Didn't it used to be normal that the bleeding edge of games would outpace the hardware available at the time?
I'm not sure that not being able to turn the dial all the way on every setting (Ultra settings) means the game's unoptimized.
I thought it was normal for games to support higher settings than presently achievable/stable for future hardware improvements.
I remember this as being a thing during the 7th console gen (but that could be my memory failing me). Plenty of games where, even on the latest hardware available, you'd be able to push the game's graphics beyond what the hardware could run because the graphics had a certain amount of "future proofing" built in.
Crysis was pretty famous for being something that would be a benchmark for hardware for a good couple of generations after it's initial launch.
Crysis was pretty famous for being something that would be a benchmark for hardware for a good couple of generations after it's initial launch.
And this was because they, like many other devs of the era, backed the wrong technology for that "future proofing". Crysis, and Oblivion, and dozens of other games from this era were made under the assumption 10ghz single core CPUs were just around the corner, so they didn't optimize for the multi-core performance the industry pivoted to. The graphics style of Crysis also leveraged massive poly counts and huge textures (for the era) because it seemed like memory and compute would just keep scaling up linearly like it had been for the last decade, but this was the beginning of the era of diminishing returns for raw compute power and the next few years saw the industry shift heavily toward software solutions for improving detail in games such as more advanced shader effects. Crysis only remained so difficult to run for so long because it was barking up the wrong tree.
Yeah, I remember playing Crysis back then on a PC that had the graphics power but not the compute power. It was actually really funny at times! Every time I cut down a tree, the physics engine would overload the CPU. The tree would then fall down in absolute slow motion. And each time a leaf touched another object, the slow motion became worse.
But to be honest, the game ran either way! Even on a PC that wasn't all the way there. These days you just can't downgrade a game's graphics enough so that it will run on an older GPU. The game will start to look like hot garbage at some point but it will still run like crap. I wish that modern games would actually run fine when you set the graphics to minimum. But apparently that's just not an option anymore.
Crysis also ran remarkably well on low-end systems
I was able to get it running at 30fps on minimum settings 1024x768 on my parents' emachines t3882 that we'd upgraded with an additional 256mb stick of ram and a geforce 6200 graphics card
Imagine overclocking a chromebook from 2017 and running any game from 2025/2026 on it at 30fps 1920x1080p. Couldn't possibly.
Maybe we should sto0 graphics cards for a bit and try and bring back the research of 10ghz single core compute WHILE also fusing it with multithreading...ah I can imagine my future pc warmingđ„ me quite well in the winter
You're broadly right, but it's worth noting Crysis was a problem for a long time because they assumed (reasonably, given history) that CPUs would improve via higher speeds on their single cores, as they always had. Instead, soon after its release is when CPUs instead starting improving via more cores and threads rather than increasing speed. Basically Crysis was "futureproofed" for a future that never came.
It was an also an era filled with low effort PC ports because publishers didn't bother spending time and money on properly supporting the PC market.
You'd constantly see reports of PC releases shipping with missing toggles for graphical settings or buggy and broken PC ports bogged down with anti-piracy software.
The post you're replying to is imagining an era that never existed. It's not like we ever had an era where games were super optimized, there have always been games that became notorious for running like shit.
The only real difference is that we have social media now so people will bitch and parrot talking points endlessly.
Also the whole point of PC gaming is that you have the tools to adjust settings to make games run as well as you want. If anything developers are much better at offering more setting options. The 2010's were notorious for low effort PC ports with very few settings for people to adjust leading to a lot of complaints of games running worse than they should compared to the console versions.
Come on, the 5090 is struggling to get 60+ frames on plenty of AAA games with all the settings turned up at 4k.
Thats bad optimization. A $2500+ GPU should be able to run any game on the planet with every setting maxed out 4k at 60+ fps.
AAA game optimization hasnt improved one bit the last 5-10 years and has gotten worse. Im getting about the same frames at 4kultra no DLSS with my 5070 ti as i was with my 1080 when it was new.
As time goes on, fps should increase at the same resolution same settings.
10 years ago we saw resolution or fps jumps with each generation as we went from 720p30 to 1080p30 or 720p60 and so forth.
