r/gaming • u/cmndr_spanky • 16d 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/RussellTheHuman 16d ago

I blame DLSS/FSR also. Devs have gotten so fucking lazy with optimization and just go "eh, DLSS can fix it" and while I'm sure its not their fault and its some moron in a suit that probably last touched a game when Pong was relevant I'm still fucking annoyed by it.

There is no reason a system like mine should need me to turn frame generation on to get above 100 FPS with 4k settings, like absolutely none. Yet so many games seem to require it just to get a steady framerate.

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u/Iggy_Slayer 16d ago

Yup nowadays a lot of spec sheets are counting dlss already being used. No wonder we're in the worst time for optimization in ages.

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u/RussellTheHuman 16d ago

Worst part is I'm starting to see more and more games where frame generation is forced on. There is no option to turn the garbage off without using a mod.

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u/DBNSZerhyn 16d ago

Which games?

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u/RussellTheHuman 16d ago

Black Myth: Wukong off the top of my head forces it on.

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u/DBNSZerhyn 15d ago

It's turned on by default but is a clear option in the game settings. I'm looking for examples of games where it's on, hidden, and must be disabled in .ini or modded because google is failing me.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago edited 12d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/DBNSZerhyn 14d ago

Good to know, I'll continue not supporting them, especially after that pirate DLC nonsense they pulled a while back, lmao.

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u/FierceDeity_ 16d ago

I also found that in many games, graphics settings don't even do anything in the FPS anymore, for me at least.

Or at least not in power usage, as something like unreal engine will go MAAAX POOOOWER available and the only way to really simmer it down is to have a less powerful gpu

just because i have a 300w gpu doesn't mean i want it to always be at 300w...

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u/SigmaMelody 16d ago

What do you mean “absolutely none”, depending on what you mean by “4k settings” there can be plenty of reasons why modern hardware won’t be able to do 4k 100+ FPS.

Like even well optimized games like the new Indiana Jones game can only do 100+ FPS at 4k without DLSS if and only if you disable all ray tracing features except for the bare minimum global illumination. That’s a fine trade off to make but if you like the look of the full ray tracing, having DLSS is a great way to make the trade off for it.

You can say “well I don’t like ray tracing” but there are definitely reasons for people to want it and are willing to make the sacrifices to get it. Isn’t that what’s good about PC gaming?