Help me find good games that justify better GPUs

[Winterpool]

I salute all of your valiant attempts to stimulate demand in this stagnant economy. Would that our political and financial overlords matched your efforts. (I excuse here Ben 'Money for nothing and the chicks for free' Bernanke.)

Despite being an exceedingly casual first-person gamer (I played a few hours of Killzone 2 each week or month), I too wish there were something graphically stunning (and GPU-punishing), narratively engaging, and fun to play. Of course it's not as if Hollywood does much better with their 'blockbusters'. The last time I felt interested in upgrading my kit was the release of Dragon Age... Modern Warfare held promise, even if it wasn't an intense workout on PCs, until it went hurtling off the cliff of story stupidity...

I currently own an ASUS Radeon HD 4870 (1 GB) which never gets to stretch its legs. I'll upgrade when I see a game with star fleet battles, aerospace landings, massed mecha engagements, and at least semi-realistic small unit infantry / SOF tactics, all rendered in glorious artwork dripping in pixels. (And the above is not a description of Starcraft; I don't mean some abstracted RTS here...) Someone make this game!

 

[Skurge]

Dirt 3 I am looking forward to for sure.

Take a look at GT5 here. The level of detail is immense. This is why the resolution argument is a moot point for me when I see what can be done on "only" 720P.

Stop right there.

GT5 doesn't look much better than Forza3, which is nowhere near Dirt2 or F1 2010. Those pics are from the photo mode in GT5. It is nowhere near what the GT5 looks like ingame. The same thing with GT4, in photo mode, the game is boosted in resolution with lots of AA and it looks incredible It basically becomes pre-rendered, but ingame it looks very much like a PS2 game.

Does anyone remember GT4 looking like this?

Or like this

So, don't be fooled by photo mode, that game will not compare to dirt2 in resolution, car details (maybe accuracy), textures, effects, the whole lot.

 

[RussianSensation]

Stop right there.

GT5 doesn't look much better than Forza3, which is nowhere near Dirt2 or F1 2010.

I suppose looks can be debated. Having played Forza 2/3, and GT games, the amount of depth in terms of authentic cars, single player mode experience and tracks puts it far above Dirt 2 for me. Dirt 2 is awesome, but on the PC we have nothing that comes close to Forza 3 or what GT5 will be. We need more racing games with real cars.

 

[Skurge]

I suppose looks can be debated. Having played Forza 2/3, and GT games, the amount of depth in terms of authentic cars, single player mode experience and tracks puts it far above Dirt 2 for me. Dirt 2 is awesome, but on the PC we have nothing that comes close to Forza 3 or what GT5 will be. We need more racing games with real cars.

I agree, but Forza3 was too easy and forgiving and a bit bizarre with its handling, still a good game. GT games were just as easy. you couldn't turn off ABS for example. The cars in GT4 also had bogus specs. I can go into depth, but this isn't the place. I agree we need more games with more cars (SHiFT2 is headed that way), but in terms of graphics and handeling, I think we have it just as good if not better than the consoles.

My solution. Buy DiRT3, F1 2011 and GRID2 and you are set

 

[RussianSensation]

My solution. Buy DiRT3, F1 2011 and GRID2 and you are set

Did codemasters announce that F1 2011 is in development already?

 

[BFG10K]

If you have low standards and stick to middling resolutions like 1920x1yyy with little to no AA then of course you aren’t going to need much horsepower. But for those of us that have higher standards, we need all the power we can get.

A GTX460 is completely underpowered for my needs, and even a GTX480 cannot cope with a lot of a strain I put on it.

If I upgraded from a GTX480 to a GTX580 I’d see practical performance benefits in almost all of the 100+ games I have installed right now, some as old as eleven years. And these are great games, which is why they’re never uninstalled.

Crysis at "Very High" at 1280x1024 0AA looks way better than HL2 at 2560x1600 8xSSAA.

No, it really doesn’t. Try it if you don’t believe me. Fire up Crysis at right now at 1280x1024 and tell me it doesn’t look like utter ass. Crysis without any super-sampling looks absolutely horrific because the whole game sparkles like a Christmas tree, even at an unplayable 2560x1600.

