This is getting out of hand. The other day I saw the requirements for “Hell is Us” game and it’s ridiculous. My RX6600 can’t play anything anymore. I’ve downloaded several PS3 ROMs and now I’m playing old games. So much better than this insanity. This is probably what I’m going to be doing now, play old games.
Edit: I wanted to edit the post for more context and to vent/rant a little.
I don’t want to say I made a mistake, but I buy everything used, and I have scored a good deal on two 27" 4k monitors from Facebook marketplace. Got both monitors for $120.
They’re $800 on Amazon used. Great monitors and I love 4k. I also bought an RX6600 AMD GPU for $100 from Facebook. It was almost new. The owner upgraded and wanted to get rid of it. My whole build was very cheap compared to what I see some folks get (genuinely happy for those who can afford it. Life is too short. Enjoy it while you can).
I can’t afford these high end GPUs, but now very few games work on low settings and I’d get something like 20 FPS max. My friend gave me access to his steam library and I wanted to play Indiana Jones the other day, and it was an “omfg, wtf is this horrible shit” moment.
I’m so sick of this shit!
I don’t regret buying any of these, but man it sucks that the games I want to play barely even work.
So, now I’m emulating and it’s actually pretty awesome. I’ve missed out on so many games in my youth so now I’m just going to catch up on what I’ve missed out on. Everything works in 4k now and I’m getting my full 60FPS and I’m having so much fun.
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.
And honestly, most modern games still look great on medium or low if you just put the textures on high. And that usually only affects VRAM usage and not performance.
I usually buy my PCs with an expected lifetime of about 10 years. And I don’t even buy the highest level components. Just enough to get High graphics at whatever is currently the most common resolution. After those ten years they usually can still play the newest releases at low settings while still looking better than ten year old games. You just have to play around with the settings a bit.
My Steam Deck is the only gaming PC I have that is actually struggling having new releases look good. But that was to be expected. And most of them still work if I tolerate abysmally low resolutions at 25 to 30 fps.
I disagree and I’m too lazy to explain but in short, it’s not about High/Ultra settings, that’s just name for the settings. It’s about how the games look, play, etc… vs how they perform. And I don’t remember that PC gaming was ever before so bad even when we’ve got shitty console ports.
You were so lazy it sounds like you agree with the og comment, not disagree. In essence, I think your comment aligns with the one you are replying to.
(Calling u so lazy is a light hearted joke that joins into my point)
4:30AM 2.6.2025 BC (before coffee) morning me wrote that comment.
I honestly just glanced at and dreamt the comment I was replying to.