Value of Hardware Unboxed benchmarking

True. Also, I take issue with incoherence being a negative. There are artistically desirable incoherences.
I am terrified of settling on realistic ray-traced lighting. I hope it can be bent against the laws of physics or we are stuck in a very boring (and static) box.

Yep. Raytracing apis don’t dictate the laws of physics. They just give you a very accurate answer to the question of “where on my object does this path intersect”. The direction of the paths, the shapes and positions of the objects and what happens at the intersection point is completely up to developers and artists. You can do abstract unrealistic lighting with raytracing if you wanted to.
 
I am terrified of settling on realistic ray-traced lighting. I hope it can be bent against the laws of physics or we are stuck in a very boring (and static) box.
All have their uses, depending on what the artistic intend is.
The bottom line is, more options and better tech, provide more freedom for the artist.

Either way, if and when a technology provides a consistently better image and ends up being computationally cheap to run, it will naturally take over.

I remember reading articles in gaming magazines about 3D graphics back in the day.
How needless they were, when the current tech of that time was perfectly adequate, especially taking into account that they were much worse in terms of image quality, compared to 2d.
And honestly, to a large extent, they were worse, in just about everything.
About the fact you needed an expensive powerhouse with a dedicated 3D accelerator to run them.
My Diamond voodoo 3D cost me one of my first paychecks...

It happened before, and frankly, hopefully, it will happen again, and again.
Who will do it, and what that tech might be, is of little to no importance.
 
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All have their uses, depending on what the artistic intend is.
The bottom line is, more options and better tech, provide more freedom for the artist.

Either way, if and when a technology provides a consistently better image and ends up being computationally cheap to run, it will naturally take over.

I remember reading articles in gaming magazines about 3D graphics back in the day.
How needless they were, when the current tech of that time was perfectly adequate, especially taking into account that they were much worse in terms of image quality, compared to 2d.
And honestly, to a large extent, they were worse, in just about everything.
About the fact you needed an expensive powerhouse with a dedicated 3D accelerator to run them.
My Diamond voodoo 3D cost me one of my first paychecks...

It happened before, and frankly, hopefully, it will happen again, and again.
Who will do it, and what that tech might be, is of little to no importance.
To be fair, while what you say may have been true in the PC world, it was very much not the case in the console world, where 3d graphics were incredibly hyped and loved right away, nearly universally. So much so that once we had dedicated 3d consoles, 2d game development basically disappeared overnight.

So I imagine some of the 'criticism' of 3D you were seeing from back then was partly a bit of cope from PC gamers in having to accept that consoles were ahead of the curve here. Which isn't too dissimilar from how some segment of AMD fans like to downplay ray tracing(and previously DLSS) simply because what they have isn't as good at it(though likewise, some Nvidia fans also big it up as much as possible). Doesn't mean there aren't reasonable arguments on both sides from people who are doing so without any agenda.
 
So I imagine some of the 'criticism' of 3D you were seeing from back then was partly a bit of cope from PC gamers in having to accept that consoles were ahead of the curve here.
I'm not sure that playing Tomb Raider at 640 by 480 vs 320 by 240 on ps1 was coping. ;)
It was basically a kickback to the kind of games that came to the forefront, the gameplay, the art etc.
Edit.
And to be fair, it was not widespread, but it was there.
 
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To be fair, while what you say may have been true in the PC world, it was very much not the case in the console world, where 3d graphics were incredibly hyped and loved right away, nearly universally.

As someone old enough to buy their own PS1 at the time, I recall plenty of debate on BBS's on how 3D was being unnecessarily latched onto at the expense of good 2D art. The classic PS1 texture/polygon wobble due to the lack of subpixel precision didn't help either.

The PS1 was released in North America in late 95. The Voodoo1 came in late 96, and plenty of people were excited about it, including many on this board (heck I was a beta tester for the first Nvidia prototype NV1 boards. Yeah that...didn't exactly set the world on fire). 3D accelerators were talked about constantly before that in every major PC gaming outlet you could find. Rendition. Voodoo. S3 Virge. Matrox. ATI. The market exploded for a reason.

Where there "some" PC gamers dismissive of it due to consoles? Sure, maybe - there are 'some' people with bizarre opinions on everything. But the idea that 3D acceleration wasn't overwhelmingly promoted and anticipated by PC gamers long before the first arrived is just ahistorical. I mean, they're literally why this forum you're posting on exists!
 
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Where there "some" PC gamers dismissive of it due to consoles? Sure, maybe - there are 'some' people with bizarre opinions on everything. But the idea that 3D acceleration wasn't overwhelmingly promoted and anticipated by PC gamers long before the first arrived is just ahistorical. I mean, they're literally why this forum you're posting on exists!