The fact is, it doesn’t matter how good the effects are if they’re rendered onto lego bricks or a swarm of bees.

Yes, a typical CGI movie looks good at low resolutions because of great effects, but also because of massive filtering and AA, which results in not a single pixel being out of place. You think anyone would think Toy Story is realistic if the characters looked like they were made out of lego bricks and rendered onto a swarm of bees?

 

[RussianSensation]

No, it really doesn’t. Try it if you don’t believe me. Fire up Crysis at right now at 1280x1024 and tell me it doesn’t look like utter ass.

Not for me. I am a huge proponent of better graphics (i.e., complex shader effects, improved textures, dynamic lighting, physics) not higher resolutions alone. Resolution is really one of the most overrated 'features' of PC gaming. You can always make a better looking game without increasing the resolution. Check out Unreal Engine demo on Iphone 4.

Even if I lower my resolution to 720P, PC games still look a lot better than consoles do. The only way this is possible is because PC games have superior level of detail/shader effect, and higher resolution textures. Just set all visual sliders to maximum on Dragon Age Origins with 0AA/0AF and set the resolution to console levels on the PC. You will see that DAO looks way better than it does on the console.

Rage HD on an ipad at 1024x768 arguably looks better than Quake 3 on a 30inch PC monitor.

Rage HD - 1024x768 0AA/0AF

Quake 3 - AA/AF

A game with inferior graphics at 2560x1600 pixels with 32xAA won't look better than a good looking game at 720P. Since you are using a 30 inch LCD, anything outside of your native resolution will looked washed out for you. But if you had a native resolution 1920x1080P LCD next to a 2560x1600 LCD and put Crysis 1 on the 1st LCD vs. Far Cry 1 on the 2nd LCD, it is impossible to make Far Cry 1 look better than Crysis 1 regardless of how much AA/AF you apply.

For example, the amount of visual detail in Unreal Tournament 3 without any AA/AF is vastly superior to Unreal Tourmanent 2004 maxed out. This is because a single character model in UT3 has as many polygons as the entire level of UT2004. You can apply obscene amounts of AA/resolution at UT2004 and it still won't look as good as UT3 at 1280x1024 0AA at native LCD resolution because UT3 has 10x the amount of detail.

UT2004

UT3

Games like Forza 3 on xbox360, KillZone 2 on PS3, Gears of War 2 on 360 all look better to me than Call of Duty 2 at 2560x1600 on the PC. Higher pixel density of 2560x1600, 16xAA/16xAF will not make a very old game (i.e., 5+ years old) with sub-par texture and shader effects look better than a modern game at 720P with 4AA. I know you will disagree with this statement because you think high resolution and AA are more important than I do.

Crysis 1 at 1280x1024 0AA looks better to me than Far Cry 1 at 1920x1080 8AA. In fact, in every single game I play, I always max out all the visual effects first before I even think about applying AA. AA just removes jaggies but it has no impact on the actual amount of detail in the game itself. You will be able to see the fences or branches of trees slightly better but it won't make an ugly tree turn into a complex tree with 10,000 leaves reacting to wind, with water droplets accurately refracting sunlight from each leaf.

Some of us have been playing at 1920x1080P for a long time. Games still continue to look better and better at the same resolution. Since resolution is being held constant, it's evident that graphics can improve without increases in resolution. Resolution alone does not innovate graphics, it only gives the artist more pixels to work with.

 

[StinkyPinky]

When the new consoles come out in circa 2013 we will see a big leap. Most developers would be crazy to spend years making a game look great for a PC when 75% of their sales are on a 5 year old console with 2005 hardware.

In 2009, Microsoft said the Xbox 360 was only half way through its life cycle, so 2013 seems likely for the new Xbox. PS4 probably 2014.

 

[SHAQ]

2013?? Say it ain't so!! The 360 will be a fancy paper weight by then.

 

[toyota]

RussianSensation, when you run a game at a resolution way below native it will usually look horrible. I have fired up Crysis at 1280x1024 and indeed looks quite bad compared to native 1920x1080. now if it was on a 17 or 19 inch lcd that was native 1280x1024 then of course it is not bad looking.

