It’s true to say that most gamers, especially PC gamers as of late, have been going through a rough time. Sure, games are no doubt more expansive and impressive than ever, and with Deathloop, Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2 and many other titles breaking critical records, there’s a plethora of amazing games to play right now.
That said, supply chain woes related to the Covid pandemic, and of course, bitcoin mining farms worldwide, have meant that getting access to the latest video cards (especially the Nvidia RTX 3000 series) is tougher than ever. Many, many people are still totally unable to purchase the Playstation 5 without following a range of Twitter and Discord accounts/servers notifying immediate availability, too. Silicon chips are harder to come by than ever. Gaming at the cutting edge, then, has become more difficult for us despite excellent services like Microsoft’s Game Pass providing us more value than we know what to do with.
How are we supposed to play modern games without the hardware to properly run them? Thankfully, in this post, there are certain ways around this, methods you can use while the market begins to stabilize and return to normal.
Nvidia DLSS
Those with the launch RTX cards now have access to DLSS technology, which developers are constantly adding to their games. This technology utilizes machine learning AI to upscale rendered images at a higher resolution than they may be. So for instance, playing a video game like Control can mean instead of rendering the game at the native resolution of 1440p as part of your usual approach, you render it at 720p and DLSS technology upscales the frame to look as good as that original resolution. This thoroughly enhances your render performance, and can even allow you to make use of demanding shading renderers such as ray tracing.
Streaming Services
More and more streaming services, such as GeForce Now, XCloud and even PS Now are allowing games to be streamed from remote machines. For the cost of a small amount of latency, streaming games to your computer can leverage the power of a rented machine, which helps offset the need of purchasing major hardware at this moment.
Prebuilt & Custom Built PC Services
If you’re looking for a gaming PC, often custom build websites and prebuilts can offer access to the components that you may not be able to find on their own. For instance, many services like this have the 3000 cards in stock thanks to wholesale access, which can allow you to schedule your upgrade as necessary in a fully built machine that works perfectly for your needs. As one component upgrade often necessitates others (such as the new CPU architectures needing motherboards with the correct formatting to run them), this can be a worthwhile use of your time.
With this advice, we’re certain you’ll be able to game at the cutting edge despite supply chain woes.
