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Have you’ve ever been stuck with a sub-par PC or laptop for a prolonged amount of time? If you have, you know this necessarily includes attempting to play video games on said hardware. You know the pains of this process. Unlike consoles, which obviously are more-or-less on the same performance level, there's lots of variety in computer hardware. At face value, we’re talking about your GPU, CPU, and the amount of RAM you can afford to dispense. When you really delve into it, though, virtually every component can also be min-maxed to the extreme. Thing is, good hardware costs lots of money.
No one’s willingly playing games in 2019 on, say, a GT 820M. Rather, they’re stuck with what they’ve got for this or that reason. People get extremely underpowered hardware not because they want to, but because they’ve got no choice - often due to it being vastly more expensive - and, sadly, there exists a certain amount of elitism surrounding PC gaming. To that end, this article will take a look at what it means to play high-end video games at non-max settings, and whether this is actually better than not playing games at all.
The truth behind graphics in games
For the purposes of this article, let us say that you are using a mid-range GTX 1050ti. This Nvidia graphics card can be found on the cheap virtually everywhere, and is often presented as a fair starting point for casual gaming. Especially if there’s no GTX 1060 to be found for some reason, or if it is too expensive to get a hold of. To keep things simple, we’re not going to be taking the various AMD Radeon chipsets into account. Though, if you are in the market for a new GPU, definitely do take a look at those, too.
The reason we’ve chosen 1050ti for the purposes of this article is simple: in 2019, this GPU is not capable of pulling a stable 60 FPS at max settings in AAA releases. Arguably, this wasn’t possible in 2017/2018 either, but 1050ti remains a solid performer in the non-enthusiast arena regardless. The reasoning behind this is twofold, and might make certain people scoff at the idea. 1050ti can still run the vast majority of contemporary games at a stable (>30 FPS) framerate even when they’re maxed out! Alternatively, players can choose to drop settings to lower values and achieve a higher framerate that way.
When you’re playing a well-built, properly-optimized PC release, you have plenty of options to sift through. You can granularly manage how well the game you’re attempting to play performs. The Division 2 won’t run satisfyingly if you attempt to max it out at a 1080p resolution on 1050ti, that’s a given. However, if you mix-and-match high with medium settings depending on your preferences (lower shadow quality, reflections, SSAO) and maybe even let the resolution tumble down a bit to 900p, you’re going to get a fairly decent experience at a very solid framerate. Again, this is not enthusiast territory! It is a viable option for those who can’t afford better hardware, however.
Customization, customization, customization
Playing games on PC means playing something that’s, in more cases than not, extremely scalable and customizable. Those options are there for a reason. Using mid-range hardware doesn’t have to mean avoiding the latest AAA games if you know what you're doing. That’s the beauty of it. If you want 60 FPS, crash everything down to low. If you want a crisp image, bolster your resolution at the cost of texture quality. A sucker for post-processing? Reduce the visibility distance. All of this works extremely well! Provided, of course, that you can handle playing at somewhere in-between 30-60 FPS, and with a combination of low, medium, and high settings.
Of course, going through the trial-and-error of optimizing a new game is not for everybody. However, if you’re the type who’s trying to play the latest games on non-enthusiast hardware, we expect this should not be a problem. To compare with the other end of the spectrum, it’s understood that attempting to play games on a 1050ti cannot hold a candle to the type of hardware that runs modern games at 144 FPS, but that’s not what we’re attempting to do, anyway. There’s nothing innately wrong with making compromises if one really has to make them.
The conclusion to the matter of Graphics in Games
The answer to the central question of the article is a resounding no! Games do not need to be maxed-out to be enjoyable! Not only do they look great even at medium settings (which is how they are mostly rendered on consoles, anyway), but there’s also practically no reason not to min-max your visual experience through settings that developers themselves have offered. As long as you can play the latest games in a way that’s acceptable to you, you're in the clear. Even if that means running Assassin’s Creed Odyssey at 15-20 FPS
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