Amazing video showcasing that gaming on even a $200 GPU these days can be GREAT.
I first realised this when I got a gaming laptop with a 3060 in, meanwhile my main rig had a 7900xtx.
I was kind of gobsmacked that after tweaks on my laptop, many games still looked incredible. Now sure, if you have a good income and love gaming, high end gpus are a fun thing to get. But many people (including people I know) stretch financially to get say a 5070 ti over a 5060ti, when really they don't have a lot of money. I think there is some false idea in the air that gaming on low/mid range GPUs is somehow in 'another universe' or indeed that turning some settings down is impossible.
Constantly I see people say 'Yeah but card X only runs (insert modern game here) at 50fps, I need a 4090 to get 90fps'. When really they could tweak settings, get 90fps, and get basically the entire experience of the game anyway.
This felt a lot more normal to consider when I first built a gaming PC in 07. But a kind of GPU frenzy has taken over.
Chill guys.
44 Comments
These GPUs are not great if you have a high refresh rate monitor. If you are used to higher hertzs, a 60 fps experience will feel laggy to you.
this is such a BS argument though.
You play at 4k? guess what your going to need a more expensive graphics card. especially if you are doing high refresh rate.
you play at 1080p? well no shit you dont need a 5080 or 5090 to do that. Although you might need a higher than “normal” tier card if you are pushing 360hz or over.
This seriously depends on your gaming needs. The other thing is people like to try to future proof.
As long as I can get a stable ~90fps at 2k ultrawide in the games I play, I’m happy. When I GPU shop I just pick one that will do that and call it done.
When the games I play start struggling at the resolution I play at, that’s when I upgrade.
At some point turning the settings down so much just doesn’t do it for me. Wukong was what made me finally upgade.
These are all console games, you dont need a 5090 to run horizon or god of war. The real issue with weak gpus is that they do terribly on “pc” games, as in games made to run on pc that dont give a shit about resource optimization because pcs have infinite power anyways right?
Want to touch anything in the strategy genre? You better have a top tier cpu plus a decent gpu otherwise it’s going to be pain (even if the game is a fucking map). Want to play indie games? Same thing, top tier system or lag, nothing in between. Want to play a simulator? Those are the worst for bad gpus.
i wish every game was as optimized as forbidden west
As usual, the classic argument of YMMV.
I don’t run high end hardware to play at max settings.
One of the joys of a high end PC is running everything flawlessly at medium settings with zero fan noise and without turning the room into a sauna.
Yeah but he is using a well optimized game in this video. Try playing something like MHwilds with the left configuration and it will be a nightmare.
$3000 is like.. double my rent, the hell do people have that much money
IMO, the picture on the right FAR surpasses the one on the left. With any type of money I spent, I’d be upset with the left photo; unless, it was literally just 200 for the settings. This is misleading because I imagine you can get the same tech on the right for a fraction of the cost that produces the same picture quality in Horizon, I just don’t have the patience to do this research. Maybe the influencer should put their full time job and money to work and provide the best video card that can provide the right level of quality at the proper cost.
tl:dr: there is a significant quality gap between the two, but there is a middle card somewhere that can make it work.
no, 40smth FPS with VRR is not “just fine”. It’s just that you don’t have screen tear. Input lag starts kicking and you have slide show. Might be meh for top down games or smth that doesn’t have camera panning, but when there is camera motion, it’s terrible. That is both input lag and the slides.
Hardware Unboxed in its 5060ti video has clearly shown why that’s not the case, across more games on various settings. There’s no “low tier” anymore it’s more like rip-off tier, and that’s what people object to.
As long as you have enough VRAM to crank up the texture and resolution, a game would still look good with most of the other settings being set to low.
Unfortunately the combination of tech YouTubers posting the “BEST” gaming pc and people seeking max settings led to this. It’s fine to want the max settings experience, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying medium/low. It looks great nowadays compared to 10+ yrs ago!
20 years from now comparisons be like: Look at these 4 pixels here, they look way better on the extremely pricier graphics card and that’s why you’ve gotta buy it lol, because the graphs and stats.
not this bs video and discussion again.. 😒
a stable 30 is honestly not the worst
I watched this a little while ago. It’s a good video showing the diminishing returns between mid tier and very high end. There are reasons you might want the high framerate, for example, if this was a competitive shooter. But for a LOT of casual play, if you’re touching 60 fps you’re pretty solid.
