Has PC gaming become synonymous with "maxing the graphics out"?

S

SuperCell

Limp Gawd
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It seems this is the case.

COD MW2 is an old game, but even so, I can get a playable experience on a single-core Celeron 450 @ 2.2GHz, 4 gigs of 1066 RAM, and a $30 video card that was really only intended for streaming HD video.

It seems people game less for the gaming experience, and more so just to be able to max out the graphics.
 
Yeah, try that trick with Crysis :D

I think it depends on the game ... there are lots of games that still use DirectX 9 or lower (which is a pretty old standard) ... modern CPUs and graphics cards (even at the low end) can handle the older standards fairly well since they greatly exceed the capabilities of the time ... games that are coded for more modern standards and resolutions can still bring even modern systems to a standstill (try maxing out a game at 2560x1440 with all the bells and whistles turned on) ;)
 
I've been gaming on computers way before I had a PC. And it's always been the case that you strive to maximize the experience. I remember spending a TON of cash just to get sounds that were from something other than the PC squeaker.

In regards to graphics -- I remember swapping out video cards depending on what game I was playing... did I want to use Glyde? OpenGL? 2D game? PC Gamers have always tried to maximize the graphics, and why wouldn't they -- you always want your rig to perform as best as it can.
 
Crysis was the first game that got me into Overclocking. I squeezed so much out of my 8800GT.
 
It's certainly easier to meet the requirement these days. On a typical 1080p monitor setup, it doesn't take the most expensive hardware to max all setting with some AA thrown in.

I remember when I first gotten Soldier of Fortune 2, somewhere in the manual it cautioned that the game was created with current and future hardware in mind so we may not be able to tune everything up to the maximum. That was the game that drove me to build my own PC for the first time.

I don't think that's the case these days. Most games will happily run on current system and doesn't require anything more powerful unless you're pushing some crazy resolution at 120mhz
 
Nah. I mean take a look at the Steam hardware survey results. Valve games are easy to run and make up a large portion of PC gaming, as well as CoD, Indies, an average console port being in the middle somewhere. Games like the Sims, some MMOs and ARPGs. The games that aren't hard to run, but they're just games that work better with kb&m.

It sure can be a part of PC gaming (uber graphics), but that is pretty cool. A differentiator if you will. Probably get that from hanging here that this is all people are after. While we silently play other titles too. It's just not talk that comes up amidst "290x or 780Ti?" talk. Or you may even be thinking yourself : "I didn't think of stuff like the sims, because I don't care about those." :)
 
SuperCell said:
It seems this is the case.

COD MW2 is an old game, but even so, I can get a playable experience on a single-core Celeron 450 @ 2.2GHz, 4 gigs of 1066 RAM, and a $30 video card that was really only intended for streaming HD video.

It seems people game less for the gaming experience, and more so just to be able to max out the graphics.
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I can't speak for all gamers but I game on PC because I enjoy PC gaming. Part of that enjoyment comes from playing at a "playable" frame rate which is subjective from gamer to gamer. Some folks consider ANY drop in FPS immersion killing so they stop the game and order a high end card. I personally love nice graphics but will sacrifice some eye candy for great story and gameplay. For example, Mass Effect had some very noticeable blurry textures in some background scenes that some gamers were very pissed about. Personally it didn't bother me so much. Anyway YMMV and not all gamers are the same but most PC gamers DO want the game to play at least mid to high settings at a playable frame rate.
 
a large part has to do with the graphics...but PC gaming also gives you modding ability
 
Its also about not having to listen to children screaming obscenities at each other.

also having AA in games is nice. red dead redemption would have been an amazing game, except for the fact that you couldnt see clearly after about 50 feet.
 
It also depends on the types of games you play ... FPS games on the PC were always about the eye candy and pushing the envelope until the console overlap killed some of that off ... strategy games are a mix of game play and graphics (Civ V is a graphics treat as well as a challenging game) ... RPGs can go either way but the best are like Civ and a good balance ... now with the indie developers having more effective access to wider audiences they can produce games focused on game play first and graphics second (not always a bad thing, depending on the game)

I think that is why PC games can often be the best since the flexibility in genres, game play, graphics, depth and story, modability, control, etc can give you the most flexible gaming experience on the planet :D
 
I think that is it in a nutshell. PC gaming allows you to choose the experience you want, whereas with close systems the experience is largely chosen for you.
 
To me, the heart of PC Gaming means that I have more control over the experience. If that means I like to try to max out the graphics to have some eye candy, so be it.

If that means I want to dial everything back so I can get 300+fps (ah the old Quake III days), so be it.

The point is that the gaming experience is flexible to my needs, not the inverse.
 
