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Preface:

I built my gaming rig raw from the ground up a lil under three years ago. At the time it was a fairly powerful rig for the $1k I spent on it. I built the rig specifically to game and dick around on the internet, allowing my old rig to be a pure workstation and it's done me right. My games run smooth like butter on the highest settings and have ever since...which inevitably led to me questioning the purpose of newer video cards.

I'm currently playing Assassin's Creed/Mass Effect 2 at the highest graphical settings available in-game and my rig was built two years before those games came out. Same for Black Ops.

I'll admit my screen can't exceed 1280 x 1024, but is that really the only difference between my GTX 280 - purchased two years ago for $300 and the 590 - which can be in excess of $700. Before the 360/PS3, you needed the latest/greatest to play any PC game on the highest specs, but now most all triple A titles that use high-end graphics are console ports based off performance specs that are over five years old. Just what are people getting out of the cards of the last three years that I haven't gotten out of mine?

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 24th April 2011 03:08

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On my new 2011 macbook pro with an Intel 2820QM, an AMD 6750m GPU, eight gigs of 1333 rated RAM and a 128gb O.E.M. SSD, I only get 25 FPS in Civilization V (run in Windows 7 Ultimate under bootcamp) on maximum settings with a 1920x1200 resolution according to the benchmarking tool in the free edition of FRAPS under Bootcamp. Now granted, mobile class GPUs perform several levels below their desktop equivalents but insofar as macintoshes go, the only ones that're definitively more powerful than the one I'm on right now is the Mac Pro, since Apple hasn't hit the refresh button on any of their other models yet.

Also the "highest specs" is somewhat of a misnomer when it comes to PC gaming. There are all sorts of things that can make a difference and almost always something better out there. Remember, there are settings to adjust and compromise based upon your total computational power. Console versions of any given game run at much lower resolutions than their PC counterparts can. Portal 2 on the PS3 only runs at 720p, while I'm pretty sure my Macbook could push it up to full native resolution with relative ease, meaning a sharper image (my HDTV is 1080p so the signal would have to be upscaled) and more visible play area. Once I find my working PS3 to activate it on Steam, I'll probably be playing it exclusively on the computer.

Some people have some pretty crazy setups. High end computers can go waaay beyond what a console can push for publishers who give their customers the option to utilize more power and customers with deep enough pockets. Higher resolution computer monitors than what I've got are starting to penetrate the general marketplace ever since Apple came out with their 2560x1440 27" Apple Cinema Display. Triple screen AMD Eyefinity setups with 6060x1200 resolution are processing an impressive amount of information as it is and Nividia surround vision takes that a step further by using multimonitor setups to virtually envelop you in eyepopping 3d environments, requiring at least double the framerate to work. And yes, before anybody asks, there are games you can play games with 3 monitors at once. [Demo Video Link]

Ridiculous? Perhaps but at this point in time, a GPU in a high end gaming rig can cost as much as a fully functional PS3 slim, so building a computer with one isn't necessarily for the frugal or the faint of heart.

This post has been edited by Tonepoet on 24th April 2011 04:43

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Role reversal at its finest.

Quote (Tonepoet @ 23rd April 2011 21:21)

Ridiculous? Perhaps but at this point in time, a GPU in a high end gaming rig can cost as much as a fully functional PS3 slim, so building a computer with one isn't necessarily for the frugal or the faint of heart.

Yeah...but then what? What does all this power do? What do I get back for such a large investment? A higher resolution? More monitors? That's it?

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Quote (Narratorway)

I'll admit my screen can't exceed 1280 x 1024, but is that really the only difference between my GTX 280 - purchased two years ago for $300 and the 590 - which can be in excess of $700.

You've hit the nail on the head - this is the most significant difference by far. It's very common for PC gamers to play at 1920x1080 and above, and it has been for some time. The number crunching power required to support higher resolutions increases exponentially, so by now you can pretty much use arbitrarily old hardware and get decent enough frame rates at 1280 - the GTX280 was already massive overkill for a screen that small when it came out, so it'll last you plenty of time to come. It's a bit like driving a Ferrari around a roundabout - the newer ones might have more power but there's nowhere to use it.

