I don’t like this line of thinking because especially now where new games seem to always suffer from performance issues, it lowers the bar that these developers feel like they’d need to set as far as the experience they’re offering for their games.
I think the minimum standard should be at least 60fps, in cases with steam deck and other low-end hardware of course concessions must be made, so either lower graphics settings or deal with lower framerates.
But there’s no reason a new game should be suffering poor framerates on modern desktop hardware (looking at you Dragons Dogma 2).
Lower frame rates can be perfectly fine, I find I’m far more bothered by inconsistent frametimes.
The main reason 40fps feels fine on the deck is that the display can come down to that same Hz and operate in lockstep.
I’ll take consistent 60 over hitchy 165 most of the time, though VRR means you can occupy kind of a middle ground. But even there frametime inconsistencies can make for a shit experience.
My point is that game developers should aim to deliver games that render at similar framerates throughout.
So many of these recent games do hit decent framerates, but then there’s that one in-game location, enemy type, player ability, or particle effect, that just makes the framerate completely shit itself.
It’s like these studios are designing each element with a given GPU budget, pushing things right up to the limit, and then do a surprised pikachu face when things run like shit once they try to put more than of these elements together to make an actual game.
165 that dips to 100 is unquestionably better than 60 with no dips, especially with GSync.
165 that dips below 60 is very bad.
My point is that game developers should aim to deliver games that render at similar framerates throughout.
Scenes in most games usually have a high variety of complexity, so the way you’d achieve that is through getting a baseline quite a bit higher than your target FPS, and then limit FPS to your target FPS. This way the game won’t utilize near 100 % of the GPU most of the time, but peaks in scene complexity won’t cause FPS to drop below the set cap.
This is how it works or at least use to work for a lot of games on console. On PC, you almost always have to make the choice yourself (which is a good thing if you ask me).
For many games with a lot of changing scenery I have to target around 45 FPS with graphics settings to even have a chance of achieving somewhat consistent 30 FPS/33.33ms on the Deck.
On the one hand the Deck is heavily underpowered compared to even lower-end PCs. On the other hand tests show that the Z1 Extreme/7840U isn’t much faster at these lower wattages (10-15 watts TDP), so there hasn’t been a lot of progress yet.
But it’s also that many games don’t scale so well anymore. I feel like half the settings in many modern games don’t affect performance to any noticeable degree, and even fewer settings affect CPU usage. And if there’s low settings, the game often looks unrecognizable because these lower setting models, textures and lighting/shadows are simply generated by the engine SDK and rarely given second thoughts.
Tech like nanite rendering does bring a potential of maybe solving that variability. But even before that, LODs, detail render distance limits etc. already allow frame rates to be leveled out, if utilized.
And I would consider 30 and 45 within that “similar” range. I’m not asking the framerate to stay within even 10% of an average at all times. But games are getting a lot worse than that.
A recent game even my desktop has been struggling with is Forbidden West, which I tuned the settings on to achieve 80-100 fps, yet in some locations (larger settlements) it will chug down to 20-30.
Some newer games aren’t just losing 33% fps at worst vs best. But more like 70%. At that point you end up having to target 200fps just to never drop below 60, and that’s tricky even on high end desktops.
Now that they don’t have to optimize for last gen console hardware anymore, that’s going to be even more rare for any triple-A game. Even a well optimized PS5 game is going to seriously struggle to run on the Deck as even if you reduce the graphical setting, the PS5 essentially has an 8 core version of the 4 core CPU in the Deck.
Combine that with the 15W shared TDP limit and the game would basically have to be able to run using only roughly 25% the CPU load.
Yup.
And in the wider PC space, VRAM is a big issue as well.
Everybody keeps acting like every single big game that comes out is “unoptimised” because it uses more than 8GB of VRAM when playing at 1440p or above at ultra settings, and people with 8GB or lower GPUs are struggling.
Are all these games unoptimised? Or is it simply that they’re done targeting consoles with 8GB RAM, are now exclusively focusing on ones with 16GB, and because of Nvidia being notoriously stingy with VRAM, lots of people on PC are suddenly finding their cards falling short?
Thank fuck Valve had the sense to put 16GB of unified memory in the Deck. Could you imagine if they only went with 8GB, or even 12GB?
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I’m still a snob and just play games on my steam deck that are able to maintain 60fps. As soon as they offer a 120fps model I’ll probably jump.
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It’s because of the screen. Low frame rates are much less impactful on a small screen. When the screen takes up most of your field of view, you notice the frame rate more.
It’s not you, its the screen.
I think a second factor is a lowered expectation of immersion that comes with playing elsewhere. The author specifically says they can play in the pub waiting for friends or on the train or whatever. You’re not as invested in those situations, so a game is more of a distraction than an experience.
I’ve never needed high frame rates. What is more important is consistent frame rate. I’d rather have a consistent 30 than a range of 40-60.
I’ve been playing some PS1 classics on my PC, and I can safely say, playing FF7 at 240 fps does not meaningfully improve the experience over what it was back in nineteen ninety eight.