You're just seeing the slant that participating in a tech enthusiast community comes with (like [H] for example). I think a significant amount of people who play PC games are doing so on mid-level systems at best, and aren't maxing out the graphics (on newer games).

I personally don't care about maxing the graphics out. For a few reasons. First, I don't care that much about it in general, second I don't care to invite the law of diminishing returns. I'll acknowledge that there is absolutely an improvement when you use, say, a dual-GPU setup vs. a mid-grade single card. But is it worth 5x the price for small incremental improvements to me? No. Plus, I haven't found a reason to leave my 19" 1280x1024 monitor, so I have that on my side.
 
Not in these days of console ports. Most developers don't want to spend the time or money to truly maximize a game for PC's,they want the quick buck.
 
michael.pa2 said:
Not in these days of console ports. Most developers don't want to spend the time or money to truly maximize a game for PC's,they want the quick buck.
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A company will spend time on whatever delivers the most cash. If their staffs time could produce more profit by making another game that's what they will do. As for ports, AAA title costs more than ever to make. That's entirely the fault of whiz bang graphics, sound effects, orchestral scores, voice actors, art, and all the other stuff PC gamers. If you're going to go full bore on visuals and audio, it must be cross platform and it must be made for the lowest common denominator. If not you will be fucked.

Maximizing games for PC's is also the wrong way to look at it. Most people don't have SLI rigs, in fact most people are on laptops or tiny dirt cheap desktops that can't hold a proper GPU. If you truly pushed the PC platform you'd simply make it certain that most of your potential customers wouldn't be able to run it well enough to bother with it. It makes more sense to target the systems that are out there.

None of this is the fault of consoles. It's simply that making games costs more cash than ever before, it's starting to get past a breaking point (less visually impressive games are much less risky and a better option for single platform), and that a high end gaming desktop has less in common than the computers most people are using than ever before. This trend is only going to continue.

I'd say the best thing going for the PC is the oculus VR right now. Done right VR gaming could pull people back to the PC. But they are going to have to make damn sure it runs more than playable on mid range laptop cards even if it means shafting dual GPU desktop users.
 
acerbic said:
I'd say the best thing going for the PC is the oculus VR right now. Done right VR gaming could pull people back to the PC. But they are going to have to make damn sure it runs more than playable on mid range laptop cards even if it means shafting dual GPU desktop users.
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The oculus rift is 2 screens with sensors attached which wouldnt determine settings that the game plays at. I believe they do offer different resolutions though.
 
SuperCell said:
It seems this is the case.

COD MW2 is an old game, but even so, I can get a playable experience on a single-core Celeron 450 @ 2.2GHz, 4 gigs of 1066 RAM, and a $30 video card that was really only intended for streaming HD video.

It seems people game less for the gaming experience, and more so just to be able to max out the graphics.
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Dude, you're on the [H]ard forums... go big or get out. lol

[H]ard|Forums =

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crysis1tqj2x.png


You =

playing-games-.jpg
 
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Domini said:
The oculus rift is 2 screens with sensors attached which wouldnt determine settings that the game plays at. I believe they do offer different resolutions though.
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I'm aware, I own one, and will buy the next prototype as well.
 
SuperCell said:
It seems this is the case.

COD MW2 is an old game, but even so, I can get a playable experience on a single-core Celeron 450 @ 2.2GHz, 4 gigs of 1066 RAM, and a $30 video card that was really only intended for streaming HD video.

It seems people game less for the gaming experience, and more so just to be able to max out the graphics.
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As has been pointed out, a forum like [H]ardocp is going to skew reality for you.

reality is that about 1/3 of Steam users even have a 1080p capable display connected to their computers. Only 2% have a display capable of higher than 1080p resolution. And for videocards, MAYBE 25% of the users have a video card that would make their PC roughly equivalent to or better than a PS4. I'm being a bit generous by rounding up percentages for each videocard.
 
What I've observed is, it is easier to meet the benchmarks but that's because people are now pushing for 120 FPS and/or rendering 2560 resolution. For the longest time, we were only chasing 60 fps at 1920 right?

I'm not sure if this has driven hardware at all but it's nice to know that people just trying to play the game, they don't need top end graphics.

For me, I am not drawn to "amazing graphics". Crysis 3 had amazing graphics but was "meh" for gameplay so I didn't get it. There's a reason why I use emulators and play games like harvest moon, Zelda, FF etc graphics are poopy but the games ARE AWESOME.
 
chameleoneel said:
As has been pointed out, a forum like [H]ardocp is going to skew reality for you.
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Case in point.

