Hey game dev here, I'm a tech artist and I usually do optimisation for game graphics and scripts and it's really nice for people to check out low settings in videos like these. I tend to always set low settings as how the game should be seen, if it doesn't look good at low then I talk to our level team about creating a better scene as it won't be a good or accurate scene. Optimisation techniques have been lost to time. It's obvious, how can some Devs get a game like gears of war running on an Xbox 360? There is nothing special you can do to get it to run on that hardware, so the designers designed their artstyle around the hardware. A good analysis is silent hill, using the fog to hide mesh load in, that camera distance from the player is to hide horrible geometry. Modern video game graphics have gotten to a point which we live in a luxury that particles can use individual light sources, realtime shadows with colour blending shadows, subsurface scattering (where light shines through objects), all at the low quality preset. But with this, becomes a complex process which why people like us have jobs in the game industry. We are essentially the people who know how to optimise 3d graphics and code to let you run our game at low settings and not notice a major difference in fidelity. We usually just tack on the extra graphics presets for the long term for when hardware can eventually run it and it's just us turning on postfx options and engine features. We (tech artists) came around because at the time when video games were very indie and new, they were already optimised for the very harsh low power hardware but as tools became more easier and less archaic to use, the more we think less about the game performing well on systems especially when they are just expected to run well regardless which is reckless thinking, you don't need more than 1-3gb of vram if we know how to optimise and utilise texture streaming. Thank you for this video, I loved it. Good to know that people really appreciate optimisation because man, it's a lot of work and knowing. Tech art isn't the easiest of jobs in the games industry.
Dude thanks for sharing that. Nice to know that low settings are where the hard work is done, and then high settings is just additions and future proofing (memories of the original Crysis come to mind, people saying "Oh no PC can run at the highest settings, that's for PCs in the future"). That's the way I hope it stays. In some ways I feel like the existence of consoles (especially the low tier consoles like the Series S) is sort of saving the low end of the setting spectrum, because devs are kinda forced to optimize for lower end hardware. If games were developed with high end PCs as the goal we'd get low settings that are just derivative subtractions from the high settings (Red Dead 2 is a good example of this, the low settings look dramatically worse than even medium settings, it's obvious they just took a bunch of detail away because there's no way the game would look that bad if it was designed by hand with the low end in mind). When I fire up a game, and it runs amazing on low settings, but the game looks really good, THAT'S what gets me excited. I'd rather say "HOW did they make it look SO GOOD and run SO WELL!?" than to say "WOW look how good it looks lol my 4090 is going to catch fire".
But, but if everyone starts agreeing with you and deciding they don't need to push quality to the max, then they won't buy new graphics cards! The whole industry will crumble to dust overnight, and it's all YOUR fault!
Gameplay alwasy will be the Winners i mean look at sekiro and elden ring they 2 are hardcore game and sell more than casual ubisoft game... I hope Dev thinking more of feature of gameplay imagine skill making comeback like on bethesda title oblivian
It can't fail it's not even possible. Company's pretend they had a bad year but that's compared to the insanely high estimation they gave themselves. These companies have been making billions for years. And it's all because people can't accurately measure what the product actually costs.
I think instead this highlights the problems with quality presets. In many games you can get 90+% of the visual quality of ultra, while getting medium frame rates by going through and tuning your settings to match up specifically with the strengths and weaknesses of your hardware.
I recently purchased a laptop and in the search for a balance between heat and graphical fidelity I started noticing what you are talking about. Super high graphics settings are not worth the heat they generate (I am trying to make my laptop last, not melt it into a puddle).
That's why I undervolt, cap my FPS, and run at modest settings. I like knowing I can crank the graphics when I want to but more important for me is quiet and comfort.
As a wise man once said: _"Ultra it's for screenshots, High it's for gaming"_ edit: i tweak every game, starting from medium all the settings one by one, to find the balance between visual gorgeousness and fps cost. It was necessary on my old pc with i5-3550, 2x8gb ddr3 1866mhz, gtx970, 7200rpm seagate barracuda... but i'm still optimizing games now that i game a r7-5800x, 4x8gb of 3600mhz cl16 ram, xfx merc 319 rx6750xt (with oc+uv tweaks i have same performance as an oced 3070 / more closer to stock 3070ti), 4.0 nvme for os and programs + 3.0 nvme for games, sata ssd for old gen games and my previous mechanical hard drive for backups. I can game on ultra 1440p@144hz without issues but i prefer to have less heat and more fps at a minor visual difference 😎
I'm with ya. In this vid I just talked about the presets but when I actually choose settings I carefully go through all them and do a cost-benefit analysis of how much it affects the visuals vs how it affects the performance. By the end my settings menus look like the ramblings of a madman - a random mix of ultra and low.
