Nvidia published a report that reveals gamers play Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds better on machines with better graphics cards and monitors with high refresh rates, though the effect of the study may turn out to be a negative one for PC gaming.
“Buy a better graphics card” is certainly something you’d expect Nvidia would say, but in a blog post, it revealed data that proves playing on higher frame rates often leads to better performance in Battle Royale games.
Nvidia analyzed the kill-death ratios of Fortnite and PUBG players acquired from GeForce Experience Highlights data. The kill-death ratio is one of the most common metrics of player performance, comparing the number of times that a player has killed an opponent to the number of times that the player was killed by an opponent.
The study found that in comparison to players running Fortnite and PUBG on the company’s older GeForce GTX-600 Series, those who have the latest GeForce RTX 20-Series have a 53 percent higher kill-death ratio.
Players might point out that perhaps those who bought better, more expensive graphics cards play more to maximize their investment, gaining more practice. However, the report also debunked that theory by showing that better graphics cards resulted in better performance, whether players play a few hours per week or several hours each day.
The report also included the effect of using monitors with higher refresh rates in combination with Nvidia’s graphics cards. The data, which covered 60 Hz, 144 Hz, and 240 Hz monitors, revealed that monitors with higher refresh rates took better advantage of graphics cards, also resulting in better kill-death ratios.
Gamers do not need to drop thousands of dollars on a high-end gaming PC just to be able to play today’s most popular games, particularly in the Battle Royale genre that also includes Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – Blackout in addition to Fortnite and PUBG. However, Nvidia shows that players who invest in hardware to enable the highest frames-per-second rates and lowest latency are better equipped to unlock their “full potential on the battlefield.”
As TechRadar pointed out, while Nvidia is trying to entice players to upgrade to better graphics cards with the published report, it may instead have a “negative advertising” effect that would cause potential newcomers to PC gaming to shy away. The data tells players that buying the GeForce RTX 20-Series will help make them better, but it is also telling players who could not afford the more advanced graphics cards that they may never become as good as those who can.