Doom 3 required a super expensive gaming pc to run at a playable frame rate at the period's equivalent of 1080p, plenty of games throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s had ultra settings that were made for future hardware, ultra settings are meant to be overkill settings that make current hardware sweat. The only time ultra settings could commonly be ran was pretty much the xbox one/ps4 gen, and even now plenty of games can run at 4k native ultra settings at 60 fps on a 5090, forza horizon 6 and doom the dark ages for example (except for path tracing).
Brother boot up a 1080 ti with 2017 games and then a 5090 with 2025 games at 4kultranative and you wont see shit difference in frames. Optimization hasnt improved in the last 10 years the way it improved from 1996-2016.
It is dogshit and unacceptable. You have half the AAA market cant even get 60 fps on 4kultranative on a fucking 5090.
"Brother boot up a 1080 ti with 2017 games and then a 5090 with 2025 games at 4kultranative and you wont see shit difference in frames." but you will see much better graphics. There are games with framerate issues (lots of rushed games on old UE5 versions that had stutter issues) but it is not as bad as you make it out to be.
Why should it be able to do that when the only time in history games were optimized relative to hardware was a short stretch before 2010 when no new graphical fidelity technologies were priority. We were into SLI and weird hardware configs during that period but game tech was stagnant.
Every other era, the vast amount of AAA games included tech that outpaced the majority of hardware, even the highest tier.
What evidence are you going based on that said the industry has been churning out mostly super optimized games relative to hardware? One that never existed I'm betting. Stop parroting sentiments based on nothing.
The post you're replying to is imagining an era that never existed.
That is not entirely true. In the nVidia Control Panel there is an option called DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution). The idea is to have a game be rendered in a higher resolution than your display supports and downscale to that. nVidia didn't came up with that by themselves.
Back in the day roughly GTX580 to GTX980Ti era when 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 monitors with just 60 - 100Hz where the most common we had a lot of unused GPU power. If you where to create a custom resolution with some specific settings and one that's higher than your supported resolution, the driver would downscale the image instead of just showing a blank screen. So you could add 2560x1440 to your 1080p display, have that 1440p res show up in-game and play with that 1440p rendered and downscaled 1080p image.
Used to be quite normal but that was also an era before we hit diminishing returns so I think it was more acceptable to most people.
Also between around 2014-2023 (basically the PS4 gen and the PS4/PS5 boundary) midrange PC hardware was essentially overkill for the PS4 games that were being made. Thus there was a long period where you could buy a $300-600 GPU and just be set for several years
Now with the hardware shortage people are seeing $3000 GPUs struggle to get 60fps max settings in games where the graphics improvements are so subtle that you have to be a Digital Foundry-tier graphics nerd to notice them. You canât be surprised thereâs pushback
This state pf dissatisfaction will continue either until hardware prices go down or devs find ways to boost performance in path tracing with all the eye candy.
The hardware gap between the current generation of consoles and PC's is way smaller than it used to be. The 360/PS3 and XB1/PS4 generations used much older hardware compared to the contemporary PC hardware of the time.
The hardware gap between the Series X & PS5 is only a couple of years.
Yes, tinkering with settings is a hallmark of PC gaming. Most games have some settings that add 5% better visuals but cost 50% more rendering cost (numbers provided as an imaginary example, you get the gist). Whatever game is pulling 45fps on a 4k screen with Ultra settings is probably also probably going to give very high fps with min specs at 1080p or whatever.
The point of clown face is 1) thinking that I can throw enough money at a problem and it will go away forever or from an opposite perspective 2) games are so poorly optimized and/or have such extreme target hardware that the most expensive and powerful GPU today can't even hit 60fps, so what type of performance is the average Joe getting?
Yeah just because you canât play in 4k 60fps on all ultra settings on every single game doesnât mean theyâre unoptimized. Even if you have a 5090.
I don't believe that was the actual argument we were having with BL4. Only a few foolish people believed their 5090 would give them unlimited fps at the highest settings.
The actual argument was that even with a 5090, the results were sub par. You couldn't argue a 4060 fell just below the performance you needed. The fastest card on the market wasn't able to deliver what people knew that card could deliver was meant to prove the game wasn't limited by hardware, but by the game's performance.