The test is not doable with youtube compression on 1080p but I do agree that while ten years ago low settings was essentially ruining the game making it look like a gba port, nowadays low on pc is equivalent to 8th gen consoles and devs make sure that even the lowest preset is somewhat respectful of their presentation and art direction. This is not like the days of the 7th gen where cod4 (og) in lowest settings looked like cs 1.5 and you could get kicked from servers since you would have grass not rendering at all and could see enemies hiding. Yeah, such an advantage my gts7300 in 1024*768 at 27fps was, server admin, lol
I have a 4080 super and I turn down settings on every game that isn't almost ten years old. Medium is usually the sweet spot for me. Smoothness matters so much more.
I always spend hours tweaking the best performance to graphic ratio on settings, but when I'm done I'd play the 15 minutes tutorial only and never touch the game again after that. 😅
Thank you for doing this comparison for us. I think I prefer to stay on high settings or medium after seeing this video. I will rethink if ultra is really necessary for now on. I am playing Sackboy a Big Adventure on PC, I'll test high settings to see if I see any difference. You opened our eyes and still there people that think that the industry will crumble if everyone agree with you. For those people I suggest buying all new graphics cards to spend a lot of money and not most of the time playing barely on 4k ultra. I don't blame them, but don't blame us for give extra life for our cards. My machine is a laptop with 3070 and it runs almost all games on 1080 ultra 60fps. The games to come in next years probably won't run at maximum, but if I put on high or even medium settings I'll ensure that I'll give to it some more years of life. Thanks
Very well said. That's one benefit of having a GPU that can play at ultra settings today, for years to come you will still be able to play it high or medium and still have a great experience.
60fps is the best framerate, if you game can run at 60fps 1% low framerate, you can tweak the settings to ultra. i have played Red Dead Redemption 2 at 45fps minimum framerate on Ultra settings (wirth DLSS) on RTX 3050 mobile refresh, that GPU is awesome, and relatively "low cost" for today laptops. using 1080p monitor.
i think it's a lack of optimisation problem... sometime it's pointless to change video graphics... they are built for consoles in mind, not pc.. I agree with you completely!
the level of sophistication has obviously increased to the point where it is harder to discern higher settings. unless you specialize in some aspect of video game graphics development or playing professionally, the average consumer won’t notice or even care about the differences. the main thing is whether it is playable at an enjoyable level or not and whether you think as a player if the game is good or not.
I game at Ultra settings all the time. With one SMALL catch though. I game at 1024 * 768 resolution. Because I have my PC with an older projector with that native resolution and I mainly play older games with that PC. And I also love trolling everyone about buying a 3070 and playing at 4:3 768p Oblivion at Ultra High! For all the other games my Xbox S is more than enough, and cost me just 250 euros! Excellent video my friend!
Forza Horizon 5 at 1440p+DLAA on a 5700X / 3060 Ti: Very low: 182 FPS Low: 161 FPS Medium: 145 FPS High: 130 FPS Ultra: 94 FPS Extreme: 73 FPS I think ultra is the way to go here. While the drop from high is large, trees are horribly blurry and very easily noticeable. Extreme is barely any different and not only is the performance drop significant but stutters also happen due to the VRAM usage getting close to 8GB!
Dweeb, I think part of the reason you're seeing these small changes is because the games are console first oriented. The lowest common denominator will always be the console market. For example, this generation, every third party game will be made to run on the Series S. Because the consoles are still fairly new, right now that means on average medium to high settings on Series S at resolution (1080-1440p). As time passes and the systems become older, it is very likely that games will be running at The equivalent of PC low settings. At that point, developers usually make one set of assets and visuals, and then throw in a couple of little changes that can be implemented on the higher settings, which will be used on the PS5 and Series X, and of course, a few more little changes for PC. Basically what I'm saying is, for the vast majority of games, the lowest common denominator is a console. As such, they plan for that system and develop for the lowest system, then they splash on a nice little layer of polish for everything higher than that but it doesn't fundamentally change the core game. I wonder if this test would be different if you looked at PC only games. I actually prefer console gaming and Xbox is my go to, but I do have a decent gaming laptop where I can definitely see a difference between lower settings and higher settings on PC only games like Europa Universalis IV and Guild Wars 2.
I'm not so sure about that. First, I can barely recall any PC only games that actually have graphical options that change the experience to a significant degree. I searched google for "PC only games" and found a few articles and they're mostly strategy games and indie games. For the really good graphical games like Half Life Alyx, they are exactly the same as I'm describing (I don't have that game but I looked up a comparison, and again, low looks nearly identical to ultra). Same thing with Total War. I'm sure there will be outliers but I think in general my point still stands - ultra settings offers marginal improvements over low settings. Maybe the fact that we have so many console games releasing on PC (and vice versa) means the devs need to spend more time making sure the games look good on the low end, but that's a good thing, that we can get games that look nearly as good at low settings but without the huge hit to fps that we get on ultra settings.