That said, you are also correct in your assessment that PC games aren't pushing the boat out graphically in the way that they used to. Crysis is a few years old now and still gets used in benchmarks, and Crysis 2 isn't even as advanced. That tells you something. I don't think that's a bad thing though - if traditional A-list PC gaming is ever going to get back on its feet, it needs a lower entry barrier. We need to get back to the situation where a home computer or laptop you buy for browsing and word processing can play the latest games reasonably well.

There is one other thing you get out of newer hardware - the GTX 280 is a DirectX 10 card, and we've had two revisions since then - DirectX 10.1 and 11. While your card will still play games made for DX11, there may be some graphics features that aren't available to non-DX11 hardware. Frankly, I think you'd be hard pushed to ever notice the difference, and I certainly wouldn't upgrade just for that if you're already getting good framerates (and if you did go to a DX11 card, unless you plan a monitor upgrade, it would make a lot more sense to get a mid-range card - you really wouldn't miss any of the extra power at that res and you'd have a quieter and more efficient machine.)

From a person who isn't well-versed in high-end modern computer gaming, does this mean that...they're hitting their limit in terms of how awesome the graphics really can be?

From Tiddles's post, that seems to be the case. Short of increasing resolution ever further, and having bigger and bigger screens to make use of it, it seems we've got enough computing power to last us quite a while. The next major step might be stereoscopic 3D, but for now most of us still have 2D screens.

I've always felt that this sort of "graphics whoring" isn't getting anywhere, and only serves to jack up costs of production and prices of hardware and software. While some gamers may like that, I'd rather see games that focus on...well, being entertaining games. Given that the NES could provide me entertainment, at least in some genres, that just shows that insanely high-res graphics are not necessarily the only way to go (and it annoys me anytime someone implies that it is).

I'm going to agree with Tiddles in saying that if gaming is going to go somewhere other than a competition of graphical oneupsmanship, it's going to have to innovate actual gameplay rather than just present graphical complexity.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 24th April 2011 23:06)

From a person who isn't well-versed in high-end modern computer gaming, does this mean that...they're hitting their limit in terms of how awesome the graphics really can be?

Not really. It's just that there's not much money in selling PC games now compared to console games, so all the A-list games get made primarily with consoles in mind, which means they have to be able to run on five year old technology. Hence there's often little benefit in running the PC version, other than higher resolutions being available through better hardware, or a preference for PC controls.

Unfortunately, this doesn't go anywhere towards reviving the PC games market because most embedded GPUs designed for desktop use are still too rubbish to play modern games.

^ So you're saying that most people don't have top-of-the-line gaming computers and thus the demand wouldn't be there for top-of-the-line modern-technology gaming?

I guess the down economy is probably not helping in that regard...

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

This is only marginally related to the topic at hand, but I kind of wish I had an *older* memory card.

I have a very nice GeForce GTX 460. It handles recent games like a boss. I can even use high-end settings on my PS2 emulator. HOWEVER, one particular game I have on Steam apparently bugs out when you try to play it with a memory card made in the past five years. Whenever you disengage from combat you lose the ability to move freely and have to save/load to get around anywhere in the game that has intermittent combat. The game? Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Don't believe me? Check out the Steam forums for that title. It's a ****ing minefield.

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Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 30th April 2011 20:02)

^ So you're saying that most people don't have top-of-the-line gaming computers and thus the demand wouldn't be there for top-of-the-line modern-technology gaming?

I guess the down economy is probably not helping in that regard...

I don't think that's what he's saying. What he's saying is that having a top of the line gaming PC doesn't do you any good as long as most of the AAA games coming out are being developed simultaneously for PC and consoles. A top of the line PC from a given year will blow away console performance, more so if the console in question is not at the beginning of its lifespan (or, in the case of the current gen, is a Wii).

Because so many more people own consoles than PCs, though, unless the game is a rare PC exclusive, a game's developer is going to develop first for the consoles, and because there's less money in it, will worry about the PC version later. This means that fewer features are likely to be included that really stretch the high-end machines, because there's no profit to be made from doing so.

In short, if you buy a massive graphics card right now, there's a very real chance that unless you also have a gigantic monitor and want to play everything at full settings, you're probably overbuying, or you're buying for the games of a year or two down the line.

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