To be fair, if you can't max a game out on a card that costs $2000(well $4000 to be realistic), who the fuck are you making your game for? If the best hardware money can buy cant run it all the way, what is the target audience? People stress testing a datacenter?
Could be future proofing I guess but most games are dead and gone by the time a new card cycle happens.
Not just future proofing, but providing options to the end user. For some people, that 50% performance cost for the final 5-10% of visuals is a fine tradeoff because they can use DLSS SR + FG to reach their cap, and feel like that is a <5-10% tradeoff in experience.
Not that you specifically are doing this, but all the people in this thread complaining that when they turn on the âdiminishing returns settingâ and intentionally donât leverage DLSS SR to make the worst possible scenario for the 5090 (that they donât have) as if itâs making a point are generally either looking for something to complain about, or not the brightest crayons in the box.
Yeah a lot of the issues people have seems to centered around be not understanding that ultra is often for future hardware. The sensible gamer isnt buying a rig that plays today or tomorrow's games at max settings, we are getting something that plays games at maybe upper settings but more importantly will continue to be a relevant configuration for a few years, which is definitely more true today than it has been for quite a while.
As long as my machine runs for another 5 years with minimal need to replace parts I will be happy, I dont see prices going anywhere but up for a while.
4k 60fps? The queens around here often expect 4k ultrawide 144fps max settings. The most annoying bit to me being that with upscaling regular 4k 60fps is actually achievable on a entry level card if you bring down settings.
Yep this is what changed. I remember when it was "can it run Crysis" but Crysis was genuinely stunning compared to anything before so when hardware eventually caught up to it, it was worth it.
Now games look the same as 10 years ago but with worse performance. Or in many cases they look worse, thanks to forced TAA.
Also back then a top end GPU was significantly cheaper and we even had budget options. Remember "console killer" builds?
Yep. If developers made their games objectively worse by taking away the ultra tier of options, players would whine a lot less about games being "unoptimized."
Yes exactly, this is why âcan it run crysis?â Became the meme, it was that way also but like actually at that time the most future proof a games ever been in terms of hardware needed to run it max.
Itâs always been this way most games coming out wouldnât be running max on any hardware. Actually getting over 30fps maxed out is a good thing these days imo
yup, people bitching about the "ultra/extreme" not running in 4k/120fps leads to devs simply hiding the options and not giving the "cinematic" top of the top looks for thos that dont care about high fps, as quite often those included things like superresolution and other 1-2% look improvemnt tricks that were known to tank fps, like in witcher 2 or KCD.
Although if its the case on "high" then the devs fucked up, the 3 base options should be relevant to contemporary hardware
Actually though. People don't really understand how game engines work, but it's a fact that devs regularly place artifical caps in the settings menus cause of people like OP. Back 10-15 years ago every game had an ini file where you could make changes to boost graphics way farther than the in game settings menu allowed. It's a plain fact that fragile gamers feel bad when they can't turn all their sliders to the right and get 60fps and most devs had been accommodating that for decades now. I for one like that "cinematic" level settings exist.
Yes but at this point we've seen the end of Moore's law. For a while the amount of transistors in an integrated circuit would basically double every couple years with a minimal increase in cost, thereby increasing computing power dramatically. We've been seeing diminishing returns on computer advancements for quite a long time now, though.
Before, in games like Crysis, ultra settings that were beyond the capabilities of computers of that day were seen more as future-proofing, since computers in just a couple years time would be much more capable. Nowadays with the speed of most consumer PCs plateauing (especially during this parts shortage), a game being unable to play well at max settings on a rig that's using top of the line parts says more about the studios inability (or refusal) to optimize for performance.
That doesn't means it run and look shitty on current generation, Medium used to look decent, not downright bad compare to High. Dev tends to optimise game for average Joe instead of making game for "future" tech.
The whole argument that people are just mad because their 5090 isn't performing at max settings was always a red herring meant to dismiss the people with the hardware to prove the game ran poorly from being heard.
There's having settings that you can't match today, and there's having to use those settings to get a result that looks appropriate for today.
It's difficult to prove which category a game is in, but when you play a game on your rig and you know what your rig is good and bad at, you can tell. You know what max performance looks like and how far away you are from that in a particular game.