So I opened my atari 7800 emulator upscaled it to 4k and I couldn't tell any difference at all.... But thats my generation from my first atari through 8 and 16 bit and beyond, games these days all look great at any settings compared to those systems. Great video TD....good point, really like your back and forth
The reason you couldn't tell a difference is because it doesn't have ultra settings. Obviously. What we need is a re-release of Yars' Revenge with ultra settings added. But you'll need an RTX 4999 to run it.
I have fairly low PC specs for these days. An RX 590 in an old repurposed HP H620 workstation with 48gb of slow DDR3 RAM and a pair of XEON E5-2690 CPU's in it. I use "optimised" settings for Battlefield 5 and can hit 100-130 FPS in multiplayer games which helps keep the input lag as low as possible. But in AAA games it doesn't matter so much so im happy at medium and you'll be surprised at the decent FPS that i can get. In slightly older titles i can bump up to ultra and have similar or the same experience as everybody else who spend thousands on their hardware.
There's been previous studies done showing when a game is in motion, the average person cannot differentiate between performance or presentation settings. Nor can they differentiate between 1080P VS 4K, when the game's in motion. Diminishing returns is a nice way to put it, BS waste of money is more accurate.
I grew up with weak PCs, so I can play at pretty low details and framerates and still not care. I've played Skyrim, entered a game and was shocked to see my save somehow got completely corrupted. I had some old save up, my gear was lousy, my skills were lousy, untill missus asked me why it looks so bad. Yeah, I've fired up OG instead of the remastered version and haven't noticed. However, sometimes I do notice big time. I've already mentioned it, but after playing through the Witcher 2 and starting the Witcher 3 on medium settings, the lighting was so bad I had to wait to get a better GPU. It's a solitary case, but man those lightning effects looked awful back then. I did notice differences between high and medium in SOTTR, I don't think it was a placebo effect. However, the absolutely awful imput lag while playing in local steam streaming made me play it at medium. I didn't really care one bit, the game looked perfectly fine to me. It used to be different though, take Fifa 2000 for example. It looked fine to me at low settings on my Pentium 133, but when I upgraded to a Celeron 433 (Mendocino core btw, like the new AMD chips), I've set it to high and it looked like a completely different game. Same with Oblivion, try running that at lowest and highest settings. The jump in quality is just massive (the faces will still look like aliens, no matter the settings). Oh, and in your examples, I've noticed a big difference in Far Cry with texture pop in when going up in quality. Then you went to ultra, and it looked bad again so, thank you RUclips algorithm. Oh, and also I tried (free) GeForce now, to see what it looks like. The game I chose was AC Origins. Man, those compression artifacts were bad enough to be offputting, I don't care how ultra those settings are if it all looks like bad RUclips compression. Maybe it's different when you're closer to the server, but I'll take low settings over those glitches any day.
Haha yeah that RUclips compression is a killer. And I had the same experience with GeForce now. Great performance, but it looked like a poorly compressed video. Hopefully AV1 gives a considerable boost to the quality of game streaming in the near future.
8:21 At low settings, it looks like standard console graphics and it looks way better than the Nintendo switch. PC gamers are just spoiled, not everything is about numbers just have fun that’s what gaming is all about
5/8. low frame-rate and youtube compression made it difficult. but you can still see the difference in picture quality. i agree, ultra is often not necessary, but low is just too low. medium or high is often the sweet spot for quality and performance.
Watching on youtube is different than looking at the real thing so comparison is not really good you need to test it for your self to see the difference by your self i always play on high graphics My rig is I5 3570 16gb 1600mhz Rx 580 8gb Yeah i know i dont have some insane pc or something And i use a 1366x768p monitor i can see so much difference in medium to high settings But im loving to customize my own settings so some settings you can't see any difference
Darnit, this showed me how far I'm out of the loop by now 😁 - the last time I was 'seriously' gaming (for varying values of 'seriously' 😉...), 'low' settings looked more like mush in most games... But back then, 150 fps would have been absolutely unobtainable anyway - or, only for people with *waaaay* more money to sink into their rig than sense... Seems like much has happened since Borderlands 2, in 3-Player LAN Co-op Mode 😁...
Normally, I can tell the difference, Especially when it comes to the AA method. I love playing in 4K and when there's aliasing, i gotta turn up the AA method or resolution scaling. I don't mind the lower FPS because I love taking screenshots. I have a folder of about 2K screenshots since November 2022. Once you see max settings after playing a game for awhile, it's tough to go down in fidelity. Very different comparison than just watching this video and trying to pick out what's high and low. The RUclips compression also doesn't help the case either.
