Only if they are easily comparable at all. There are newer CPUs that are still less powerful then older ones. I am sure there are a several of CPUs newer then those in the system requirements that are less powerful then those stated. In addition CPUs can be better in one workload and worse in another. Especially in gaming for a while it was more important to have better single core performance then multicore one. So it is not as simple as a higher model number in a newer generation is the right choice.Originally Posted by ai_ab Go to original post
That often isn't true at all. We had several releases of CPU with no important changes in instructions at all. And like you said yourself most people don't even know about instruction sets so it is even more important to state them as requirement in the system requirement. People who replied to the guy asking if he could run the game told him yes, his CPU is powerful enough. No one was even thinking about instruction sets.Originally Posted by ai_ab Go to original post
Like I said you compare generations instead of singular CPU/GPUs. A previous generation top model CPU/GPU will still beat a low end CPU/GPU of the next generation. And here is the point where many customers make the miss assumption that their CPU/GPU meets the minimum requirements. Better wording in the requirements help to avoid this problem.Originally Posted by ai_ab Go to original post
Even without putting the instruction set requirement in the system requirements a clause "and newer" would have avoided a lot of tears for some customers.
Definitely there are newer CPUs that are less powerful than the ones provided in the minimal requirements, however, if we speak of Intel CPUs these would probably be i3 and lesser CPUs, i.e. any newer i5/i7/i9 CPU is going to be more powerful than i5 2400.
Sure not all CPU generation add new instructions but is it really necessary to provide the excessive list here that i7 2600k and i7 3770k have the same sets of instructions, while AVX 2.0 support was introduced in i7 4770k etc.? I think you perfectly understand what I meant in my posts. No need to go to the extremes.
And that's exactly why I have provided examples.
IMO adding "and newer" to the minimal requirements would not prevent the issue. Adding a list of instruction sets would be useful only to those who understand what is it, others would miss it.
I think that adding a noticeable warning that the game won't run on a certain generation of CPUs or older would be more useful.