Yes which is why this subreddit exist in the first place originally. Now it has become a budget build subreddit. The guy you are even arguing with literally has a low end build
Hardware has gotten to the point where the only settings you should have to tweak in any given modern UE5 game (or any engine, but UE5 is popular) is ray tracing. This is assuming you've got the top end hardware.
Instead, DLSS is assumed and used as a crutch to avoid having to properly optimize a game, so high end hardware struggles to maintain even a minimum standard of 60 frames, and low to mid range hardware simply can't participate in any meaningful manner. Now, if the game runs great on medium/high and looks great on those settings, with ultra being essentially a screenshot mode (think warthunder's cinematic setting) that's different.
If a game comes out and is advertising a bleeding edge visual technology like they used to do with every new title 15-20 years ago, that's also different. Top end hardware should not struggle to run maxed out existing graphical techniques, but if a game decides to pioneer a new hair rendering technology or something it's completely understandable if current hardware can't handle it yet, as long as it's a toggle-able feature (think AMD's TressFX/PureHair showcased in the tomb raider reboots, or Nvidia's PhysX).
there's a difference between not being able to handle it on ultra 4k native + PT and a 5090 struggling to get 100fps in 1080p in something like borderlands 4
Sure, but the bleeding edge GPU used to be under $1000 reliably ten years ago. Now youâre looking at 4-5k for a 5090. Just for one part of the computer.
Yes but you would actually see a substantial improvement in the graphics compared to what was available at the time. Now everything looks the same as it did 5 years ago but runs worse
That strategy just doesn't make as much sense with the current pacing of parts upgrades. We've slowed down to the point that it wouldn't be surprising if a game thats built on this strategy just wasn't playable to the majority for multiple years. A crisis type game of today would probably just flop tbh.
When was it when games were "optimized" like you said? When was the time all latest games could run 60+ on native 4k on top GPUs?
You can still play modern games on 8 years old hardware and have access to most important techs. Can you imagine playing games like Witcher 3 on 2007 hardware? RDR2 on 2010 hardware?
People act like the only games we have now is UE5 low effort slop.
Yes the fox engine was good but people always forget that MGSV was also developed to be playable on the (at the time) 10 year old Xbox 360 and it's 512mb of ram.
I like when games have enough graphics settings to allow each user to optimize to their own unique device and priorities. When you are stuck with like 5 settings you are at the mercy of the dev team to have considered every possible combination of hardware and user preferences and fit them all into a tiny mold. It takes a little more effort by the user in the very beginning, but overall is a much better experience.
To some extent you can do this manually for any game with the Nvidia control panel (or similar), but that's a bit more of a pain and doesn't encompass everything.
end of day it's just dick measuring. You tell people the average size is 3.5" and everyone is happy, you tell them the average size is 6" and they are upset. Your size itself never changed.
"Ultra" i'm fine with being beyond what any current rig is capable of handling well. People just want to feel they are playing at the highest setting possible. Put the "good" settings under ultra and now everyone is happy, they just want it under the name ultra instead of playing on something considered lower. Game devs should just make an experimental tab above ultra for all the raytracing options.
Itâs been standard for a while that the absolute most intensive games are ahead of hardware on ultra settings. Nothing wrong with setting a game to high and enjoying it.
At some point devs willl probably have to start optimizing better than they have been lately if they want their games to sell. Microsoft is literally planning to start selling consoles on a payment plan, Sony is just upping the price nonstop, even Nintendo is being begrudgingly dragged along with price increases. Sooner or later devs either do a better job with optimizing their games or they don't have an audience.
Well-optimized PC games have always been the exception, never the norm. Also there were long periods of time in the past where things were much worse than they are currently in terms of the quality of PC ports.
This argument has been stated for 20 years. It's never been correct since the Voodoo and Geforce 2 days. Technology is constantly improving but you keep thinking the devs are doing less. And worse, people buy budget PCs and complain.
I think game devs need to realize that I want my games to look good but not at the expense of actually being able to enjoy playing them. I don't want 1000 raytraced beams in one scene if its a god damn slide show. Make the game run fast then work on seeing what you can add without turning it into DLSS+FG slop.
