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ReSpec: A column about the complex, glorious tech behind PC gaming

ReSpec series intro featured image.
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If you’ve ever built your own gaming PC, you know that tinkering with the hardware is half the fun. But increasingly, much of the battle for performance and high frame rates has been happening on the software side of things.

DLSS, RT, FSR, and dozens of other acronyms all await you behind your game’s innocent settings menu. Throw in the increasing trend that highly anticipated titles like Elden Ring ship with massive technical issues, and you’ve got a bit of a mess.

And that’s what ReSpec is all about: Breaking down the games you play, the software that power them, and the hardware that makes everything come together so you can get the most out of your gaming PC.

What you can expect from ReSpec

A normal map and depth map next to each other in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

ReSpec is a column about PC gaming minus the games. It’s focused on the hardware and software that make games tick, as well as the various ways you can get the most out of your gaming PC. Although I’ll talk about specific games from time to time — like when I added ray tracing into Elden Ring — I won’t focus on gameplay, mechanics, progression, or anything like that. This column is about technology behind the games we all love.

It’s an opportunity to go deep on PC hardware, gaming technology, and how they intersect to produce the frames you see. My goal is that you’ll understand why Nvidia Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is becoming obsolete before you buy a new graphics card, and how Unreal Engine 5 is a seismic shift for gaming graphics before the first UE5 game ships.

It’s also an opportunity to learn. There’s a lot to know in the world of PC gaming, especially as unique technologies like 3D V-Cache and Intel XeSS emerge. As I’m sure a lot of you do, I want to learn more about the games I play and the hardware I use, so hopefully we can learn alongside each other.

Understanding new technology is great, but I don’t want to build up something that isn’t important just for the sake of a column entry. In addition to explaining new technologies, you can expect op-eds, experiments, and gaming PC advice.

If you want to keep up on our opinions about the day-to-day news, you can follow to the Digital Trends computing page. ReSpec is set up to provide some takeaways even months after the news cycle

A bit about me

A headshot of Jacob Roach.
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I’m Jacob Roach, and I’ll be writing the columns for ReSpec primarily. About 15 years ago, I bought a Sony Vaio laptop from Best Buy on the advice on a sales associate (the model escapes me, for good reason). I wanted to play Crysis, and I didn’t know any better. After attempting to disable Aero in Vista and dozens of other optimizations, I realized the machine wouldn’t run anything in The Orange Box, let alone Crysis. 

Misguided as I was, I’m happy I was steered in the wrong direction. I built my first gaming PC shortly after. Ever since, I’ve been chasing frames, dissecting hardware, and always asking questions about PC gaming and how I can get the most out of it.

I’m still asking questions, and I’m still curious. Hopefully you are, too.

This article is part of ReSpec – an ongoing biweekly column that includes discussions, advice, and in-depth reporting on the tech behind PC gaming.

Editors' Recommendations

Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
When a high frame rate can lose you the game
A solider from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.

"Frames win games." That's been Nvidia's marketing campaign targeted at esports players since the introduction of Nvidia Reflex. It's a great slogan, catchy with the right amount of truth, and the perfect pairing for Nvidia's RTX technologies. In a new era of generated frames, though, it requires a bit of context.

Nvidia's DLSS 3 generates frames on RTX 40-series graphics cards, massively improving your performance. The trade-off, however, is an increase in latency, which hasn't been a big deal up to this point. In games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Cyberpunk 2077, you don't need to worry about gaining a competitive edge. But now, we're seeing DLSS 3 for the first time in a competitive shooter: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Originally, the game only included DLSS 3 in the single-player campaign, but after a few days, it was patched into all game modes, including Zombies and multiplayer.

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Don’t believe the hype — the era of native resolution gaming isn’t over
Alan Wake looking at a projection of himself.

Native resolution is dead, or so the story goes. A string of PC games released this year, with the most recent being Alan Wake 2, have come under fire for basically requiring some form of upscaling to achieve decent performance. Understandably, there's been some backlash from PC gamers, who feel as if the idea of running a game at native resolution is quickly becoming a bygone era.

There's some truth to that, but the idea that games will rely on half-baked upscalers to achieve reasonable performance instead of "optimization" is misguided at best -- and downright inaccurate at worst. Tools like Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) will continue to be a cornerstone of PC gaming, but here's why they can't replace native resolution entirely.
The outcry
Let's start with why PC gamers have the impression that native resolution is dead. The most recent outcry came over Alan Wake 2 when the system requirements revealed that the game was built around having either DLSS or FSR turned on. That's not a new scenario, either. The developers of Remnant 2 confirmed the game was designed around upscaling, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a AAA release in the last few years that didn't pack in upscaling tech.

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Windows is holding back the future of handheld gaming
windows isnt future of handheld gaming pcs dt respec holding back

I've used most of the handheld gaming PCs that have released this year, but I always go back to my Steam Deck. It's not the most powerful, it has some quirks, and I still struggle with a frustrating bug that can drain the battery in minutes. But it's still the best handheld gaming PC you can buy, and that's due in large part to the fact that it doesn't run on Windows like other handhelds.

It's not that I don't like Windows. As a PC hardware nerd, I'm well aware of both the benefits and idiosyncrasies of PC gaming. Things don't always work the way you expect them to, and that's just part of the process to get the best gaming experience possible. When it comes to this evolving form factor of handheld gaming PCs, however, those issues are amplified and pushed to their breaking point.
We've been here before

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