“Will 2024 Finally Revolutionize PC Gaming?”

Nonetheless, Unreal Engine 5 certainly doesn’t boast a positive history.

There were some early missteps in titles such as Immortals of Aveum and Lords of the Fallen, yet throughout the year, with an increase in UE5 titles, a more apparent trend of issues has emerged. I’m referring to games like Silent Hill 2, Stalker 2, and Black Myth: Wukong,  not to mention Intel’s difficulties with UE5 in titles like Tekken 8. 

The engine now features automatic PSO caching and on-demand shader compilation, both of which should  alleviate stuttering. Unfortunately, it appears these solutions are ineffective. I can’t identify a more inconsistent title I’ve played this year than Silent Hill 2,  which should perform smoothly given its relatively slow and deliberate movement. Nevertheless, simply turning the camera can result in a significant hitch, which is not uncommon in games employing Unreal Engine 5.

It would be less straightforward to assign blame to UE5 if we didn’t observe so many games utilizing different technologies with significantly better outcomes. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle — despite some concerns that I’ll address shortly — is a solid experience powered by idTech 7. Dragon Age: The Veilguard serves as an excellent demonstration of the FrostBite engine’s power. Similarly, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth  proves that the RGG Dragon Engine remains relevant.

There are exceptions, certainly — most notably Dragon’s Dogma 2  leveraging the RE Engine. However, almost every UE5 title I’ve engaged with this year has experienced some form of stuttering. I sincerely hope that this trend doesn’t persist into the next year, especially since there are numerous  games set to utilize Unreal Engine 5, including Avowed, The Witcher 4, Borderlands 4, and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. 

VRAM is increasingly crucial

Titles like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle illustrate that the VRAM predicament is worsening, not improving. This is a game capable of rendering the RTX 3080 and its 10GB of VRAM virtually useless at 1080p. You can enhance performance by lowering your graphics settings, but this signifies that new 8GB graphics cards cannot fully utilize a AAA title at 1080p — purely because of VRAM restrictions.

I don’t believe we will revert from this trend. There has been extensive dialogue regarding the extent of the VRAM challenge and the measures one can take within the memory system to uplift performance without merely adding another memory module.on a GPU. However, as AAA titles continue to expand in size and complexity, and as they explore more sophisticated lighting techniques such as ray tracing and full path tracing, the significance of VRAM capacity grows increasingly crucial.

To be fair to AMD and Nvidia, we didn’t witness a fresh generation of graphics cards this year. It would be just to label 8GB GPUs like the RTX 4060 Ti and RX 7600 as short-sighted — something that AMD and Nvidia themselves appear to acknowledge due to the existence of variants with increased memory capacity — but it’s also reasonable for AMD and Nvidia to cater to gamers’ needs with offerings relevant to the time of their release. At that point, 8GB was sufficient, despite indications that games were shifting in a different trajectory.

Currently, it’s irrefutable. Numerous games still function well with 8GB of VRAM, so I don’t intend to enforce an unrealistic benchmark beyond that level. If your aim is merely to enjoy Marvel Rivals or Baldur’s Gate 3 or Fortnite, there’s not much to be concerned about. Nonetheless, if AMD and Nvidia genuinely wish to sell the concept of a top-tier 1080p gaming experience in the next generation, it ought to feature a GPU equipped with more than 8GB of VRAM.

Solutions for 2025

I am not under the illusion that a new date on the calendar will instantly resolve the challenges in PC gaming, but there are a few straightforward measures that could significantly enhance PC gaming in the coming year. And I sincerely hope we witness these solutions materialize.

VRAM is a straightforward issue to tackle — there is a need for enhanced VRAM on graphics cards. This doesn’t imply that all 8GB graphics cards should vanish, but I would appreciate seeing any graphics card priced over $300 equipped with at least 12GB onboard. We could discuss the costs associated with memory modules and manufacturing expenses endlessly, but honestly, that’s not our concern. AMD and Nvidia rank among the largest and most affluent corporations globally. They should handle the calculations.

When it comes to stuttering, the situation is more ambiguous. Nevertheless, there are some encouraging indicators. While automated PSO caching and on-demand shader compilation have been present in Unreal Engine 5 for some time, it’s quite likely that the games we encountered this year didn’t utilize the latest groundbreaking features of the engine during development. Now that these advancements have been integrated into several core updates of Unreal Engine 5, I am optimistic they will enhance the stuttering issue on PC.

Moreover, the growth of Unreal Engine 5 in general contributes to improvements. As more developers acquire the skills needed to utilize the engine effectively, it is hoped that this leads to more stable experiences. At least that’s what we observed with titles like Lies of P and Unreal Engine 4.

Excitement abounds for the upcoming year, both on the game release side with titles like Doom: The Dark Ages and on the hardware side with new generations from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. I don’t expect PC gaming’s challenges to vanish in the forthcoming year, but I am hopeful that some of the significant trends we’ve observed over the last few years will finally come to an end.