How FrameScope evaluates hardware

The short version: what a FrameScope verdict means

FrameScope answers one question: where does your hardware sit relative to the minimum and recommended requirements a publisher has published for a game? It is not a frame-rate predictor. The evaluation engine reads the requirements from the game's Steam store page, matches the graphics card and processor lines to reference models, compares those references with your parts using a table of relative tier scores, and then checks video memory (VRAM), system memory (RAM) and SSD requirements as separate gates.

The whole process is deterministic. The same requirement text and the same hardware always give the same result; there is no randomness and no AI judgement involved in a verdict. FrameScope does not include measured FPS yet, so you will not see numbers such as “runs at 60 FPS” anywhere on the site, and every verdict is worded as an estimate from the official requirements.

Data sources: official requirements and hardware specifications

Game requirements come from the Minimum and Recommended sections of each game's official Steam store page. The importer fetches them one at a time with at least 1.5 seconds between requests, so it does not put load on Steam. Each listing is split into operating system, processor, memory, graphics, DirectX, storage and whether an SSD is required. The processor and graphics lines are kept verbatim for the matching step. When a publisher changes its requirements after a patch, the next import replaces the old values.

Hardware data comes from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel specifications: VRAM size and type, memory bus width, power, core and thread counts, and feature support such as ray tracing and upscaling. Desktop, laptop and integrated graphics are stored separately, because a laptop GPU with the same name as a desktop card usually runs at lower power and sits at a different performance level.

How requirement text is matched to hardware

Requirement lines are written in many styles: “NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB”, “Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600”, “DirectX 11 compatible card with 2GB VRAM”. The engine first normalises the text: it lowercases it, removes trademark symbols, folds full-width characters and strips spaces and punctuation. While doing so it remembers where the original text had separators, because the rules below depend on them.

The normalised text is then compared with the aliases of every reference model. Each reference has several aliases, such as “gtx10606gb” and “geforcegtx1060”. The most specific alias, measured without brand words, is tried first, so “GTX 1060 6GB” is claimed by the 6 GB reference before the vaguer “GTX 1060” can take it. A matched span is masked so that a shorter alias cannot count the same text a second time.

• Digit-boundary rule: a match may not split a run of digits that the original text wrote together. If a requirement says “RX 5700 XT”, the alias “rx570” cannot match inside it; otherwise a high-end card would be read as an entry-level one. In “RX 580 8GB” there is a space after 580, so “rx580” matches normally and “8GB” is read as a memory size.
• Variant-suffix rule: an alias ending in a digit does not match when the text continues with Ti, Super, XT, XTX, GRE or X3D. “RTX 4060” does not match “RTX 4060 Ti”, and “Ryzen 7 7800” does not match “7800X3D”, because those suffixes denote different and usually faster products.
• Specific beats generic: descriptors such as “DirectX 11 compatible”, “2GB VRAM”, “integrated graphics” or a bare “Core i5” are generic references. They are only used when no specific model was matched in the same text.
• Unknown models are not guessed: if a family name like “Core i5” is followed by a model number we do not have, or the text contains something that looks like a model but matches no reference, the result is “insufficient data” rather than the generic family score.
• Lowest of the alternatives: requirements usually list “A or B or C”. The publisher considers each of them sufficient, so the engine uses the lowest-scoring one as the threshold. Vague names work the same way: an unqualified “GTX 1060” covers both the 3 GB and 6 GB cards, so it takes the lower 3 GB score.

Hardware tier scores: relative positions, not FPS

Every graphics card and processor has an integer tier score. GPU scores are centred on the GeForce RTX 4060 at 100: older integrated graphics sit in single digits, a GTX 1060 6GB is around 37, an RTX 2060 Super around 78, an RTX 4070 around 170, and the fastest desktop cards are above 300. Processors have their own separate scale that is only used to compare processors with each other.

The scores are an editorial ordering built from architecture, compute resources, memory bandwidth, clocks and generation. They live in a versioned table that is covered by automated tests. One test, for example, ensures that a reference model never scores higher than any real model it stands for; otherwise a requirement that names a GTX 970 could rate an actual GTX 970 as below the minimum.

A score tells you which part is stronger and roughly by how much. It cannot be converted into a frame rate. A two-to-one score difference can mean very different real gaps in a CPU-bound game, in a game that is short of VRAM, or with ray tracing enabled. That is why pages show requirement bands and never FPS.

Minimum and recommended bands, and the 1.5× “exceeds” rule

Once the minimum and recommended thresholds are known, each part lands in one of four bands. The GPU and the CPU are evaluated independently.

• Below minimum: the score is under the minimum threshold, or the card's VRAM is below the size stated in the minimum requirements.
• Meets minimum: at or above the minimum threshold, but below the recommended threshold or below the VRAM stated in the recommended requirements.
• Meets recommended: at or above the recommended threshold, but less than 1.5 times it.
• Exceeds recommended: at least 1.5 times the recommended threshold. The 1.5× line is a deliberately conservative headroom margin that separates “just meets it” from “has clear room to spare”. It does not correspond to any particular preset or frame rate.

