Should PC gamers care about frames per second?

It’s been a little over a year since Gordon went head-to-head with Brian Troh of BPSCustoms to talk about whether or not performance matters in PC building and gaming. Obviously that’s a loaded question (hey, thanks for clicking that link by the way!), but it’s one worth diving into… and diving into again. Brian, a year older and wiser and somewhat mellowed from retirement, once again joins us on the floor of CES 2024 for an updated chat with Adam and Keith (who definitely just happened to be strolling by with a fully-rigged wireless mic).

We seem to be reaching a level of performance, at least in high-end gaming, where framerates are outpacing what we can actually, practically use. That’s certainly true if you have any of the new super-fast gaming monitors out there, pushing 360Hz (or even more) panels. Sure, it’s technically possible for the human eye to see the difference, but whether it actually makes a difference is another question.

“I think we’ve hit a point where hardware is powerful enough, even at lower levels. To me you don’t have to upgrade every cycle, you don’t have to necessarily go out and buy the most expensive thing,” says Brian, boiling the blood of any passing graphics card executive. There’s also the emerging and widening bottom end of PC gaming: the handheld market. With the Steam Deck and its ever-growing list of competitors, suddenly gamers have a reason to value performance and efficiency at a much lower scale.

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