s better not to dwell on that beast as initially prefaced.
In short: PC gamers are ABSOLUTELY not ready on the SSD front given this survey. Any SSD won't do for the sake of the argument.
RAM:
RAM paints a better picture for the opposing view.
16 GBs of RAM or better can be found in
48% of user rigs surveyed (with 7.7% of that 48% being above). However we all know the devil is always in the details and not all RAM is equal. We do not get data on clock frequency unfortunately. It’s safe to say however, that out of that 48%, a number of the users surveyed are running with lower frequency RAM compared to the baseline (XSX).
This is the least costly area of an upgrade process, ranging from $50-100 to get equivalence.
Thus, between
52 -60% of those users surveyed have, in some way or another, a need to upgrade their RAM to get up to par.
MOTHERBOARD:
This is where it all falls apart for that survey. There is no data here.
What we know for sure is that given the need for
90-94% or so of the users surveyed to at least have a need for an upgrade; more than likely it will require a new motherboard (especially if the CPU is your problem or if it’s a combination of components).
To get to an equivalent for the Series X, using AMD Ryzen 7 boards as the baseline this can range between $120 (good luck) - $450 and above for enthusiast models.
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There are obviously other costs like a PC case, fans etc that bump the price up. In short, if you want to be next gen ready, you should probably have saved that stimulus check, and beg the turtle Mitch McConnell to approve another one. Frankly, just buy a god damn console.
Conclusions:
Based on this limited data, as of May of 2020, of a limited - opt in survey (of which we have no idea how many participants took part) tells us that PC Gamers are woefully unprepared to sit on November 2020 at the same table with future next-gen console owners.
Using the slow variation in upgrade % for components in this data tells us that PC gamers upgrade at a constant but
extremely snail-like pace (0.3%-2%) - progressively, and not drastically in jumps. PC users do not behave like console users on the cusp of a new generation who buy-in and rush en masse to adopt hardware.
Even if we were to be generous by doubling, or tripling the rate of percentage change (upgrades) on PC (due to incentive of new minimum reqs by devs); it still would be too low a number, too slow to outpace, match, or keep within striking distance next-gen console adoption. Not mention, it’s consoles who are dragging PC gaming forward, and not the other way around. Why the snail pace? PC gaming is becoming prohibitively expensive.
Making the educated guess that by the end of 2021 there will be roughly at least 10 million next-gen consoles (in user hands) tells us that PC users for at
least the very the first year of this next gen cycle will be, without a doubt, holding back console hardware and its advances – and are defacto, the lowest common denominator. This is all the result of the quality of hardware that’s shipping with next gen consoles, the custom chips that help achieve optimal performance by removing bottlenecks and the consumer friendly pricing to be expected (or in other words, the high cost PC users will face when upgrading to an equivalent set-up).
Now of course I wasn't a proponent of using this data, as I think it's devoid of details, and too limited in sample size. For us to have truly representative data, Steam would have to profile every concurrent PC gamer in the span of 1 fiscal year, release yearly data, be detailed components wise, and must do this through data mining not as an opt-in survey but as part of Steams TOS (to include as much data as possible).
Now of course there will be those who will still be myopic about reality and come in and claim that they spent 3k on their rig, have a ferrari parked outside their homes and that they’ll smoke consoles, barbeque them etc…. that’s a cool story and all but you know there’s the door out…