You need more FPS, overclock the memory, install better cooling, upgrade the video card, buy a better monitor, you need even more frames per second in every game! If you write such things in all caps with CAPS LOCK, you get the impression of an inadequate fanatic who has gone crazy. The irony is that these fanatics are more or less all people who are at least a little interested in computer topics.
In this article, we will talk about a huge problem and a whole culture of unnecessary consumption of technology. Tech bloggers are exemplary slaves (or slave traders?) of the system and spread the «perpetual upgrade syndrome» to the masses, infecting millions of computer video game fans.
We’ll also look at the painful issue from a technical, biological, and psychological perspective, and also take a look into the peaceful realm of game consoles, where peace and harmony reign, and players enjoy the process of playing the game without crying out in frustration.
Content
YouTube vloggers literally live off referrals, so it’s no surprise that they churn out content for the sake of content, constantly releasing new videos with meaningless comparisons of computer components. For example, here’s a test of the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, which is only 1% faster than the RX 6800 XT, and let’s go ahead and pour negative criticism on the new video card with a shameful power increase.
The community of computer fans is used to complaining about everything, and often for no reason. Video cards have fallen in price six times since 2020 — still expensive! An 8 GB video memory can hold high-quality textures of almost any game, but test-addicted fans will continue to shout about the need for more.
All this is thanks to testers bloggers who post videos every day when they test video cards and processors exclusively with ultra graphics settings, and only in the most demanding games.
Such videos give the impression that the conventional AMD Radeon RX 6400 is useless and a waste of textolite, but in fact, «office clip» will provide a comfortable FPS in most games.
This brings up an entire computer community, a member of which can no longer just run the game. He is obliged to first check the FPS and whether the video card is fully loaded, or maybe the CPU, or how smooth the frame rate graph is, what is the minimum FPS 0.1% low, etc. Such a «player» does this in every game for fun, then it turns into a desire to get more FPS by overclocking components, and eventually comes to replacing them, although there are no objective reasons for this.
The headache of every ardent computer fan and the main source of profit for manufacturers today is upgrading, upgrading, improving. You can call it whatever you want, but the point remains as simple as possible. A long time ago, computers were popular in every home, so they were bought for Internet access and as the main multimedia device in the family.
In civilized countries, such system units were always bought as a complete set, ready to go, ready to work on the principle: take it out of the box, plug it in, and it works. But some manufacturers realized that it was more profitable to sell components separately with high margins. That’s how the ATX fan caste appeared, who do not accept any other reality than the one in which you have to assemble a computer from individual parts by hand, and then go through it many times over.
After 2010, the exponential growth of computer performance stopped and the development is more or less linear. This means that a conventional PC with an Intel Core i7-980X (the most powerful processor in 2010) could serve until 2020 as a really good computer that does not keep the owner waiting. 10 years without an upgrade is quite normal.
Then this wealthy i7-980X owner decides to upgrade in 2020 and buys a notional Intel Core i9-10900K with 64 GB DDR4 4000CL16 and RTX 3090 — such a powerful computer with a huge margin is still enough for today. There is no reason to replace anything, no reason at all.
But this is in an ideal utopian world where people think rationally. In an era when PCs are no longer a mass product, someone who has already spent a lot of money (or maybe not) on a computer cannot stop. Such a person will watch various thematic videos and find out that his or her last year’s processor is no longer a top one and is 5% weaker than the new one.
You need to upgrade your «outdated» computer because the video card delivers only 58 FPS with maximum graphics settings and ray tracing, and the monitor has as much as 180 Hz. And lowering the graphics settings is for wimps! If a psychologist were to look at this situation from the outside, he would immediately characterize it as a classic shopaholic.
If a man is always interested in computer equipment, spends a lot of money on it, and regularly updates his PC, then he is no different from a stereotypical lady who buys shoes, clothes, and cosmetics unnecessarily.
The apogee of the whining of corrupt bloggers is the amount of video memory. This topic has been hyped for a long time, saying that games need more VRAM, releasing an 8 GB RX 7600 is as insignificant as an RTX 4060, etc. The simple fact is that you don’t need more than 8 GB of video memory for 99.99% of games that have ever been released on Windows computers.
Considering the tens of thousands of quality games that have been released over the past 20–25 years, a few projects with an excessive appetite for video memory will barely score 0.01% because you can count them on your fingers. We bought an 8 GB video card in 2024 and have been playing any online games and most AAA titles for a long time without any problems.
Almost all cases of upgrading are not fully justified, although the option to deliver another drive or easily replace a broken component in the system is excellent. ATX systems are easily modularized and can be serviced at home, but that doesn’t mean that another upgrade is necessary.
The pursuit of the «I have the best gaming computer» chevron by computer fans only makes sense for component manufacturers that are going through hard times. Classic computers have long ceased to be mass-produced, and fewer and fewer people are buying them, so it’s important to earn as much as possible per user.
Many resources are devoted to this policy — a review format is promoted, emphasizing full computer utilization and counting every FPS. Like, look, our new processor delivers as many as 507 frames per second in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Isn’t this a reason to replace the old CPU, which is only capable of 229 FPS?
The limitations of consoles are a huge advantage for a user who does not know what he or she wants. Simplicity is the key to success and happiness, and the latest generations of gaming consoles allow you to play at 30, 60 and 120 frames per second, so they cover the needs of absolutely all segments of the population.
Minimal settings, only a few options, and everything is maximally optimized. In online games, players cannot turn off shadows and reduce the quality of graphics to better see their opponents, but instead they look at a smooth and beautiful picture.
