But if you're interested in running multi-monitor or super-high-resolution monitors with all the eye candy turned up to get the absolute maximum IQ out of today's games, an SLI GTX 460 rig simply will not cut it. At the enthusiast level, there's nothing available that counts as overkill, which is why you see people flaunting their 6 GHz overclocks and quadfire 7970 setups feeding 6 monitors in eyefinity.
All of that is true. However, it changes nothing about the fact that since Crysis 1, there hasn't been a single game out in the last 5 years that has
redefined PC gaming graphics. People will always find the need for new hardware (i.e., 120 FPS, 3D gaming, e-peen, hobby, fun of upgrading, etc.) or justify $2-3K of hardware. However, it's been a long time on the PC where we have been blown away by a GPU upgrade. I remember the first time I ran Crysis on an 8800GTS 320mb I was amazed at how much better the game looked than anything else at the time. I actually wanted a new GPUs because the game was choking at just 1280x1024 and there was no way to turn up the graphical details, nevermind play it for me at native 1080P. Now, it's more about turning on Uber Sampling, depth of field, or more AA but the games don't look better than Crysis 1. Look at many modern games today, even when you change the settings from Very High to Ultra, the graphics barely change but performance falls dramatically.
Sure, 2560x1600 monitor does make games look sharper than a 1680x1050 or even 1080P monitor but it doesn't make them much better looking. The actual lighting, texture, AI and physics model has barely advanced since 2007 (I suppose tessellation and HBAO/SSAO did add a little extra).
What we need are next generation game engines such as Unreal Engine 4. Until then, all the extra AA, resolutions is just putting lipstick on a pig. Since Crysis 1 and Metro 2033, PC gaming graphics have completely stagnated. Even BF3 is nothing special at all in terms of graphics.
People will even buy GTX780 next year but it won't make Crysis 2 or BF3 look any better because gaming graphics have stagnated thanks to consoles.
People will buy new GPUs because it's our hobby. However, nowadays it hardly has any impact on graphics because the graphics themselves are stuck in the year 2008.
I am almost in disbelief now that Crysis 1 came out Nov 13, 2007 and in 5 years since then PC graphics have hardly improved.
