Metro 2033 and other PC games which can only be maxed out with hardware from the distant future.

[ph0b0s123]

I wanted to talk about PC games that you can only play at full visual settings with hardware that comes out many years after the game is first released.

We have had a break from these types of games for a while due to the whole consoles being stuck on DirectX 9 thing. But I brought Metro 2033 to go with the 2 new Nvidia 580's I brought. It runs like a dog even on 2 top of the range GPU's that are a generation or two above what was around when the game was released. And this makes me ask of this of other members of the forum. What were the developers thinking?

Crysis was guilty of this years ago as well where it was only finally playable with everything turned up full about 3 years after its release. There are countless others back through PC gaming history. I think there was Far Cry before that, etc

I have a love hate relationship with these games as first they show of what a PC can do, but at the same time seem to be designed for hardware that will existing year in the future if at all. Which just seems so dumb as I won't play them until they are playable. Crysis I did not buy until I had hardware that could play it fully.

The odd thing about Metro 2033 is that it is also a console title. Normally these machine breaking titles cannot be converted to consoles until much later. This makes me believe in Metro's case the PC version is really badly optimized.

Now I don't want this to turn into a console vs PC thread as I know this is a PC only thing. But I do think that releasing games that cannot even be played on the fasted hardware available at the time, does not help your sales. But others here my think differently.

 

[Arachon]

That's a load of bollocks D: I run Metro 2033 on top settings with a GTX470... Perhaps you are being bottlenecked?

 

[Erana]

Yep. Developers do that.
Why? I dunno- I suppose they just prefer to look pretty in their tech demo and tell their audience, "Have lower settings or get a better gaming rig."

Of course, its far easier to do this and boast a "great looking game," than actually employing style and making a game with timeless visuals.

 

[Woodsey]

I can run Metro 2033 on DX11 with the highest settings (bar one DX11 specific effect that really chews up the frame rate) at a great frame rate on:

Core2Duo E6750 2.66 GHz
Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR3 VRAM
4GB DDR2

You've just had a bad experience. It's fucking gorgeous by the way.

Perhaps you are being bottlenecked?

Seems likely.

 

[viranimus]

Yes, I fully agree, thats a load. Im playing Metro 2033 now at 1900x1080 reso with no problems at all on an GTS 250 which supposedly falls just below recommended specs (though oddly enough it has 4times the card ram, and one generation higher of shaders than the game recommends, and ive had this card for well over a year now.

 

[Swaki]

bwuh? metro 2033 dont seem like it requires a lot, when it comes to graphics its not a very impressive game and it even runs decent on my moms pc which is a Frankenstein pc made of random parts that the rest of my family have upgraded over the year (she my old razer keyboard and mouse and a pre historical monitor which i think looks funny), and its not like i have a monster pc, i had a good friend of mine make mine 3 years ago and we did on the cheap but i can still run every game ive ever bought on high.

 

[Rednog]

Pretty much have to agree with Arachon, I have a PC that is nearing 2 years old, and when I built it it was slightly above average at the time and it plays Metro 2033 just fine.
Something might be wrong with your setup if you're having problems that makes it unplayable.
And I really don't think there really are that many games out there that are like Crysis in the sense that you need an insane rig to run.

 

[Wolfram23]

Your problem is that you're trying to run Depth of Field and 4x MSAA. It just doesn't work. Never will. Either DoF and AAA or no Dof and 4xMSAA. It looks better with the DoF generally IMO, but you get jaggies on vertical and horizontal edges. Angles are fine tho. It's just how Analytical Anti Aliasing works.

So yeah, fix that. My two 5850s ran the game fine with 1080p, Very High detail, DX 11, tesslation, DoF, and AAA. I'm talking probably 40fps average, usually 50+ but the occasional scene it would drop into 30s (usually with a lot of light effects)

 

[ph0b0s123]

I'm running it in DX11 at 1920 x 1200 and on Very High with a i7 EE CPU at 3.8 GHz and 6 GB 1300MHZ RAM. Am using AAA and DOF. It goes under 35FPS in some scenes which is not acceptable and the judder is quite noticeable. The gun range at the beginning for example.

Have had to set it to just High settings to be guaranteed of frame rates that don't drop under 40 FPS. Have enabled Vsync as well as according to some threads it increases FPS.

For a game that was released before the Nvidia 4xx and 5xx series were available, I think it stinks that 1.5 to 2 gens later it still runs like a dog.