One side note that doesn’t specifically show up well in his comparison choices is for some games you can be removing a lot of filler content or draw distance to get the frame numbers up high enough, especially on an older card. This might be ok after you get into the game and forget about it, but when directly compared, the difference in the amount of raw stuff you see presented can be a stark contrast.
Lastly is on the CPU side. We talk a lot about graphics cards, but many games are still CPU hungry, especially games with a lot of NPC/enemy activity. In some cases the graphics card is don’t relatively little. We just focus heavily on modern visual titles or some titles like CS that’s very non-demanding to just show CPU only, but there’s so many games in between that have heavy mixes of both that can shift moderately in the gameplay experience because of the CPU instead. I do wish we tested GPUs with low and mid tier CPUs.
Who woulda thought that the more money you spend the better quality image you’ll get. The question you gotta ask yourself is do you absolutely need that $3k GPU in order to enjoy games? Or will middle of the pack GPU work just fine? When I first got my GPU for my PC it was about middle of the pack. I got a rtx 3060ti about the time the 40 series was first coming out. It still works really well for almost all the games I enjoy playing.
Yeah, there are games that struggle a bit with lower frames and stutters on occasion but it’s like 2 games I have that do that. All the other games I play I have no issues with.
So do you have to have that super realistic, ultra crisp graphics that make you feel like your playing real life? Then save up or go buy that $3k 5090 GPU. But if you just want to enjoy games with decent graphics? Then a $400-$700 GPU will work just fine.
That’s my opinion.
I went from a 1660 laptop card to a 4060 desktop to a 7800XT and it might as well be high end to me. Now if only Oblivion ran half as well as it should I’d be fine. And if only I had gotten a 9070xt before they sold out on release.
What I’m hearing is I should get a 6090
Yea but there IS something you don’t see in that video and that is called aging.
That $250 maybe good now but see how it does in a few years, that $3000 card will have a longer “shelf” life than that $250 card.
Yeah you only need high-end cards for shit optimized games, and meaningless features that scale to infinity.. (1000 raycast bounces wow).. that’s coming from someone with a 5090
I try telling people this all the time. I have for the most part always had top tier machines and my work rig has a 5090 in it. The machine right next to it has a 3070. The 3070 machine has 32 gigs of ram and a decent ryzen cpu.
I tell them flat out, I get to play with every video card made. I will load up the same game and lets see if you can tell a difference. For me it’s about giving them the best bang for the buck and with the prices of GPU’s many people are priced out of top tier.
The only reason I see to have a 90 class is if you are like me and are using it for production use. I have blender, orca slicer, and many other things going at the same time as I play my games in window mode for brain breaks. That’s what it is made for. For most people mid tier cards are more than enough but it’s your money and I will build what ever you want.
I have them so I get both sides. It’s just if you are saying you want a 5090 don’t look at me wired when I say I want to put a minimum of 64g of ram in the machine.
There’s a happy medium here. I don’t mean to imply that the 3060 is a bottom of the barrel card, but… the 5090 looks way the hell better at 4 times the resolution and double the framerate. But, you also don’t need anything close to a 5090 to run a game like this way better.
If I have to turn down settings and run at 1080p to make a game playable… I’m probably just going to play it on my PlayStation. For me, part of PC gaming is definitely being able to push the graphics and performance further. How much I care about this, or how much I’m willing to compromise on this depends on the game.
Just swapped my Dell 32″, 165hz curved for an LG B4 48 OLED @ 120 and my 3070 runs it smooth as.
I mostly play The Division/2 and turning some shit down or off is a no brainer as I’m going too fast to appreciate “ambient occlusion” or HDR.
High detail in my immediate firing lens is all I need and the world still looks beautiful at 100 mph.
Glad someone else is poking this particular Bear, been trying to convince people but “Yeah, Linus (insert Youchooba guy) said (insert some asstalk) that I NEED a 7090 super ti at least? Don’t I?
No nugget, ya don’t. Average graphics cards (no, not you 3/4/5060) will play everything unless you’re awash with cashy munny and will spend for the sake of an Excel chart showing your 1% better than us plebeians.