A prime example is Fortnite: all successful PC players play with only minimal graphics settings without shadows, and the game really doesn’t look very attractive. In contrast, we have the owner of a Sony PS5 with luxurious graphics and a smooth picture, who doesn’t even suspect that Fortnite could look worse.
It’s true that Xbox/PlayStation owners are happy people because they don’t count FPS, measure the temperature of their processor, under-voltage their video card, fight excessive noise from a system unit that consumes 500 watts in games. They don’t worry about anything, and just enjoy the game.
Press a button and play without thinking about performance statistics – isn’t that the point? The gameplay on PS5 in Call of Duty Warzone is as smooth as on an expensive computer. Of course, 120 FPS with up to 100 FPS drops is not 150-200 FPS on a 150,000 UAH computer, but does it really matter when playing?
In most AAA games, there’s no point in super-high FPS. 30 frames per second, and you can play comfortably, 60 frames is a pleasure to enjoy, and 120 will be appreciated by a professional who goes for the best result in an online match.
Before all this, the owner of the game console NOT:
Instead, he just plays and has fun. Of course, you can put on a cheerful mask and say that computers are a gamer’s paradise, an ideal platform with unlimited possibilities. But the tears of despair from under this mask will betray the truth, as will the frightened voice of a PC fan who cannot accept objective reality.
Older people often complain that the world is no longer the same as it used to be, because they have a whole carload of pleasant memories connected to the past. This phenomenon is usually called nostalgia. The fact is that emotions do not depend on the quality of the content we consume, so we used to enjoy seemingly stupid things.
Let’s take a look at an elementary and illustrative example that will help us understand the essence of the problem. You can give a child a hundred LEGO sets, a huge Barbie house with hundreds of accessories, motorized cars, and the world’s best toys that even an adult wouldn’t mind playing with, but it often doesn’t make the child happy.
The concept of happiness is very complex and often depends on random events, things that have no direct connection with the quality of life, material security, or the level of perfection of the product with which a person interacts.
A child with thousands of dollars worth of toys sobs and says how much he hates his parents because they bought him a new Batman set instead of Deadpool, and another child with a wooden stick in his hand that he found on the road happily beats nettles. Running home in the evening with incredible impressions, positive emotions, and scraped knees/elbows.
So what is more valuable in this case: a wooden stick or the unlimited financial resources of parents to buy top toys? The situation is quite familiar, even painful because anyone with at least 20–30 years of life experience can recall a similar analogy from their own life. Savvy readers have already realized why I’m writing about computer games.
There are more than 8 billion people on the planet, almost everyone has a smartphone, and computers are becoming rare artifacts.
ITC readers who have been following the site for decades may find it hard to believe, but in reality, the vast majority of gamers have literally never seen or played a computer. What’s more, they have never played (and are unlikely to ever play) on anything other than smartphones.
Mobile gaming generates more money than PC and console combined, and the gap between these platforms continued to grow at an unprecedented rate. Mobile games are bad, terrible, and poorly made, if you look at it from the perspective of a PC fan or console owner.
The graphics are bad, the gameplay is primitive, there are ads everywhere, and in-game purchases are intrusive – none of this matters because mobile games bring happiness. The release of dopamine is more important than anything. You can make graphics that are indistinguishable from reality or realistic physics in a simulator used to train combat pilots, but what for?
The player should enjoy the gameplay, and mobile games are the best at this. It is enough to press one button and the game is loaded. Another one and the gamer is already in the virtual world, defeating light bots, which are a critical aspect of the success of iOS and Android games.
Low entry thresholds, weak bots, and maximum assistance in the gameplay — all of this is raising a generation of casual gamers who will never be able to get a dose of dopamine from AAA computer games. The time when children do not want to play graphically high-quality and detailed games on PCs, preferring their phones, has already come.
Does a gamer who only changes his processor, video card, and other components every year enjoy it, or one who spends half his time looking at the FPS meter and not the game itself? The pursuit of technology (upgrade) never brings the smile that those who, for example, finally reached the Peach with the Crown in Super Mario, get.
It’s no wonder that a boy from the suburbs of Mumbai is happy after defeating light bots (like players) in PUBG Mobile. This is not the case with the ever-nagging owner of a gaming PC from Toronto, who no longer allows him to play Call of Duty Warzone in 100+ FPS after the next update.
Similarly, a cashier in Abuja is happy with beautiful animations after successfully completing a Candy Crush Saga level. A wealthy computer enthusiast from Berlin is racking his brains over manually setting RAM timings to reach 100 GB/s per write in Aida 64, but instead gets blue screens and is forced to buy a more expensive RAM kit.
If a game gives you a dose of dopamine, that’s fine, but when it can only be obtained by overclocking your computer and watching the FPS while monitoring it with third-party software, it’s worse than any gaming addiction (except gambling).
Everything said in the article can be summarized in the form of simple theses. To enjoy the game, you need to follow the simple commandments of a happy gamer:
The most important thing is not to forget about the basic purpose of video games: to give joy, distract from the daily routine, and cheer up. To get all this, you don’t need a powerful computer, quite the opposite. Most fans of benchmarks have forgotten how to enjoy the game. They have become computer slaves who are now dependent on FPS numbers rather than interesting gameplay.
Will you, dear reader, be such a slave? To play games or to play benchmarks? To be the owner of a home computer or its servant (slave)? Concentrate on the game or the frame rate counter? The choice is yours!
