A question of graphics cards

Darko

so I used to be a big time gamer and had a pretty reputable name in the gaming circles, so recently I built a gaming system for my son and I used a gtx 580 and it seems to play everything I have thrown at it and I am confused by the amount of people who seem to invest in 300 Plus pounds cards to games on.
So my question is what is the reason for the new high powered cards if most gamers are playing at 1080 I kinda of get it if you are playing 4K but can’t help that think people are spending more than nessary on expensive cards.

Please don’t be offended I am just curious if I’m missing something.

Thank you Darko

next010

The high end PC gaming scene has shifted into higher resolutions 1440p-2160p and higher framerates so up to 120/144Hz refresh rate displays with framerates to match.

Higher refresh rate displays are still quite common at 1080p so thats why some buy high end hardware to push past the old 60fps limit but still use 1080p displays pushing out 120 fps.

As to why they do that, Blurbusters explains it, it's popular with esports types and those looking for very smooth motion in single player games.

Darko

It makes sense and if anything I spose I am shocked by how well some of the older generations cards perform compared to yesteryear when a out dated card simply would not be able to run newer games.

Cheers Darko

Fe_man2000

last gen nvidia and current gen AMD GPU's were some really good cards and made 1080p gaming possible on even the cheapest one of them and on the most expensive they where trying for 4K as well.  Everything higher up the food chain than a Nvidia 1060 or 480\580\590 AMD card are as mentioned for higher res or frame rate monitors.  

I have a 8GB 480 with a intel 8400 CPU but my monitor is 60hz at 1080p so any GPU more powerful is a waste of time for me.  But if I get a new 1440 or 4K screen I will need to get as  least a new £500  GPU to drive it at the native res. This has created a real price divsion in PC gaming, I am up for a £350-400 GPU every 3 years maybe,  but this time its more like  £1000 with a monitor as well.  I am sticking at 1080 at 60 frames a sec for another year or two at least.

Darko

I have a 4K projector and that makes sense but on such small screen surely 1080 should be more than sharp enough ?


Cheers Darko

Greg Hook

It depends what games your son is playing and what level of graphics quality settings you are happy with.

I doubt you would play Battlefield V on anything like decent settings with that card, even at 1080P 60FPS.

As others have said, I would guess 1440P is the most common resolution these days and if you want to play on Ultra settings at a high frame rate you need a decent graphics card. My GTX1070 manages about 70-80FPS on mostly high settings on BFV at 1440P.

Crafty

One thing that has really driven the GPUs of today is crypto currency mining. Imagine how much they have tied up in hardware here:

                                                                                                                                       

EndlessWaves

It's all about apparent size - how much of the field of view the screen fills. PC monitors may be physically small, but because they're close they have a large apparent size.

PC monitors are getting on for as big as the typical projector setup, bigger than many TV setups.