If you wanna run games well, a pc of a grand is good (DISCLAIMER: Donald Trump may have fucked the market while I’m typing) if you want all bells and Cyberpunk cock details then it’s more of a pose than a game.
I’ve seen middle PCs going for £5000, THAT’S FUCKIN INSANE!
I’m running a 3070 Aorus Master, 7800x, 32G of Gskill on a X470 Asus Crosshair Hero VII.
It’s more than enough but the arguments will come no doubt.
I stand by the sentiment that you don’t NEED to spend crazy munny, just turn down the shit you never need.
That’s fine, but I upgrade every other generation and put my old GPU in a secondary rig. I’m confident the 3090 in the SFF PC in my RV will still be fine in four more years at 1440p. I’d hesitate to say the same thing about even a 3080 due to VRAM constraints despite the 3080 having around ~90% of the 3090’s performance.
If Nvidia gave the 5080 24gb of VRAM I might have just gone that route instead and saved money, but given that current consoles have 16GB and new consoles are likely two years down the road I’m dubious about the longevity of even 16gb cards right now.
I think just optimize for what you have and just enjoy. I got a 7800xt and love it. Picked up a 1440p monitor and crank up the settings. Would i like 4k? Ya sure. Will I empty my bank account for it? Hell no.
Personally I think 3080 is where things get comfortable once you optimise. No need to drop everything below high or turn the clarity to mush to get DLSS performance running at 1440p to barely hit 60fps. Sweetspot is around 3080 for graphical quality and performance both factored in.
If the 3060ti had a 12gb variant it would have been very interesting though as a strong budget card. 3060 is just slightly weak in many scenarios imo.
TBH I wish games would allow you to select if you want 4K textures as they did in the past or not, Settings should be more modular as times passes not less, it’s my biggest frustration over the years seeing things just devolving.
I have two monitors at 1080p and a 4060, I’m really happy and I can play anything I want. Right now i need other stuff way more than I need to upgrade my rig. 🙂
Just stop buying shiny new hardware to chase after games, play something that run fine on your current set up instead, there are tons of them. If a game want me to be its customer, it will cater to my hardware, not the otherway around.
I don’t think ray tracing helps with this. It really separates the the haves from the have nots because it affects performance so much, but we’re starting to see more games with no option to turn it off.
Almost no difference then 🤣😂
he lost me at 50fps is totally fine.
For us oldies, it’s pure habit, because a decade or two ago, there really WAS a huge difference between budget and high end.
You didn’t need a YouTube video to zoom in to the reflections to see a difference in a side-by-side comparison, LOL.
Preach. RX580 held up a long time for me. Played Cyberpunk on that. After I upgraded monitors (mainly for work reasons) I upgraded GPU.
I’m comfortable putting all my settings to low though and target 60fps. Atleast I feel comfortable saying I used my GPU to its fullest
first thing I noticed for me when looking at the first minutes of the video, the textures on the 3060 pictures look awful, where the for instance the ground textures on forbidden west at the beginning, the bricks in the stonewall are crisp an sharp.
IDK if this is the difference between medium and high presets or dlss quality vs. native when both streams where at 1440p
The interresting part would be, what gpu is needed to get the 5090 looks, with the 3060 fps
Timestamps 40sec to 1min 20.
Yeah I was getting fomo when the 50 series cards started dropping but honestly, my 3070Ti is still more than good enough. Yeah the limited vram isn’t the best but I’m pretty confident I can squeeze at least another few years out of it
>Constantly I see people say ‘Yeah but card X only runs (insert modern game here) at 50fps, I need a 4090 to get 90fps’. When really they could tweak settings, get 90fps, and get basically the entire experience of the game anyway.
Well yes and no …
You can also tweak setting en get 240FPs at higher resolution with the high end card, the low end one cannot provide you that experience, only talking about it from the low end card is disingenuous.
It’s at 1080p lmao, ofc it performs well in a very well optimized game without anything complex like fighting going on in the game. For more demanding games you’ll struggle, especially if you are at 1440p. This video is just a money grab because of course in the current state of the economy people want to be told they don’t want an expensive GPU so this video serves to make them feel better about it.
Now you can optimize game settings and use the money for a homelab, that’s a smart move (HDD space you get for $1000 is ridiculous)
Tripling the frame rate is already enough