What does it mean that a video game 'runs well'? (all that "144 FPS ultra low in 768p on IGPU" gibberish explained)

hwtrendsetter (36)in #hardware • last year

Some people enjoy Witcher 3 on 50€ computers, while others complain that it stutters on their 5000€ gaming beast. So clearly those 2 machines are not running exactly the same workload.

Hence how do you know if, in your circumstances, the computer you are looking to buy will run let's say Cyberpunk 2077 'reasonably well'?

If you already know that you need to play in 1080p, on ultra, with 60+ FPS, on a dedicated GPU - you don't need to read this article, just check tests on YouTube or other websites. But if you are unsure what those words mean - continue reading.

FPS - Frames Per Second

is the number of images the game shows on the screen per second. The more frames per second, the smoother the game looks.

It can be compared to looking at a picture book. If we turn the pages very quickly, it looks like there is movement in the pictures. But if we turn the pages too slowly, it's a "slideshow" instead of smooth animation.

if the gif above isn’t moving, you can watch it directly from the source:
https://www.boxcast.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog%20Images/B073%20-%20Frame%20Rate%20Shutter%20Speed%20Sports/Blog-Image_B073_FrameRate.gif

The animation above is quite an extreme comparison. We certainly don't want to play with frame rates as low as the 15 shown above. This is what animations in The Sims might look like on a really weak computer.

But is 30 FPS “enough”? Or maybe 60 FPS is a “must”? It's a matter of personal preference. If someone played on PS4/Xbox One/Nintendo consoles and it was smooth enough for them, then 30 FPS would "satisfy" that person. Because framerate cannot be changed on consoles. It is whatever the developers had decided (and on old generations of consoles in the vast majority of cases it is 30 FPS) .

Graphics settings

these are the options that allow you to change the appearance of the game (as in the example below) .

If the images do are displayed or appear too small: https://youtu.be/6mmNpoMVTWk

The higher the settings, the better the game looks, but also the more powerful the computer must be to be able to display them at a reasonable number of frames per second.

On consoles, it is usually not possible to change graphics settings. Console game developers decide what the graphic settings to run. To make the game run smoothly and look as good as possible. Most often, these are not the "highest"/"ultra" settings, but rather similar to the "medium"/"normal" settings on the PC .

And as you can see in the examples above, switching from low to medium settings in The Sims 4 (but also in many other games ) results in a huge improvement in image quality.

Going from medium to high and very high also some improvements (e.g. more accurate shadows, better water quality, more leaves, etc.). However, for many people it may be a situation where “the cake's not worth the candle” (taking into account the need to have a more expensive computer or a more expensive console).

Screen resolution

is the number of pixels that make up the image on the screen. Pixels are small squares that are different colors and connect to each other to show an image.
Creating an image on the screen can be compared to assembling an image from Lego bricks. The more blocks, the more accurate and detailed the image will look.

A Full HD (i.e. 1080p) screen has 1920 pixels vertically and 1080 pixels horizontally. The other most popular resolutions are 720p (1280x720 pixels) and 4K (3840x2160)

From a long distance, every image is clear. In practice, it is shown in the pictures below - only when our eyes are close enough to the image (because either our nose is extremely close to the screen, or the screen is large enough) we can notice when the image becomes blurry:

Manufacturers assume that on laptops 15.6 inches or smaller, resolutions of approximately 720p are still acceptable .
And resolutions around 1080p will do the job on monitors up to 27 inches .
But this is an personal prefference (it is also influenced by, for example, possible vision defects).

Integrated graphics

is a graphics card that is permanently part of the processor, instead of being a separate component .
For example, a Ryzen 5-5600G processor always has an integrated Vega 7 graphics card.

This is unlike a dedicated graphics card, which is a separate component and can be paired with any processor.

In other words, if you can pick up just the graphics card and remove it from the computer, it is a dedicated card.

And if it looks like there is only a processor in the computer (but the display output works and everything is fine) - it means that we are dealing with integrated graphics..

In desktop computers, dedicated cards look like the image above on the right , and in laptops it is simply a separate chip in a different place than the processor.

Both solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, in short, dedicated cards are usually more powerful but consume more power.

Nonetheless, integrated cards also have their place, they are not only "for the poor" (for example all modern gaming consoles also use integrated graphics cards)

Other definitions

I tried not to use other confusing terms in the guide below, but that doesn't mean I definitely succeeded.

Fortunately, if you come across a word (not only in this guide but also in life) that you don’t quite understand, you do not have to spend half a day digging through sponsored articles. Things like “What is Antialiasing? Oh that’s just smoothing the edges, anyway BUY NOW THE BEST GAMING LAPTOP WITH ANTI-ALIASING AMAZON RANKING BEST VALUE”

Just go to https://bing.com/chat and select the More Creative mode and tell the AI to explain a given concept as if it were explaining it to a five-year-old: (AI does it quite well, probably because in America "explain like I'm 5" is quite a popular phenomenon)

Sources:

#budget #performance #resolution #settings

last year in #hardware by hwtrendsetter (36)

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