I want to know how the hell I am lucky enough to not have any real performance or graphical issues...
I'm not even using a supported GPU (1660 Super) and it's still very playable with the lowest fps being 27 and the highest being about 70.
Outside is on the low end. Interiors are higher, with empty interiors (IE no NPCs) being the fastest. Just dropping a single NPC into a space I am getting 72 fps in drops the frame rate to 50. NPCs aren't handled by the GPU; they are CPU bound.
My CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600x; the exact AMD chip Bethesda lists as the recommended. In fact, other than my GPU, the rest of my system meets recommended requirements.
Edit: I kinda wonder if it's simply how things are tested in QA. For years, I see users claiming to have high end systems having tons of problems across various games, and I am starting to think if they aren't simply lying about their specs (which seems an odd thing to do if you want real support), is that they are simply too new and the focus was more on hardware more users use. Going by Steam hardware survey stats, most people have pretty old stuff while only a small fraction are on super high end systems.
Yeah, I second that. I run the game to a perfectly playable extent, low-to-medium settings, and I have a barely better GPU, 1660-Ti, with a 10th gen laptop i7
I can't argue there. Considering how well it runs as it is on this card, it feels like their minimum requirements are way off, and they could have supported some older hardware if they optimized certain systems a little more. I don't want to make it sound like no effort was taken at all, because... Damn. I've seen every release from Morrowind to Starfield as it was at launch, and this is by far the most well built right out of the gate.
Hell, my rig doesn't even meet minimum specs (Ryzen 5 2600 and a RX 570) and other than periodic CTDs (fuck Akila City, that was like every 5 min) its run like a dream.
Bruh you joke but literally I've had to tell people to plug their monitor into their graphics card instead of the MB before, including pulling up pictures of what a graphics card looks like in the back of the computer.