To be fair though, that's a VERY new game and they cared so little about optimizing it that they went out and said "you're probably going to need a new computer to play this" ..
My 1070 handled Doom Eternal just fine with pretty high settings. I'm sure it helps that I only use a single 1080p monitor for games, but it was still pretty enough for me.
*Edit - I picked up on the sarcasm after posting this reply. Oh well.
Every release means every release, and the requirements aren’t going to get lower. It’s a great card and I know people hate losing it, but it’s on its last legs and likely won’t be able to play new releases at all next year.
Cod MW2/3 are total crapshoots with frame rates, even on a 3080 and set to performance it can still just turn to crap. It seems to run more stable and on higher settings on 2070 laptop. I don't understand. (I tried to get as much hardware running DMZ as possible for friends and family, lots of machines)
I actually prefer the crisp edges without as much post-processing effects sometimes. Source engine games look great to me, just minimal crisp and clean geometry. I find a lot of modern graphics distracting, but it depends on the game. I do love really pushing graphics for a game like Skyrim.
Modern game engines don't use the amazing SSAA (super sampling anti aliasing). Most have post processing anti aliasing like FXAA or TXAA which always makes edges look fuzzy. Source engine is one of those that still supports super sampling
Yeah that's exactly it, MSAA isn't too bad but FXAA makes edges look pretty blurry. Temporal anti aliasing is also really blurry looking sometimes but gives the impression that the edges could be crisp.
My 980ti is still a toss up between amazing or mediocre performance. The big issue is that I bought it for £600 which is a lot of money to me, and new GPUs are 3 times that, or more.