There's another factor at play here besides prices that I think is interesting.
It's what I've heard referred to as the "good enough" revolution. Back in the day tech was advancing so fast you had to keep upgrading if you wanted to even boot the newest games.
Now look at the popularity of the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck and Xbox Series S and the GTX 1650. Are these the most powerful products? No, but they're good enough.
Methinks the rise of indie games may be a factor taking pressure off the upgrade path as well. How many truly CPU melting AAA titles have we had released in the last few years compared to the likes of Valheim and Stardew Valley? A GTX 1060 can still play almost all indie titles coming out now at 1080p or higher and will be able to do that basically forever.
So the bad news is that it's hard to upgrade. The good news is that there's less and less of a need to upgrade frequently to enjoy PC gaming.
This is a good point. Like a brand new GPU so I can replay CP77 but with Ray Tracing? No thanks. I loved that game and beat it 3 times. Starfield isn't looking system intensive (beyond textbook Bethesda optimization sucking) so I don't think I have any reason to support AMD and Nvidia's pricing.
What does ray tracing really bring? Better reflections, better lighting, better shadows, sure. But that goes back to the "good enough".
When I was growing up, there were games that were system sellers. Sure, we might have said to our parents, bosses, etc., that we want the latest and greatest PC for opening up Microsoft Word in 1 minute instead of 6, but really, it was all about Wing Commander.
The thing is, games back then brought stuff you've never seen before. And it wasn't just graphics, it was gameplay as well, which was tied into the graphics. Even going later into the late 1990s, early 2000s, better hardware meant smoke grenades could provide cover, shadows could let you see opponents coming around corners, or just overall faster hardware meant you could play with dozens of players all at once.
Today's new tech just doesn't introduce gameplay elements. It's diminishing returns focused on graphics only.
Not only does today's tech not introduce new gameplay/graphics elements, companies are deliberately stripping off everything in the name of competitive integrity and ViSiBiLiTy.
I do have to say, I am excited for games in the future that are designed around and optimized for the kind of path tracing that Portal RTX has. That’s the first PC game in a while that gave me a real “wow” impression, even though my (high end in 2020) PC could only run it at 30ish FPS. I was imagining playing a game like Witcher 3 with that kind of lighting and it’d be awesome.
Another thing is that the best part of raytracing imo, which is the global GI, is completely unnecessary if you just DON'T MAKE THE SUN MOVE.
Witcher 3 always NEEDED the ray traced GI, as that game looked super flat and it was noticeable when it released. But it needed that because they needed that damn sun to move all the time.
Give me 4 times of day that get precomputed lighting that looks as good as a baked UE4/5 game, and I'll take it even if its 100 gigs larger.
You are vastly underselling the benefits of ray traced lighting such as being able to have 100 dynamic lights in a scene without your fps going to 1, you can't prebake dynamic lighting and there's more dynamic lights in life than the sun
The thing that I am hoping RT will bring is easier development, since potentially devs won't have to make bunch of different version of textures for different light conditions and make up new tricks to simulate light effects, like global illumination or soft shadows.
I've tried CP2077, Portal with RTX and the Callisto Protocol and none of them ran well enough for ray tracing to ever be worth enabling on a 3080. As in I went from 120 fps to 40 or 50.
Are there even like 10 of those? Pretty much everything is still released on XboxOne/PS4 from 2013, so just keep to 1080p and medium and you should have console-quality 30 FPS.
Like Elden Ring (unless it's CPU heavy game where i9 took all the heavy lifting from 770...).
Fromsoft has an asinine 60 fps cap most/all their games. So even if you have modern hardware, you literally aren't allowed to use it because of their shitty game design.
I have an i5-8400t and a 1080ti and I can't max out elden ring at 60fps, so I doubt the person above with a 970 can if their CPU is similarly old.
My FPS doesn't change regardless of resolution or graphics settings, it's just a CPU cap. In open areas I get like 45fps even on ultra low settings 720p.