 

[Barfo]

Yup, back when I had a 19" and I had just gotten my 4850, Crysis looked beautiful to me.

 

[Vdubchaos]

2013?? Say it ain't so!! The 360 will be a fancy paper weight by then.

360 was a paperweight the day it came out.....it had 1 year old hardware on RELEASE DATE

 

[Barfo]

360 was a paperweight the day it came out.....RROD

Fixed.

 

[busydude]

Rage HD - 1024x768 0AA/0AF

Quake 3 - AA/AF

UT2004

UT3

Russian, I am surprised that you used JPEG images to show IQ of certain games. There are no jaggies to be seen because its an inherent property of JPEG compression to blur the details of an Image, and also for the fact that the image is not shown at its original resolution. I am pretty sure in reality there are going to be discernible jaggies along the edges.

 

[Absolution75]

Russian, I am surprised that you used JPEG images to show IQ of certain games. There are no jaggies to be seen because its an inherent property of JPEG compression to blur the details of an Image, and also for the fact that the image is not shown at its original resolution. I am pretty sure in reality there are going to be discernible jaggies along the edges.

He's clearly not talking about jaggies. That's the purpose of his post. Even with the aliasing, the amount of texture detail and increased polygon counts exceeds the increase in quality when one turns AA on alone.

 

[StinkyPinky]

2013?? Say it ain't so!! The 360 will be a fancy paper weight by then.

It makes sense. They just released the Kinect so they're going to want to milk that for a few years...

With the announcement of the Xbox 360 S, Microsoft have said that they believe that the console is only mid-way through its life-cycle and will continue on through 2015.

So...yeah. TEN years this thing is going to be around for. Of course there will be some cross over so hopefully 2013 we will see the next console. By 2015 integrated graphics will destroy the Xbox 360.

 

[taltamir]

So...yeah. TEN years this thing is going to be around for. Of course there will be some cross over so hopefully 2013 we will see the next console. By 2015 integrated graphics will destroy the Xbox 360.

I predict it will happen even earlier... say, 2013 +/- 1 year for integrated graphics to destroy the xbox 360

saying now that it will go for 5 more years is quite crazy... the xbox was 2001 to 2005. the ps2 was 2000 to 2006... is MS really trying to break some kind of record here by pushing their POS outdatedware for 10 whole years? And its not like the wii which targets the super casual market... the ps3 and the xbox360 are competitors for home entertainment + mid range game performance console (high end only available in PC naturally). If the PS4 comes out in 2011 and the xbox720 (personally I am guessing xbox 5) or whatever isn't available until 2015 then the PS4 will decimate the xbox... it will fall to the casual range and have to compete with nintendo in a market it doesn't know how to handle...

 

[busydude]

He's clearly not talking about jaggies. That's the purpose of his post. Even with the aliasing, the amount of texture detail and increased polygon counts exceeds the increase in quality when one turns AA on alone.

My bad, reading comprehension fail. its really hard to compare games based on different engines. The best way is too look at screenshots of the same game at different resolutions.

 

[Skurge]

He's clearly not talking about jaggies. That's the purpose of his post. Even with the aliasing, the amount of texture detail and increased polygon counts exceeds the increase in quality when one turns AA on alone.

When you lower the resolution to something like 1024x768, you wont see the higher details of a game like crysis compared to say HL2, you won't even see the fish swimming in the ocean and at that res as BFG said the high detail foliage in crysis will look like it was made from lego bricks.

 

[RussianSensation]

RussianSensation, when you run a game at a resolution way below native it will usually look horrible. I have fired up Crysis at 1280x1024 and indeed looks quite bad compared to native 1920x1080. now if it was on a 17 or 19 inch lcd that was native 1280x1024 then of course it is not bad looking.

