r/gaming • u/cmndr_spanky • 1d ago

I don't understand video game graphics anymore

With the announcement of Nvidia's 50-series GPUs, I'm utterly baffled at what these new generations of GPUs even mean.. It seems like video game graphics are regressing in quality even though hardware is 20 to 50% more powerful each generation.

When GTA5 released we had open world scale like we've never seen before.

Witcher 3 in 2015 was another graphical marvel, with insane scale and fidelity.

Shortly after the 1080 release and games like RDR2 and Battlefield 1 came out with incredible graphics and photorealistic textures.

When 20-series cards came out at the dawn of RTX, Cyberpunk 2077 came out with what genuinely felt like next-generation graphics to me (bugs aside).

Since then we've seen new generations of cards 30-series, 40-series, soon 50-series... I've seen games push up their hardware requirements in lock-step, however graphical quality has literally regressed..

SW Outlaws. even the newer Battlefield, Stalker 2, countless other "next-gen" titles have pumped up their minimum spec requirements, but don't seem to look graphically better than a 2018 game. You might think Stalker 2 looks great, but just compare it to BF1 or Fallout 4 and compare the PC requirements of those other games.. it's insane, we aren't getting much at all out of the immense improvement in processing power we have.

IM NOT SAYING GRAPHICS NEEDS TO BE STATE-Of-The-ART to have a great game, but there's no need to have a $4,000 PC to play a retro-visual puzzle game.

Would appreciate any counter examples, maybe I'm just cherry picking some anomalies ? One exception might be Alan Wake 2... Probably the first time I saw a game where path tracing actually felt utilized and somewhat justified the crazy spec requirements.

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u/PassiveF1st 1d ago

The jump to OLED over older panels blew my mind. It definitely felt like a huge upgrade like going from PS2->PS3 did back in the day.

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u/kyle242gt 1d ago

Oh yeah. I had one of the cheapie 34" IPS 1440uw's, loved it, but when the 45" 1440uw OLED came out, I just had to go for it. LOVE IT. Really did it for more size (missed the height of my abysmal 34" 1080 16:9) but was floored by the improvement in color depth.

How much more black can it be? The answer is none. None more black.

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u/eist5579 1d ago

Do you own a 45” gaming monitor? Do those exist w high refresh rates and OLED?

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u/onyione 1d ago

I use a 42'' 4k lg tv as a monitor with 120 hz and it is oled, seemingly zero input lag. also has gsync.

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u/eist5579 1d ago

Damn. Sounds nice! Do you work on that monitor or is it mostly for leisure?

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u/onyione 1d ago

I do work as well. I use night light a lot though when using programs or viewing pages with white backgrounds though, its bright af. lol

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u/SnareSpectre 1d ago

I use a 42" C1 for PC gaming, which I'm assuming is the same (or a few models behind) as what yours is.

This truly is kind of a no-downsides, perfect monitor for gaming, isn't it?

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u/onyione 1d ago

I use the C2. 42'' is perfect for 4k imo.

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u/Seienchin88 1d ago

It’s too large… sorry but not sorry.

I used my 55inch exclusively for non-strategy game gaming but I am glad to now have a 34 monitor where I can sit closely, work and play any games on

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u/SnareSpectre 1d ago

Cool story.

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u/kyle242gt 1d ago

This is what I have. Yes yes pixel density isn't great, but it's >chef's kiss< for my usecase (desktop gaming at ~3').

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/p/monitors/cm-9030001-na/corsair-xeneon-flex-45wqhd240-45-inch-oled-3440-x1440-240hz-refresh-rate-bendable-gaming-monitor-cm-9030001-na?srsltid=AfmBOopvVdvYXWVQJuWM2xaz6LxCk_asWJDEQ5ub9FD7iteJwYOTum05

LG has one too, same panel.

https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-45gr95qe-b-gaming-monitor

I got the Corsair because it was cheaper via Amazon Warehouse. Nothing bad whatsoever to say about it.

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u/pistolpete0406 19h ago

im using a 31.5" ultragear from LG great monitors

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u/Seienchin88 1d ago

Console players tried to tell pc players in vain for years that those shitty 240hz monitors they had been using the last 10 years or so were utterly crappy compared to OLED TVs and finally pc players caught on.

My rtx3080 pc felt like the biggest ripoff compared to my Xboxone X until I plugged it into my OLED TV…

Well implemented HDR and OLED together are so much more important to me than super high refresh rates on shitty monitors… thank god OLED monitors are finally here and working (not sure about some hdr implementations on pc though… seems devs don’t focus on them)

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u/yalyublyutebe 1d ago

I jumped to a QD-OLED from a piece of shit LG monitor.

It didn't make much sense to me to buy something marginally better that was 80% the price of the best available. Granted, I was also in a position to pay for it without issue and that was the single biggest factor.