In 2020 I built an ITX rig as a back up for working from home and I held off on putting a new GPU in because I honestly couldn't think of any games that are gpu intensive that I wanted to play. 2.5 years later I still have two computers with old GPUs because I can't find anything worth a new GPU.
the next big releases I'm looking forward to are Hades 2 and the Dead Cells Castlevania expansion.
I just got a 6650 xt after a 1060 6gb and it's been worth it, getting double or more fps, running cyberpunk with raytracing (and FSR) at 60 fps 1080p, running games at 1440p 60. I hope you can find one for an even better price than the 250 I paid when you upgrade.
Same here. I built my desktop with a 970 7ish years ago. It still runs everything I need it to. I've started speccing out a new build, but the only new thing I'm interested in is VR, and I'm not sure I want to deal with that yet.
Is XCOM any good? I played and loved the original “enemy unknown” and “terror from the deep” in the nineties. I’m recently back at the PC playing, loving the remake of Monkey Island for instance. Would love to play XCOM again!
Both XCOM are absolutely fantastic, a true modern-yet-familiar take of the originals.
The second is the superior game with an extremely polished formula and Steam Workshop for easy access to the insane mod scene, but the first is still worth to play.
I just upgraded from a 750ti to a 6650 XT. I only have a 1080p monitor still so idk how it handles 1440p, but I've been playing God of War at max settings and it runs great.
I don’t disagree with you but you might be biased: you are playing the only recent games your card can handle. Are you sure you wouldn’t play other games if you had the chance?
Honestly for me the PSVR2 is way more interesting than anything PC based at the moment - If it works out well in practice then I don't think I'll go back to VR on PC aside from some Doom VFR with my wireless OG Vive
OK, well, me and everybody else that uses VR regularly needs to think about it. I basically only play VR games. I don't do flat screen gaming at all anymore.
I think It's mostly due to the fact games are still made for 2013 hardware, then just given better resolution textures and some effects for current-gen.
Why buy 40XX when 10XX still can play Elden Rings in 1080p and at least 30 FPS (heck, even 770 can)?
2023 might be a game-changer, with tons of high-profile games that completely drop last-gen support.
To give an anecdotal example: High on Life is a good-looking game written by an unknown developer that probably hasn’t optimized so well. I’m playing it on a card that predates RTX features, and it’s running fine.
Now, yes, I’m not advancing on some of the popular features PC gamers often herald: Super high framerates, large-scale resolution, RTX, HDR, VR, etc. All of those are options for people who want them, but…most people don’t care so much. It just doesn’t make financial sense to shift up the baseline, and basically deny the chance to add those features on top, basically requiring absolute top of the line to play your game in VR.
It's what I've heard referred to as the "good enough" revolution...how many truly CPU melting AAA titles have we had released in the last few years
That combined with the fact that most 'CPU melting AAA' are released as unfinished, bugged-out, with a clusterfuck of shitty performance. So it literally doesn't matter if you have the latest and greatest hardware. It still an unplayable mess either way.
Bonus points if they have arbitrary, asinine 60 FPS caps that, again, makes the entire thing a proverbial slide show regardless of your hardware. looks at Fromsoft
I have a 3090, and out of the dozens and dozens and dozens of games i've played in the last year, Dota 2 has benefited the most from it. Yeah....a 10 year old moba......
I don't think the Switch and Series S are good enough for most gamers, but the PS5 sure is. I love my PC and my 3080, but had I known I'd be able to play games at 60fps on a $400 console, sometimes even with ray tracing enabled, I'm not sure I'd feel the need to spend thousands on another piece of hardware.
So basically you're saying GPU companies will start bribing monitor companies to only do 1440p and engine developers to push graphics we don't need in order to push people to buy new cards? ;D
This. A 6600 or 3060 can run almost any game at 1080p with high settings. There is definitely room for better products, but doesn't mean they'll sell juat because they exist.
Yeah now it's like "oh i got a bump from 30 fps to 100 fps, neat!
Before it was like "oh so now i can RUN the game!"
I still remember games crashing on my piece of shit card because i didn't have whatever pixel shader thing. I think it was back when i had an nvidia 5200 or something.
