Value of Hardware Unboxed benchmarking

[Potato Head]

Tbh I can't think of any recent classics. I think we are in a horrible drought of genuinely good games. The last really good game I can think of would be RDR2 or TLOU2, but both were fair graphically impressive for their time, and neither particularly recent. Both came pre-RTX so they were really the last and the best of the raster only gen.

You don’t think Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2 will go down in history as classics?

I’ve started my third playthrough of Cyberpunk and I’m still shocked at how good it is. It’s the first game in a while that had me wanting to complete every side quest. Everyday I find little features that I didn’t notice before.

 

[arandomguy]

Cyberpunk had the rought start which might be problematic in terms how it's viewed. At the same time it might get that kind of late "cult" benefit even though it's above that type of status in terms of popularity. I wouldn't think Alan Wake 2 is at that level either.

At the moment to me it seems like in terms of 2020 onward games it's Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring that might be the "classics" so far. This isn't to say all other games are bad, but I guess I'm looking at that term as something down the line that would be often referenced in that "all time" sense.

In terms of the PC now that I think about it the last game in that sense and was a graphics showcase I would say is the Witcher 3.

Note that I feel this type of discussion is separate from what one might personally like. For example I'm not interested in Elden Ring but I can recognize in terms of the broader discourse what the feelings are.

 

[Potato Head]

Cyberpunk had the rought start which might be problematic in terms how it's viewed.

True, I didn’t buy it until after Phantom Liberty came out. But it is so good.

There aren’t many games I want to play a lesbian character in and sometimes just gawk at the skyline.

 

[GhostofWar]

I played the monster hunter demo they put out a little while ago, I could not make that thing look ok no matter how much I ignored performance. even native with everything on high it still had this horrible look to it, i'm not even sure what the best way to describe it is. It looked worse than world to me, and played worse so it's firmly on my ignore list unless a miracle happens and it gets glowing reviews.

 

[Cappuccino]

You don’t think Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2 will go down in history as classics?

Maybe Cyberpunk, AW2 absolutely not.

At the moment to me it seems like in terms of 2020 onward games it's Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring that might be the "classics" so far.

Very good point, I agree. Important to note that neither of these games are graphically groundbreaking, in fact I'd argue Elden Ring looks quite bad for a modern game. BG3 looks fine but there's no raytracing or anything.

 

[Scott_Arm]

AW2 will definitely be a cult favourite.

 

[IQandHDR]

In no particular order (assuming you already are aware of the raytracing showcase titles)

Stray
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered
Star Wars Outlaws
Forza Horizon
Pinball FX
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Black Myth: Wukong
Diablo IV (get a month of Gamepass)
God of War: Ragnarok
Atomic Heart
High On Life
Ghost runner: Tokyo
Returnal
The Calisto Protocol

I would shorten that list a lot:
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Black Myth: Wukong

The rest are meh/not for me

 

[IQandHDR]

Cyberpunk had the rought start which might be problematic in terms how it's viewed. At the same time it might get that kind of late "cult" benefit even though it's above that type of status in terms of popularity. I wouldn't think Alan Wake 2 is at that level either.

At the moment to me it seems like in terms of 2020 onward games it's Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring that might be the "classics" so far. This isn't to say all other games are bad, but I guess I'm looking at that term as something down the line that would be often referenced in that "all time" sense.

In terms of the PC now that I think about it the last game in that sense and was a graphics showcase I would say is the Witcher 3.

Note that I feel this type of discussion is separate from what one might personally like. For example I'm not interested in Elden Ring but I can recognize in terms of the broader discourse what the feelings are.

It had a rough start, because CDPR tried to shooehorn it into the last gen console, that lacked the power to run it.
On PC it was much better, unless you had a wrong notion about what your PC could run settingswise.

It was like the original Crysis, it broke a lot of peoples e-peen, but unlike then peole are a lot more whiney today and whine about everything, when in reality it is their wrong notions leading them into troubles:


This has NEVER been a "Ultra High END PC", even at launch

 

[trinibwoy]

Cyberpunk had the rought start which might be problematic in terms how it's viewed. At the same time it might get that kind of late "cult" benefit even though it's above that type of status in terms of popularity. I wouldn't think Alan Wake 2 is at that level either.

At the moment to me it seems like in terms of 2020 onward games it's Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring that might be the "classics" so far. This isn't to say all other games are bad, but I guess I'm looking at that term as something down the line that would be often referenced in that "all time" sense.

In terms of the PC now that I think about it the last game in that sense and was a graphics showcase I would say is the Witcher 3.

Note that I feel this type of discussion is separate from what one might personally like. For example I'm not interested in Elden Ring but I can recognize in terms of the broader discourse what the feelings are.

BG3 is the one that came to mind. Elden Ring is the current souls darling but it’s too early to say whether it will stand out among the other souls games in the long run. Cyberpunk has the potential to grow in favor and reach Witcher / Fallout status but it’s not there yet.

 

[Cappuccino]

It had a rough start, because CDPR tried to shooehorn it into the last gen console, that lacked the power to run it.
On PC it was much better, unless you had a wrong notion about what your PC could run settingswise.

It was like the original Crysis, it broke a lot of peoples e-peen, but unlike then peole are a lot more whiney today and whine about everything, when in reality it is their wrong notions leading them into troubles:
View attachment 13092

This has NEVER been a "Ultra High END PC", even at launch

I’m like 99% sure this is a joke referencing other posts where people are trying to use ten year old builds to play new games. Who is running a $2500 TV with a 1050ti?

 

[trinibwoy]

I love how Tim has to constantly remind Steve that GPUs do more than raster and maybe that matters too.

 

[Scott_Arm]

From what I've watched this is a pretty good video. Only half-listening, but overall everything seems reasonable.

 

[arandomguy]

BG3 is the one that came to mind. Elden Ring is the current souls darling but it’s too early to say whether it will stand out among the other souls games in the long run. Cyberpunk has the potential to grow in favor and reach Witcher / Fallout status but it’s not there yet.

This is more from a PC centric view but Elden Ring seems like it has a much higher impact than other Souls games or similar in the discourse.

As for Cyberpunk I think Cyberpunk is viewed more favorably on the PC than on consoles and by extension the overall gaming space. However at the same time it feels like it's generally percieved as CDPRs least impactful/liked game not counting the Gwent stuff. I do feel as well it has that long tail benefit and might get that cult like boost despite being already high profile at launch.

 

[DavidGraham]

HardwareUnboxed is establishing another false equivalency .. they claim a 5700XT is as a poor of a choice as the RTX 3070, because while 5700XT can't run RT games, the 3070 can't run them either because of it's limited 8GB VRAM!

It's the kind of over-generalization we've come to expect from HardwareUnboxed, the 5700XT can't even run Metro Exodus EE, Indiana Jones, Doom Dark Ages. It can't run Alan Wake 2, Avatar Pandora, Star Wars Outlaws, Assassin's Creed Shadows with good performance and visuals because they rely on mesh shaders/hardware RT to deliver on both. 5700XT also runs SpiderMan 2 with awful visuals as the game only supports reflections on RT hardware. Contrast that to the 3070 which runs every title under the sun.

This is without mentioning the upscaling situation, where RTX 20 and RTX 30 have access to DLSS with both CNN and TNN models, while also doing ray reconstruction for RT games, vs the 5700XT having access to just FSR3.

While true the 3070 can run into VRAM limitations when using RT, this only happens in select titles, and can be resolved by using DLSS or by reducing textures settings one notch down (which is usually not even noticeable), the 5700XT doesn't even have that luxury.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1891622565258690885