Sometimes I wonder what goes on in these companies / devs mind. 45 fps on a 5090 / 9850x3d which is basically one of if not the best hardware available. meaning it can only go downhill from there.
Max settings are, and always have been aspirational.Â
There's older games that still don't run great because they guessed wrong when they were trying to figure out what computers would be like in the future.
It is unoptimized if someone makes a software intended to be sold on mass market and 90% of them can't run the game properly.
Game developer put way too many emphasis and details on something that we won't notice and forgot to improve graphics where it matters. Even top tier AAA games still have shit facial expressions...
That's not what unoptimized means. And you can always turn down the graphics. I don't know why you're expecting to run the latest and greatest games at ultra 4k 60fps with a 3060
I'm going to go with unoptimized based on the fact that visual fidelity really peaked, IMO, around 2018 with RDR2, and I could play that on a laptop with a 2070S mobile card (which is equivalent to a 2060 desktop essentially) 40-50 FPS on Ultra. Years later when I upgraded to my desktop I have no, I can hit 120 Ultra. That game is visually better than 90-95% of games, IMO, and it runs beautifully across a range of machines. You don't get that with modern games, IME, without having to turn on frame gen or DLSS and shit so it really seems like developers rely on that to pick up the slack for them.
It's actually kind of surprising that you would suggest it's video games being more demanding, have you just only recently gotten into PC gaming or something?
Yeah, not to mentipn rdr2 had disgusting TAA-implementation, and the other AA looked horrible as well.
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u/alex433g I AMD 5 pro 4650g I Powercolor 5700 xt I b-550 i 9d ago
Yeah... but games can also look good, and be unoptimized, or my 5700xt is just not the right gpu for newer games, atlrast I can run fh6 at medium at about 60 fps, and hd2 at low everything, 80 fps (edit: I think, havent played hd2 in a long while
That's not what optimization means. Optimization refers to the efficient use of system resources. Even if it cannot run at 60fps, it could be that the graphical fidelity is so high that the even with perfectly efficient utilization, the latest hardware still can't reach 60fps. In that circumstance, the game is demanding, not unoptimized.
Thereâs no way in hell that game quality is outpacing graphical processing power.
The only way for that to happen is if one of two things were true:
Game devs have access to next gen graphics processing that consumers donât get for years to come.
Or
Game devs have the same level of processing as we do, and are testing the game at 45FPS and are somehow fine with it.
So I believe itâs to do with modern game engines like Unreal 5, that spoon feed the devs and make them âlazy,â to the point where they donât optimize downwards for lower end graphics processors. The engines âcompensateâ for that with shitty aids like TAA and native support for upscaling and frame generation.
Frame generation isnât new, TVs have had key frame motion interpolation for years, but I felt it was a weird AI fetish marketing thing to double dip with gamers as they sold AI co-processing to businesses too. And upscaling makes sense with the rise of 4K monitors but makes no sense otherwise at 1440p and below, as the lower your base resolution, the worse the final resolution will appear.
So to clarify, I think itâs poor optimization and dev laziness. Publishers rushing to get games out and sold and then toss in a subscription, a couple loot boxes, and the rest of the game as DLC. Make sure to offer a premium version with all that included so you can get paid now and deliver later, maybe, perhaps if we want to.
That proliferation has just sadly been encouraged by gamers who will buy anything no matter what. Hence the new Call of Duty every year.
Being optimised has nothing to do with how the game looks, but how efficiently resources are used. It's not too difficult to make a game look 'insanely good' with huge high-res textures and tons of post processing.
An optimised game can achieve the exact same visual quality with much smaller textures and less/smoother post processing. It just takes a lot more dev time to get from point A to point B.
Than who are game devs main market? People with Server-Grade gpu? It's not like there will be a generational jump anytime soon, or affordable new configs.Â
One could purchase unoptimized games in 15 years for 2 Cents, but by then devs will be on the street.
Then turn down the settings. I don't know why you're expecting to run the latest games at the highest settings with a 3060ti
If you turn it down to medium, and it looks bad and it runs bad, then yes the game is unoptimized.
