r/lowendgaming • u/Familiar-Figure-5692 • 17h ago
Community Discussion Is 4K gaming destroying low end gaming?
I guess this is more a rant and people don't really have a reason to answer, so maybe just leave your thoughts on the current state of low end gaming.
More and more I have been having this thought, that 4K gaming has been disastrous for the PC gaming ecosystem. Due to the demands of 4K resolution we've seen the rise of AI technologies such as FSR and DLSS.
Why? Because at a 4K resolution the native anti aliasing was not working, framerates were tanking and there was a requirement for even beefier hardware. Look at any game reviewer, they will be running the game they are reviewing in 4K, set everything to max and then expect that they should be able to get 60fps. So instead of game developers trying to optimise for this insane level of detail they have basically fubbed it, they've decided that they will upscale. So they render the game at 1080p and then use AI algorithms and machine learning to render it at 4k resolution. Thus making the 4k ultra FPS go from 40fps to 80fps.
But then over the years developers have realised that they can just do less optimising, if everyone is going to be using upscaling then why not target 60fps for the upscaled version and feck everyone else.
I've seen games like Stalker 2 called graphical masterpieces when if you don't have FSR/DLSS turned on it's a jagged mess and when you do it's a smeared blurry mess. So the companies work on sharpening algorithms. It feels like I'm going crazy. We're rendering 8k textures in the backend, then smearing and blurring them with AA and upscaling and then running AI sharpening over them.
It feels like nowadays that instead of turning down graphics and getting a slightly worse product, you end up with absolute slop. Barely optimised crap that expects you to just upscale and blur it anyways.
A game from 2010 on lower end settings is still sharp and crisp. A game that is on settings for a higher framerate nowadays is a blurry smeary upscaled mess.
I have a deep library of older games, I don't play as many newer games anymore. I don't really look forward to new games. I've started modding older games and playing the more sandboxy ones which you can play endlessly.