It is also dumb that there is no way to change individual settings all you get is Low, High or Very High. Maybe I want some settings Very High and others only High to get acceptable performance.

You are right that there are not a lot of PC games that suffer from this at the moment as the PC has been in a funk for pushing the graphical envelope due to the impact of most games now being console ports. But I bet we will see the same with Crysis 2 later this year.

They do come out every so often and they are normally AAA titles and it is very annoying. If you have been playing PC games since the early 90's like me, you will have a shopping list of titles that have been guilty of need hardware much faster than is available when the game is released. I think this will start happening again with the PC over the next year or two. But I think it is something that should not happen. Games should be made to run with everything on full on hardware that is available at the time. I don't mind if they have been given pre-release GPU's etc from AMD or Nvidia, that they make the games for them. But having to wait many GPU generations to play a game with all the detail turned up to full is just dumb....

 

[Nietz]

I upgraded my computer a couple of months ago, replaced motherboard, RAM and processor (from 2 Gig RAM to 4 gigs and from a Dual core 3Gig Hz proc. to an i5 at 2.6 GigHz..I think) and Metro 2033 actually runs slower now on my new computer. I think it might be because of the raised number of cores, but I don't know. Same goes with Kane and Lynch 2. Anyone who knows why?

 

[ph0b0s123]

Disabled DX11 DOF in the user.cfg file. Frame rates a lot better. Can now play on Very high settings.

So anyway back to the main topic of PC games that don't run on current hardware. Another one used to be GTA V. But that I think was due to bad optimization. The PC version of Halo was also a dog on the hardware around when it was first released.

 

[Ashcrexl]

i have metro 2033 on the lowest setting and it is barely playable. but then again, i have a $600 laptop, nowhere near ideal for running high level games. you should pay more money for a high-end pc instead of complaining.

 

[ph0b0s123]

i have metro 2033 on the lowest setting and it is barely playable. but then again, i have a $600 laptop, nowhere near ideal for running high level games. you should pay more money for a high-end pc instead of complaining.

Your joking right. Posted my spec above. I have the fastest GPU (2 of them) CPU and SSD money can buy. There is no more you can get, hence my annoyance.... Well I supposed a third GTX 580....

Also played the game some more. It sits at 60 FPS, then goes under 35 FPS every time there is any gun play. Back to 'high' again....

 

[Nutcase]

I wanted to talk about PC games that you can only play at full visual settings with hardware that comes out many years after the game is first released.

...
Crysis was guilty of this years ago as well where it was only finally playable with everything turned up full about 3 years after its release. There are countless others back through PC gaming history. I think there was Far Cry before that, etc

I have a love hate relationship with these games as first they show of what a PC can do, but at the same time seem to be designed for hardware that will existing year in the future if at all. Which just seems so dumb as I won't play them until they are playable. Crysis I did not buy until I had hardware that could play it fully.

That's an utterly retarded attitude. You want to remove one of the strengths of the open platform PC is, for no gain whatsoever.

Current situation: we can play the game at a certain level of graphic fidelity (say, "medium"), and then in a few years we have the option of going to "highest" and getting even better graphics.
What you'd apparently want: developers rename the current "medium" to "highest". The game never looks better than "medium" until the end of time.

 

[Hashime]

I can play Metro 2033 on max at 1600x900 (Damn cheap monitor) with my 5770 no problem.

 

[Daedalus1942]

Metro 2033 isn't very demanding.
I have an AMD phenom II core, with 8 gb's ram, and my graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD5830.
I can run the game like 5 or 6 times over at max settings with that setup.
The actual reqs for the game really aren't much by today's standards. perhaps you need to upgrade your processor?
I can run it DX11, maxed at 1920X1080, with no issues at all.
Possibly your computer is on the way out.
-Tabs<3-

 

[nesto]

i can run Metro on my intel Atom eqipped netbook.







thru Onlive.

 

[Psycho78]

I have no problem with Metro 2033, other than getting sound but a black screen when I tried to run it. Finally fixed that, of course with Steam in the equation it has cfg files in at least 3 different places.

Try ARMA2 if you want to kill your machine. It needs a good video card but also a fast (3GHz+) CPU.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Then tone them down, but I run Metro 2033 just fine here with a new rig that didn't even cost me 800 euros. So yeah, must be something on your end.

I can run Metro 2033 on DX11 with the highest settings (bar one DX11 specific effect that really chews up the frame rate)

Which option would that be? That might explain my rather disappointing framerate (for my taste), even with my new rig.