You are right on that toyota. I am saying if BFG downscales his 30 inch monitor to run outside of his native resolution, every game will look horrible. But if he actually had a native resolution monitor with 1920x1080 or even 1280x1024 resolution, he would be able to have a true representation of proper resolution down-scaling. When he discusses the inferiority of lower resolutions, I believe it's implied he is considering comparisons of native vs. native res for an apples-to-apples comparison

Russian, I am surprised that you used JPEG images to show IQ of certain games. There are no jaggies to be seen because its an inherent property of JPEG compression to blur the details of an Image,

I think you missed the point of what I am saying. I judge graphics based on "artistic represenation" (i.e. how does the gaming world look, how do the characters look with their facial animations, how do the weapons look and how does the gaming world react to physical damage from the guns, how realistic are the shadows (are they static, dynamic, etc.), how realistic is the ground/foilage/water effects, etc.). AA helps to improve what I call the "geometric represenation" of the game (i.e., straighten jagged lines or smooth curved lines).

Based on the images I linked, it's very evident that graphics themselves are affected by artistic aspects much more so than by resolutions or AA imo. Artistic representation adds details and realism, while geometric accuracy introduces perfectly straight lines and improves curved lines by reducing aliasing artifacts. However, geometric accuracy does not add any more detail to the game that isn't there in the first place; and hence cannot overcome artistic deficiencies of older games such as low polygon count models of Unreal Tournament 2004 for example. Can you apply AA/AF to make PS2 games look better than PS3 games? You can reduce the jaggies of PS2 games, but the artistic represenation of PS3 games will easily outshine any PS2 game.

Think about this for a second. You can apply as much AA/AF as you want to Warcraft 2 and it will never look as good as Starcraft 2 in terms of graphics. AA/AF are icing on the cake. But if the game isn't great looking (i.e., Fallout 3 NV looks very dated), adding AA/AF isn't going to make Fallout 3 NV look better at 2560x1600 than Crysis or Metro 2033 on a native resolution monitor at 1920x1080. This is why I disagree that higher resolution + AA can make a 5+ year-old game look better than a 2010 modern game. Dated graphics with AA are still dated graphics, but with smoother lines.

The whole idea behind PhysX and Tessellation is giving the artist the ability to grow in terms of artistic representation in making the virtual world to look as close as possible to the physical world. I bet that in 5 years from now, a game with proper physics and tessellation effects with 0AA/0AF will embarrass any game today with 16AA/16AF because it will look much more realistic.

^^ This is my opinion and I realize not everyone will agree.

 

[busydude]

I think you missed the point of what I am saying. I judge graphics based on "artistic represenation" (i.e. how does the gaming world look, how do the characters looks, how does the laser beam from the gun looks, how realistic are the shadows, how realistic is the ground/foilage, etc.), not based on "geometric represenation" of straight lines. Based on the images I linked, it's very evident that graphics themselves are affected by artistic aspects much more so than resolutions or AA. Artistic representation adds details and realism, while geometric accuracy only introduces perfectly straight lines or reduction of aliasing artifacts. However, geometric accuracy does not add any more detail to the game that isn't there in the first place; and hence cannot overcome artistic deficiencies of older games.

I get your point.. and it was my mistake to make that post without reading yours.

 

[RussianSensation]

When you lower the resolution to something like 1024x768, you wont see the higher details of a game like crysis compared to say HL2, you won't even see the fish swimming in the ocean and at that res as BFG said the high detail foliage in crysis will look like it was made from lego bricks.

This 720P demo on iphone 4 looks better than 3dMark2001 at 1920x1080 4AA on my PC. The maximum resolution of the iphone 4 is only 960x640. It seems the artist is able to present a more realistic world despite the reduced resolution. Using this example, why wouldn't it be possible to create a game in 2017, for example, that will look better than Crysis at just 960x640 on the iphone 10?

 

[busydude]

Using this example, why wouldn't it be possible to create a game in 2017, for example, that will look better than Crysis at just 960x640 on the iphone 10?

It cannot be possible. If you look at different resolutions and assuming both have the same FOV(Aspect Ratio), both cover the same area.. but one is bigger and more detailed and the other is smaller and has less detail.

You definitely lose detail.. like creases and folds on a shirt, small cracks on the walls.. the bigger blocks can be seen clearly but all the smaller and finer details are missed.

Consider this example, 960X540 is exactly quarter of the total pixels(Half on each side) of 1080p.

