Gaming

It’s another common trope that gaming causes attention problems. However,  Bavelier shows data  that people who play video games are better able to keep track of objects around them — while the average person can track three objects effectively, video gamers can track six to seven objects. They’re also better able to multitask in general. Initial studies suggest that these benefits may be trainable. In one study, Bavelier’s lab gave participants a test, and then asked them to play 10 hours of video games over a period of two weeks. When they came back for a post-test, their performance improved — and the improvement was still measurable five months later. Bavelier’s lab hopes to use these findings to create games that can improve eyesight or help keep the brains of senior citizens sharp.

Meanwhile, game developers are always pushing the boundaries with breathtaking visuals and huge, open worlds to explore. The latest games include ultra-high-quality art assets that stand up to scrutiny on high-PPI monitors, and they support deeper color formats for high-dynamic range displays. They also use some nifty tricks to maintain steady frame rates, like adaptive quality and dynamic resolution scaling. Each of these things can improve the gaming experience—and together, they can look absolutely glorious in motion—but they all require larger video memory capacity. As a result, today’s games can exceed 8GB of VRAM usage at their highest quality settings.  Here’s a look at the VRAM allocation we measured while running some popular games.