The video reveals that Star Citizen’s official minimum system specifications result in poor performance, frequent crashes, and graphical issues, making the game largely unplayable on the recommended hardware. The presenter urges Cloud Imperium Games to update these specs to more realistic standards, emphasizing the need for stronger CPUs and more RAM to achieve a stable and enjoyable experience.
The video discusses the official minimum system specifications for Star Citizen, highlighting significant issues and disappointments with the current recommendations. The presenter revisits the minimum spec from a year ago, which suggested a quad-core i7 CPU from 2011, and tests whether playability has improved. Initial attempts to run the game on a recommended AMD RX 5700 GPU failed due to errors, which were only resolved by switching to the Vulkan API. However, even then, graphical glitches like green screens persisted, indicating serious compatibility problems with the recommended hardware.
Switching to an NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB, another recommended minimum GPU, allowed the game to run better, including access to Arena Commander and Star Marine modes. However, performance was still far from ideal, with frame rates often dipping below 30 FPS, especially in the persistent universe. Loading times were sluggish due to heavy shader compilation that strained the underpowered CPU, resulting in stutters and frame rates dropping below 10 FPS in busy city areas, which is unacceptable for a minimum spec experience.
While performance improved somewhat in less demanding environments such as space or during transit through jump tunnels, the gameplay remained challenging due to low frame rates and difficult controls. The presenter managed to navigate some areas but encountered frequent crashes, especially in complex locations like Lville, where the game often failed to load or crashed shortly after starting. These stability issues further compounded the poor performance, making the game frustrating to play on the official minimum spec.
Additional testing in different game areas like Ruin Station revealed similarly poor frame rates and unplayable FPS in the FPS-focused Ghost Arena mode. The presenter criticizes Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) for maintaining minimum specs that fall far below what most gamers would consider acceptable, emphasizing that less than 30 FPS is not a reasonable baseline for a playable experience. The video suggests that the real bottleneck lies more with CPU and RAM limitations rather than the GPU alone, with the main thread performance being particularly problematic.
In conclusion, the presenter recommends more realistic minimum specs, such as an Intel i5 10400 or Ryzen 3600 CPU, and suggests that increasing RAM might help with stability and smoothness. They hope that once Squadron 42 is released and optimized, CIG will revisit and update the minimum hardware requirements for Star Citizen. For now, players attempting to run the game on the official minimum spec should expect numerous issues, crashes, and poor performance, making the current minimum specifications effectively a catastrophe rather than a viable baseline.