When only one set of requirements is published

Some games only list minimum requirements. With no recommended threshold to compare against, the engine uses 1.5 times the minimum threshold as a reference line: parts at or above it are shown as meeting the recommended level, and parts below it as meeting the minimum. It never awards “exceeds recommended” in this case, because there is no recommendation to exceed.

If only recommended requirements are published, the engine estimates a minimum threshold at half the recommended one (never less than 2). In both situations the confidence label is lower, as described below.

Resource gates: VRAM, RAM and SSD

Tier scores only describe whether there is enough processing power, but many real problems come from capacity. The engine therefore applies three additional gates, and failing any of them changes the conclusion.

• VRAM: the engine reads memory sizes written in the graphics line (for example “6GB”) and uses the smallest one up to 32 GB as the threshold. A card with a high enough score but too little VRAM is moved down a band: a GTX 1060 3GB facing a minimum requirement that says 6GB is rated below minimum. Integrated graphics that share system memory have no dedicated VRAM and are not treated as meeting a VRAM threshold.
• RAM: system memory below the minimum figure is below minimum; at or above the minimum but below the recommended figure is “meets minimum only”; at or above the recommended figure meets the recommendation. If no recommended figure is published, the minimum is used.
• SSD: if either the minimum or the recommended requirements say an SSD is required, choosing a hard disk drive fails this gate. Modern games stream world data while you move, and a slow drive tends to show up as stutter or textures that load late.

How the overall result is combined

The Can I Run It tool combines the individual results into one conclusion. If any part is below minimum, RAM is insufficient or an SSD requirement is not met, the result is “hardware bottleneck detected”. If any part only meets the minimum, or RAM only meets the minimum, the result is “playable with compromises”. Only when both the GPU and the CPU exceed the recommendation is the result “generous headroom”. Everything else is “meets the official recommended specs”. When neither the GPU nor the CPU can be evaluated, the result is “insufficient specification data”.

The conclusion deliberately follows the weakest link. A strong graphics card cannot make up for too little memory, so a single failing part keeps the overall result from looking better than it is.

Confidence labels

Every verdict carries a confidence label that tells you how much it rests on:

• Medium confidence: both the minimum and the recommended requirements were matched to reference models. This is currently the most common and the highest level.
• Preliminary: only the minimum requirements were matched, and the recommended band was estimated from them.
• Limited data: the requirements were too vague, a model is not in the database yet, or the text could not be parsed, so no judgement is made.
• Medium+ and high confidence: reserved for verdicts backed by measured data under stated conditions. There is no such data yet, so these labels do not currently appear.

Worked example: a 2020s AAA game

This example uses the models listed for Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam (simplified; check the store page for the current version). The minimum graphics line names a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, a Radeon RX 580 8GB or an Arc A380; the minimum processor is a Core i7-6700 or a Ryzen 5 1600; 12 GB of RAM and an SSD are required. The recommended graphics line names a GeForce RTX 2060 Super, a Radeon RX 5700 XT or an Arc A770; the recommended processor is a Core i7-12700 or a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, with 16 GB of RAM.

Graphics: the three minimum cards score roughly 37, 38 and 26, so the threshold is the lowest, 26. The line mentions 6GB and 8GB, so the VRAM threshold is the smaller 6 GB. The three recommended cards score roughly 78, 78 and 88, giving a threshold of 78 and an “exceeds” line of 78 × 1.5 = 117. Processors: the minimum threshold is 60 and the recommended threshold is the Core i7-12700's 160.

Applied to a few common parts, the results are shown below. Note that the table contains no frame rates; it only shows where each part sits against the official requirements:

Known limitations

We want you to know what this method cannot do:

• It is not a benchmark. A verdict cannot reflect specific scenes, optimisation patches, driver differences or the real cost of ray tracing.
• Official requirements are limited. Publishers rarely state the resolution and preset their requirements target, and they list only a few models. We can only compare what they wrote.
• Relative scores are approximations. Architectures perform differently in different engines, so the same score gap can mean different real differences in two games.
• Laptops vary widely. Laptop GPUs with the same name can differ a lot depending on the power limit the manufacturer sets; the database uses one representative value.
• VRAM reading is simple. The smallest memory size in a line is used as the threshold; if a line describes several cards, the threshold can be more lenient than intended.
• Models that are not in the database show “limited data” until they are added.

Method updates and reporting errors

The evaluation rules carry a version (currently requirements-v1), and every change to the rules or the tier table comes with automated tests so that fixing one case does not quietly break another. If a verdict for a game looks clearly wrong, for example because a model was mismatched or the requirements have changed, email contact@frame-scope.com with the page URL. We reply within 7 days and correct confirmed errors.