Ihavetheelderscrolls said:
What I've observed is, it is easier to meet the benchmarks but that's because people are now pushing for 120 FPS and/or rendering 2560 resolution. For the longest time, we were only chasing 60 fps at 1920 right?
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The amount of PC gamers outside of enthusiast forums actually worrying about pushing 120fps on tri-monitor setups is ridiculously miniscule.
 
The one thing I'm really not a fan of with the whole "Maxing out" thing is peoples necessity to use copious amounts of MSAA.
When I see reviews and benchmarks at 1080p with like 8xMSAA makes me cringe.

I like little details in "ultra" settings though at the end of the day even a midrange card (like mine) and a 1440p setup on medium to high details at a pretty solid 60 is rewarding without breaking my bank.
 
I'm some what of an off and on gamer, I use my computer for basically all of my media. Having said that, I find my self gaming for a few months every few years. I recently upgraded my computer and have been playing through games from 2011 to current day games, and it's fantastic the experience I'm currently enjoying. I'm maxing out what would be older games, but I like the idea of gaming every once and a while and getting to play them as the developer intended.
 
JayJapanB said:
The one thing I'm really not a fan of with the whole "Maxing out" thing is peoples necessity to use copious amounts of MSAA.
When I see reviews and benchmarks at 1080p with like 8xMSAA makes me cringe.

I like little details in "ultra" settings though at the end of the day even a midrange card (like mine) and a 1440p setup on medium to high details at a pretty solid 60 is rewarding without breaking my bank.
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I cringe because there are much better options today, than MSAA; which which gives both better performance and better image quality.
 
SuperCell said:
It seems people game less for the gaming experience, and more so just to be able to max out the graphics.
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Excuse my ignorance but isn't maxing the graphics part of the experience? What's wrong with demanding the best of all worlds? That's what the PC is all about. Do whatever you want if you have the money.
 
chameleoneel said:
I cringe because there are much better options today, than MSAA; which which gives both better performance and better image quality.
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I want to know what this secret aa technique is because the only thing that i have seen that looks better then msaa is down sampling or SSAA neither provide better performance then msaa. Both fxaa and mlaa blur and distort the image and most of the time i just prefer it completely off then use them.
 
Has PC gaming become synonymous with "poorly coded console ports not optimized for current hardware so people who go out buy top of the line to achieve best of both feel shafted"
 
To a point I agree and think its just a way of maxing out hardware and giving people a "reason" to get new hardware. I do think it does the games a little more longevity for me.

I like to back replay games from consoles, if its multiplatform I'll typically get the PC version. The PC version tend to have better textures and mods that enhance the gameplay. I went back a few months ago and play GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas on the PC. The visuals were tolerable running on the PC. Theres no way I could stomach the visuals, if I played it on the PS2 or Xbox.

Playable is also a relative term. I know some people that can play games and framerate isn't an issue. They can tolerate 30-40fps with no problem. For me I pretty much have to have 60fps on just about every game I play. So my definition of playable will most likely different then your definition.
 
dgz said:
Excuse my ignorance but isn't maxing the graphics part of the experience? What's wrong with demanding the best of all worlds? That's what the PC is all about. Do whatever you want if you have the money.
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Judging that the example game used by the OP was a shooter, perhaps the better phrasing of the issue might have been "Have PC shooters become synonymous with maxing the graphics out at the expense of gaming" ... when Rage came out it seemed to take less of a beating over the linear story and more of a beating over the texture issues ... similarly, Oblivion which had a massive open world RPG environment got beat up primarily over graphics issues as well

I think the success of some of the bigger Indie titles (especially Minecraft) indicates that with many genres the gameplay is first and foremost ... however, there are some genres (shooters especially so) where good graphics is the main criteria and the users are willing to sacrifice gameplay, as long as the graphics rock ;)
 
I'm an oddball. First thing I do on any game is lower graphics as much as possible, something I can't do on a console. What to me makes a game enjoyable is high refresh rate, minimal lag, and as little annoying graphic effects that make the game difficult to play as possible.
 
Christopher said:
To me, the heart of PC Gaming means that I have more control over the experience. If that means I like to try to max out the graphics to have some eye candy, so be it.

If that means I want to dial everything back so I can get 300+fps (ah the old Quake III days), so be it.

The point is that the gaming experience is flexible to my needs, not the inverse.
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Biggest load of poo I've read in a while.
 
FordFanboy said:
Biggest load of poo I've read in a while.
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If you feel what he said isn't a positive aspect of PC gaming, you are being quite ignorant.
At least back up your bold statement with some explanation. :rolleyes:
 
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PC gaming is indeed about playing the way that best suits your preference, not buying some box and hoping your game runs the way you want. Not the way some Randy Pitchford motherfucker thinks it should run.
 
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