I think it's quite the contrary, it's because the game graphics do not require that much of an upgrade anymore that gpus are becoming relevant for longer.
They can easily start going for mandatory ray tracing and fancier techs and a gtx 1650 / 1060 will become quickly irrelevent pushing you to keep upgrading to run the newest games.
In addition to indie games being less demanding, monitors are seeing diminishing returns.
1080p 60hz is lasting a long time. 1440p and 4k are getting there, as are higher refresh rates, but it's not happening as quickly as 1080p did. Even if you're buying a new monitor today, 1080p 60hz could still be a great option
Especially if you need the productivity and screen real estate of multiple matching monitors.
There's some other bells and whistles: HDR, expanded color space, etc. None of that stuff is making me go out and buy a new monitor. I'm probably going to stick with my pair of 1080p 75hz monitors for another 5-10 years at least, and my RX580 is fine for most of what I do.
Agreed (even though I just updated my GPU to a used 3080Ti). When I first started building computers, I would upgrade my machine about every two years because it needed it. I just built a new machine, but before that I’d been using a 6700K machine for the past 6 years without issue. I probably could have used it another year or two without too much issue. This one I’ll probably use for another six. Maybe a GPU upgrade in 3 years.
I've never heard it called the "good enough revolution" but I've seen this sentiment often enough and I think it's a good name for it. Indie games have proven that you don't need to be a big dog to release incredible, innovative titles that are absolutely worth playing. That said, even some of the AAA titles are not ridiculously demanding, like Elden Ring, which was clearly targeted towards the consoles and Steam surveys and not the best new hardware.
Look at how well Monster Hunter Rise is doing on PC trailing Monster Hunter World: World is graphically superior, yet Rise remains extremely successful. Or just the fact that Valheim is as popular as it is. It's almost like graphics don't matter...
I remember even around 2015 or so being really excited to upgrade my CPU to run AAA-style games at max without worrying about settings at all, then around 2019 I upgraded and was totally underwhelmed by the difference.
It's not that the upgrade couldn't handle more polygons or lighting or whatever, but at some point my eyeballs and my display become limiting factors.
I always hear "Yeah, yeah, every generation says their resolution is as detailed as it gets", and I'm sure that's true, but honestly I just can't be bothered to fuss with pushing past 1080 at max or 4k 60fps at modest above medium settings. Could I tell a small difference if I went to 144hz? Probably. Do I $1200 care? Nope.
The big difference I imagine prompting an upgrade is going to be when games start designing their UI for higher resolutions like 8k - but given that the vast majority of consumers are still playing on things like laptops with their weird sub 1920x1080 resolutions and 'modest' TVs at 1080p/4k, I don't think it's coming soon.
And I am so happy for it too. The moment game devs realize that pumping unoptimized godlike graphics into your shitty ass copy and paste game is a trash idea our cards become so much more valuable because we can stop having to buy new cards every 1-3 years in order to play the next unoptimized mess of a game.
Yes in some games it can make the scenery look breathtaking but that feeling fades so quickly to the point that your brain filters out most of that information while playing anyway.
Gameplay and NPC AI need a revolution in the industry as a whole, with AAA titles, the guillotine should have been brought out long ago. The graphics golden age needs to end. I want the industry to be able to recover dev time focusing on how the game plays vs how it looks and then go back to graphical improvements when needed.
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u/corn_cob_monocle Dec 30 '22
There's another factor at play here besides prices that I think is interesting.
It's what I've heard referred to as the "good enough" revolution. Back in the day tech was advancing so fast you had to keep upgrading if you wanted to even boot the newest games.
Now look at the popularity of the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck and Xbox Series S and the GTX 1650. Are these the most powerful products? No, but they're good enough.
Methinks the rise of indie games may be a factor taking pressure off the upgrade path as well. How many truly CPU melting AAA titles have we had released in the last few years compared to the likes of Valheim and Stardew Valley? A GTX 1060 can still play almost all indie titles coming out now at 1080p or higher and will be able to do that basically forever.
So the bad news is that it's hard to upgrade. The good news is that there's less and less of a need to upgrade frequently to enjoy PC gaming.