It was to a large extent genre dependent on the PC. 3D graphics was readily received in terms of FPS and TPS presented games (which I mean let's face it makes sense). But in terms of other genres (some of which had much higher relevance way back then now) which employed more fixed perspectives (eg. side perspective, or top down) the reception was less heralded. Which kind of makes sense if you look at the limitations especially of early 3D games, for instance they essentially would lack a lot of detail compared to non real time 3D graphics.

As an aside this is also why I've continually had a problem with the usage of the term "PC Gamer" as a feel the demographic has always been too broad and segmented to be lumped together in terms of how that term is often used.

But I don't think this was specifically with the PC either. Even in the console space (and what would be considered more console genres) from what I remember I think there was hold over against 3D graphics for things such as side scrolling platformers, fighting games, jRPGs, etc.

Even today you still have a pretty strong voice in some specific types of games for non "3D graphics" at least in terms of the visual style.

I guess broadly you can argue that "cel shading" even though it's technically still 3D graphics was a response to appeal to those that preferred non 3D graphics. The recent Guilty Gear games being maybe the most notable example in that they are looking to at least in terms of visual aesthetics involve "traditional" 2D animtation.
 
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It was to a large extent genre dependent on the PC. 3D graphics was readily received in terms of FPS and TPS presented games (which I mean let's face it makes sense). But in terms of other genres (some of which had much higher relevance way back then now) which employed more fixed perspectives (eg. side perspective, or top down) the reception was less heralded. Which kind of makes sense if you look at the limitations especially of early 3D games, for instance they essentially would lack a lot of detail compared to non real time 3D graphics.
At the time, adventure games, strategy, and side scrollers were the kinds of games most pc gamers grew up with...
The transition was already happening, but some of the people that grew up playing Sierra and LucasArts games didn't see the appeal.
 
As someone old enough to buy their own PS1 at the time, I recall plenty of debate on BBS's on how 3D was being unnecessarily latched onto at the expense of good 2D art. The classic PS1 texture/polygon wobble due to the lack of subpixel precision didn't help either.

The PS1 was released in North America in late 95. The Voodoo1 came in late 96, and plenty of people were excited about it, including many on this board (heck I was a beta tester for the first Nvidia prototype NV1 boards. Yeah that...didn't exactly set the world on fire). 3D accelerators were talked about constantly before that in every major PC gaming outlet you could find. Rendition. Voodoo. S3 Virge. Matrox. ATI. The market exploded for a reason.

Where there "some" PC gamers dismissive of it due to consoles? Sure, maybe - there are 'some' people with bizarre opinions on everything. But the idea that 3D acceleration wasn't overwhelmingly promoted and anticipated by PC gamers long before the first arrived is just ahistorical. I mean, they're literally why this forum you're posting on exists!
Well I'm talking mainly about more mainstream opinions. Yes of course niche, tech-enthusiast circles will likely have had different sort of discussions than the typical gamer was having about these things.

Also, I wasn't the one who claimed that PC gamers were dismissive of 3d graphics. :p
 
Very interesting video, I was curious about this. The 2060 Super significantly outperforms it, as expected. Though I heavily disagree with Tim's statement about playability. It's totally playable on the 2060 Super. Upscaling is only blurry because it has no sharpening, which can be added easily.

Now I'm super curious if setting post processing quality to low truly provides a huge FPS boost, like @Dictator said. The 2060 Super might be able to run 60 FPS with it turned down and perhaps 30 FPS with Raytracing on low.
 
Alan Wake 2 presents a disaster case for HardwareUnboxed, they championed RDNA1 over Turing. Now here comes a game that not only have bad performance on RDNA1 due to lacking DX12U features, but also bad image quality due to relying on FSR2. While the Turing alternative suffers none of this, have superior DLSS upscaling quality as well as access to Ray Tracing and Path Tracing.
 
Also notice how desperate they are, comparing 2060 Super to 5700XT, instead of the 2070 Super. They always stressed that the 5700XT is a better buy than the 2070 Super.

TPU tested another area and found the 3060 (which is the same tier as 2060 Super) to be 75% faster than 5700XT. HardwareUnboxed used a far less taxing area.

QUu0ZRdAgjuKcCB7.jpg


 
Also notice how desperate they are, comparing 2060 Super to 5700XT, instead of the 2070 Super. They always stressed that the 5700XT is a better buy than the 2070 Super.


TPU tested another area and found the 3060 to be 75% faster than 5700XT. HardwareUnboxed used a far less taxing area.

The 5700xt was always the direct competitor to the 2060S.
 
Alan Wake 2 presents a disaster case for HardwareUnboxed, they championed RDNA1 over Turing. Now here comes a game that not only have bad performance on RDNA1 due to lacking DX12U features, but also bad image quality due to relying on FSR2. While the Turing alternative suffers none of this, have superior DLSS upscaling quality as well as access to Ray Tracing and Path Tracing.
To be fair though, RT is really unplayable, even on low. Here's hoping post processing to low helps.
 
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