A block of 100 X 100 resolution is displayed at a resolution of 50 X 50 resolution on that smaller screen, Lets say that object is 10m away from the person in that game. Theoretically both have the same detail.. but your eyes tell you a different story, that person should be standing at half the distance or 5m away from the said object to be viewed in the same detail as a being seen on a 1080P screen.

 

[RussianSensation]

It cannot be possible. If you look at different resolutions and assuming both have the same FOV(Aspect Ratio), both cover the same area.. but one is bigger and more detailed and the other is smaller and has less detail.

The video provided above clearly shows a game putting out far superior graphics at just 960x640 than older games did at 1080P. So how is it impossible?

640x480 analog TV looks better than a videogame at 2560x1600. Why does TV look better despite 640x480 pixel output on my 1995 CRT TV than a videogame does at 2560x1600?

Why does my 720P plasma look better than 90% of 1080P LCDs which are plagued by "screen-door effect", inferior black levels, slow refresh rates, poor viewing angles?

You are not thinking outside the box. Your conclusion rests on the assumption that rendering methods for graphics cards will remain static. You can improve graphics without changing resolution.

Another way to realize that high resolutions add little to the overall graphics embience/realism is to compare "Rasterization" (current graphics card method of rendering graphics, say at 2560x1600) vs. "Raytracing" with full dynamic global illumination (at 1080P). There is just no comparison despite 2x lower # of pixels of 1920x1080 vs. 2560x1600.

Here is another demo: Raytracing Demo on CPU

If in 10 years from now you could use "Raytracing" on the iPhone 10, it would flat out make Crysis 1 at 2560x1600 4xTrAA/16AF look like a game designed in the 1980s by comparison.

There are plenty of other real world examples of why resolution by itself is not very important. Every photographer in the world will agree that megapixels don't mean anything when it comes to the quality of the photograph. A 6.1 megapixel DSLR will blow the doors off a 14 megapixel point and shoot. Without good optics and adequate sensor size that can actually capture all the detail, the maximum megapixel density of a camera is a meaningless metric. Similarly, throwing high resolution and AA at sub-par rendered old games isn't going to make them any more realistic aside from adding geometric accuracy to lines/curves.

Read these 2 articles:

Understanding Resolution
Understanding Pixel Density

Typical 30 inch monitor 2560x1600 = 101 Pixels per inch
iPhone 4 960x640 = 326 Pixels per inch

The iPhone 4 can actually resolve more detail to the human eye than a 30 inch monitor. Without considering the viewing distance from the display, it's impossible to conclude that higher resolution produces better visual detail. You can achieve higher level of realism with lower resolutions.

Now armed with this information, you now know that you can have better graphics/level of detail despite "lower" resolutions in games; and you can easily make a 1080P game with 0AA look 100x better than a game at 2560x1600 with 32xAA.

 

[taltamir]

if you look at the rest of his post, his point is that very fine detail is lost at such low resolutions.

A game from the year 2000 blown up to 1080p will look vastly inferior to maxed out crysis at 480p because the graphics themselves look nothing like reality, models are blocky and bad.

He specifically named crysis, a game generally referred to as being "photorealistic" (under max quality)... so his argument seems to be is that crysis is now photorealistic, games from the future can't top photorealistic, only equal it, thus game from future will not look better are much lower resolution.

However, as close as it is, crysis is not quite photorealistic yet, so games can top it... but it wouldn't be as big a difference from now to 2020 as it was from 2000 to 2010.
And he said "look better" not "have more detail" which also doesn't take into account monitor quality improvement. That hypothetical game from 2017 might lose some of the finer details due to running a much lower resolution, but it might actually look better because it will be running on a future (and much superior) quality display (a high end OLED display most likely) and might be even closer to photo-realistic than crysis is. It isn't that pixels have NOTHING to do with quality... its that pixels are not the SOLE determiner of quality.

Movies already have photo-realistic CGI, the only limitation on having the same in computer games is hardware power (it has to be able to do it in real time). We will get there soon, at which point you can't get any more photo-realistic, you can only increase the resolution (displaying more fine detail), design better levels / models, or improve the display quality (better color contrast, etc... which are not pixel dependent)