Steam

You want to play at 4k on an old low end card. I'm sorry but this one is on you.

!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works

I tend to play shit 2+ years old...

Have you tried just setting the resolution to 1920x1080 or are you literally trying to run AAA games at 4K on a card that was targeting 1080p when it was released, 4 and a half years ago?

Obligatory reminder that Titanfall 2 is pretty great, runs great (its built on a modified Portal 2 era Source branch) looks great... and with Northstar, people figured out how to mod the client to work with custom servers and mods... and it all works on linux as well, literally has its own custom Proton branch.

But uh yeah, the new AAA graphics paradigm is:

Everything is a dynamic light, game devs don't optimize shit anymore because they're all being slave driven by corporate...

...because everything is built for stupid high graphical realism fidelity, few AAAs make any novel or engaging, fully fleshed actual gameplay...

But hey, nobody has to bake light and shadow maps anymore!

Assuming, of course, your card can support real time raytracing, which it can't, so we had to invent intelligent frame upscaling to replace well optimized AA methods, but that also isn't enough, so we had to invent (fake) frame gen.

Oh and all the cards that can do this are all sitting around double MSRP, because board partners can do whatever the fuck they want, and retailers don't even bother to attempt to stop scalpers.

...

The 9060 XT launches this week, and its supposed to MSRP at $350, for the 16 gig model.

My guess is we will get maybe 12 hours of prices between $350 and $450 (for the fancier partner models)... and then $500 to $550 will be the new 'baseline' price for whatever is left by next week.

If you're planning on trying to get a 9060 XT, good fucking luck, you're almost certainly gonna need it.

...

The GPU market is largely doing the same thing thats happened with cars, housing: everything is a luxury model, none to few viable economy options even get newly mfg'd, then the entire consumer base goes into debt to keep up their lifestyle, then all the debt bubbles pop and consumer spending ability craters... and... maybe then, 6 months to a year after that, the GPU mfg'rs could possibly start releasing actual economy models? Maybe?

...

Either way, a whole lot of AAA studios are either going to keep monetizing harder and harder... or realize that as we enter this 2nd Great Depression... that shit ain't gonna work for a mass consumer base, people just won't have the money.

Or I guess Klarna and Afterpay come built in to GTA 6 Online shark card purchases.

Why not?

It's not just insane power requirements. It's putting graphics bling ahead of playability and fun.

I recently bought Doom 2016 and Mosa Lina. I've had more fun with the latter than the former, even if I've been a Doom and Doom II player all my life.

4k gaming is a scam. I've been using 1440p for 20 years and never had issues running every game that comes out at max settings.

Okay I'm going to go against the grain, and will probably get downvoted to hell, but this is not new. This is PC gaming. This has always been PC gaming. Hot take - you don't need 4k@60fps to be able to have fun playing games.

New games require top of the line hardware (or hardware that doesn't even exist yet) for high-ultra settings. Always have, always will. (Hell, we had an entire meme about 'can it run crysis', a game that literally could only play on low-medium on even the highest level machines for a few years) Game makers want to make their games not just work now, but want them to look great in 5 years too. Unless you have shelled out over a grand this year for the absolute latest GPU, you should not expect any new game to run on great settings.

In fact, I do keep my PC fairly bleeding edge and I can't drive more than High settings on most games - and that's okay. Eventually I'll play them on Ultra, when hardware catches up. It's fine.

And as for low to mid level hardware I was there too - and that's just PC gaming friend. I played Borderlands and Left4Dead the year they came out on a very old Radeon card at 640x480 in windowed mode, medium settings, at about 40fps.

Again, this is just what PC gaming is. If you want crisp ultra graphics, you're gonna have to shell out the ultra payments. Otherwise, fine tuning low to medium payments, becoming okay with sub 60fps, this is all fairly normal.

Personally, when I upgrade I find great joy in going back and "rediscovering" some of the older games and playing them on ultra for the first time.

The reason has nothing to so with higher quality. They just do cost cutting of not having to create lighting and pass the cost on to the customer by having us raytrace and thus requires more horse power that GPU makers failed to deliver.