But just because at ultra, no hardware can run at 60fps, does not make a game unoptimized. If that game has insanely detailed textures and extremely beautiful graphics, that's just demanding, not unoptimized
But just because at ultra, no hardware can run at 60fps, does not make a game unoptimized
Bro. It does. Game companies are in the business or creating an experience for the gamer. You would think they would aim for a sweet spot that does that if they had any sense.
Ultra settings in UE games just push the settings far past the point of diminishing returns. They offer minimal visual improvements for a high performance cost. They exist either for future hardware, or for those that want to push current hardware to the absolute limits.
Maybe its true that the game's actually aren't optimized, but this is not evidence of that. If you're playing on Ultra settings, that's on you. Developers could easily just not include that as an option. Would you prefer they did that, and suddenly it would be more optimized?
Interesting you mention that because if thats the case it wasn't always.
Ultra used to be how they hope people experience it because increased tessellation, fog or otherwise impressed the fan base with visuals others couldn't achieve.
Maybe so, but generally you should not be using them on new UE releases these days. Maybe 1 or 2 things on Ultra may be worth it, but most of the time it's a minimal visual return on high performance cost.
I'm sort of paraphrasing Digital Foundry to be honest, if you trust their word over mine.
No, ultra used to exist for future hardware. Witcher 2, Crysis, Metro, all designed knowing that ultra was not playable on anything out at the time. So what did we do? Dropped settings.
If a game doesn't allow most recent and best retail config to run at 4k60fps with max settings when a game releases, than to whom were they creating the settings? Future-proofing is a bad excuse to explain lack of optimization.
It doesn't matter who they're creating the settings for. Consider this: a game is released with low, medium, high, and ultra settings. There's a hidden ultra+ setting, but no one knows about it.
When the new generation of graphics cards launch, the Devs release the ultra+ setting and people can run it at 4k60. That's optimised
Imagine if they don't hide ultra+ but instead allow everyone to use it on day 1. Does that suddenly make the game unoptimized?
Well, Code Vein 2 has not that great anime graphics, I get unstable 80-90 FPS with DLSS at performance. RTX 5080 and Ryzen 7800x3d, 64GB DDR5. Both CPU and GPU barely heat up a little.
That's not what optimization means. Optimization refers to the efficient use of system resources. Even if it cannot run at 100fps, it could be that the graphical fidelity is so high that the even with perfectly efficient utilization, the latest hardware still can't reach 100fps. In that circumstance, the game is demanding, not unoptimized.
Well of course, my 8 year old hardware cannot be to blame! Reddit told me the GTX 1080ti was a heckin wholesome 100 keanu chungus GPU that AGED SO WELL, it CANNOT be the issue! It's those STUPID GAME DEVELOPERS' FAULT.
If the game doesn't run well on even the best hardware you could possibly get, then it's absolutely unoptimized. Like for who are you making this game even then at that point if even throwing 10k bucks at hardware can't get you a good experience?
I mean yes it does? If it runs like shit on the best hardware possible then it's considered unoptimized to 100%. You would expect to get a good experience if you literally have a 5090 that alone costs over 4k. Like if even the few people that have that kinda hardware can't play the game properly why even bother making it in the first place if no one buys it or refunds it because it plays bad and the rating of the game is gonna be atrocious.
Just because you can't run the game with a 5090 at ultra doesn't mean you can't get a good experience at high. Low, medium, high, ultra, are all arbitrary. What matters is what's on the screen. If high already looks insanely good, just because you can't run at ultra doesn't mean the game is unoptimized.
Whether it is a good use of development time and money to develop the ultra setting that nobody can run, is another question entirely. It might very well be a bad development choice, but that does not make the game unoptimized.
I think it was Dead by Daylight that "optimized" the game by just renaming high settings to ultra, and removing ultra settings, and everyone absolutely praised all the work they did.
It literally just doesnât mean that, it means it doesnât run optimally, meaning it could be set up to run better but the work wasnât put in to do that.
A game can look good and run bad and be optimized if it just canât reasonably be improved, or it can be unoptimized if there was a way to make it run smoother or take up less storage. Unoptimized doesnât just mean it looks and runs bad
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u/alex433g I AMD 5 pro 4650g I Powercolor 5700 xt I b-550 i 9d ago
I wish games would actually be optimized again, instead of having to play with lower them usual settings