Personally I think the games given Minimum - Recommended specifications for this game are optimistic, and do not take into account a well developed gaming session with an in sector battle raging.
See my signature for own specification, and using Windows 10 Game bar performance monitor :
FPS in normal game play with no major battles occuring = 60 (Capped with NVidia driver setting), it stays up there most of the time, being capped the game is obviously averaging way above 60 to be hitting 60 constantly.
FPS in stations is variable, but never goes below 35 FPS even in asteroid heavy sectors when landed on a station.
CPU is a 6 core 8th Gen I7 (12 logical cores), and goes between 24-45% usage - This game is heaviest (according to Bernd Lehahn on the youtube videos) on CPU usage - Occasionally speedstep technology has to up the frequency to just shy of its max 4.2ghz, but even then the CPU does not exceed 45% use. The I7 8750H in my machine is above even the games "recommended" specification.
GPU is a laptop 1050 TI, which doesn't have the same capability as a desktop GPU, but never exceeds 50% use.
When a major battle is happening in sector, FPS goes to slideshow / stutter mode, sometimes as low as 15 fps which is awful .. But the CPU and GPU are not increasing any more than stated already.
So personally I think the game may be playable (under all circumstances including heavy well developed game with an in sector battle occurring) on future machines in about five years time.
Currently the stated specifications for the game (imho) are BS if you want the game to run decently under all game generated circumstances worst case scenarios.
And thats without making your own stations in sector with too many additional modules attached, I am talking about sectors without your own stations, using only the one player station gained by the missions, and only adding a few storage modules and a few solar panels .. In a sector many sectors away, with only a few traders.
We should have a reasonable expectation that any scenario in this game, especially if you have a high end CPU and above minimum spec GPU, should play well without stutter of any kind. But as soon as a battle starts in sector currently thats not the case.
I love the game, but until I get a machine probably five years down the road that can handle everything this game can stress your machine with comes along, I am avoiding any major battles.
As I said the specifications given are at least optimistic, and do not specify either that really you need SSD hard drives - Mechanical hard drives would be awful for this game and imho that needs clarifying on the sites we buy the game from. Both of mine are SSDs, but
still have issues loading the next sector.
The specifications stated also need to give laptop specs, not just desktop specs. Many people these days buy gaming laptops and do not realise the pitfalls of following game specifications only to realise later what they thought would be a machine capable enough going by the game specifications is in fact woefully inadiquate especially on the GPU. Thats circa 1000 british pounds down the drain, followed by another 1000+ to get the machine that (may) be up to the job, not currently though. Thats a lot of wonga guided by "optimistic" specifications wasted.
Edit : Top tip - X3 Albion Prelude (even when heavilly modified) is butter smooth on a machine in X4s specification range, and still a lot of fun without any hint of stuttering anywhere. So that probably serves as a guide as to when to expect X4 to run great on future machines. Dont know about X Rebirth, I bought it but even with its most recent update still don't like that particular part of the X series.