Even if higher settings wastes fps what matter will it make? You will not feel a diffrens gameing in 90 fps or 120 in a singel player titel. Farcry 6 uses a engine i belive is same as farcry 3 so around 10 years old. Tomb raider i dont remeber the engine but its older to and god of war being a 2018 consol port. Reason to include this? Thank you
Here is a question for you: Assuming you have a GPU that can play your favourite game at 4K, Medium settings and at your ideal FPS. You now have the option of purchasing a PC Monitor. Would you purchase a 4K Monitor or would you purchase a 1080p Monitor and (as a result) play the game at Ultra Settings? PS I can merge this with my previous comment if you want Dweeb :)
@@animationmann I agree with the above. But what gaming experience would be better? Gaming at Ultra 1080p or Medium 4K? There is of course the option of using DSR (Nvidia) or VSR (AMD) on a 1080p Monitor... I mean, is the higher price of a 4K Monitor worth it if you can only play at Medium settings?
Hmmm. That's a good question. I personally would get more enjoyment out of 4k than I would out of ultra settings, but realistically the CORRECT answer to this situation is aim for the middle - high settings at 1440p.
I've found that running a game at a non-native resolution negatively impacts the visual quality far worse than lower settings. So really I think your choice depends on how likely you are to upgrade your GPU in the next year or so and how new are the games you like to play.
I could see that the tests were done appropriately and thanks for providing a lot of details. It gives a lot of insights. However, it missed on the comparison between 1440p, 4k, or 1080p. Having higher end graphics cards would definitely support 4K resolution while lower end graphics cards do not support them. Therefore, comparison should have been made between 1080p, 1440p, 4K as well to also show the difference. This would push people to buy higher end graphics cards for sure when they look at 4k resolution haha. But great review overall.
I use a 65 inch 4K TV in lieu of a monitor. Under certain conditions, the difference between high and ultra is obvious. It depends on your personal setup. Honestly, I am in love with 4K content right now.
5800x and 1080TI user here witha 1440p 144Hz and a 2nd 1080p 60Hz display. my 5800x runs at fixed 4GHz, 1.08V, all boosts disabled. my 144Hz monitor runs always at 120Hz. Somehow display AND GPU use a lot more power at 144Hz. Maybe because of the 2nd 60Hz display and 120 is 2x60 ? for single player games i cap my FPS at 60-100 depending on the genre only for multiplayer i cap at the 120 FPs my display can even show. overall safes up to 50% power draw depending on the game, a lot of heat and noise
I start with high settings and then tweek it, but I also don't need to have very high resolution as I prefer streaming to my steamdeck or use a smaller curved monitor
I can tell if a game is set to low or not usually easily, but I can't tell the difference between medium or higher unless I keep going back and forth between them. In most cases, low setting usually have a more solid single colour in the texture when compared to medium or higher, I usually notice this on the character's skin or hair. GoW is one of the few exceptions where I can't tell the difference between them. In all honesty, I don't mind playing all these games on low, especially since the low settings looks much better than playing older games (which I still do).
at the end of the day just make sure all settings are turned on atleast exept ray tracing. then when possible set atestropic filtering to x16 and textures to max. and screen space reflections to max. rest to low but make sure they are atleast on. then make reselution higher then display and turn off anti aliasing unless its fsr 2.0 or dlss 2.0 and enjoy high res with insane fps. and game looks amazing.
This depends on your hardware. You should ajust the resolution last, ajust the texture quality based on how much vram you have, Filtering drops your fps by like maybe 1, maybe none it's so worth having at max. If you want a nice experience using fast vsync keeps the screen tearing down without imparing your latency.
This. This has been literally me with some guys at work wanting me to help build PCs for them. Which I'm glad to do for free cause I actually like building units again. Your video is the same reason I keep telling them guys new to the gaming scene to go for a much cheaper albeit newer hardware spec PC that can easily be turned into a low powered office machine down the road. Mainly i3 12th gen and Nvidia 1660 super/ti combo. In gaming, get a pc that does a great job at lower settings like a console. I still game on a PS4 Slim, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Switch. I've never been too crazy for gaming settings and resolutions. Just want some good looking quality and framerate that doesn't let me lose even more hair from my bald self. Cause I was pretty much good with my previous GTX 1050 2gb playing Halo Infinite and Jedi Fallen Order(being my most demading games)with base clocks pushed to increase CPU clocks amd GPU power draw. A custom coded Nvidia Sharpening to make 720p as close to 1080p(more like 900p) within its driver files. Plus I had the GTX 1050 overclocked like crazy with MSI Afterburner and adding a huge heatsink from a broken R9 270 and good thermal paste and pads. I went from low at 30fps to low with some medium settings and anti aliasing at 45fps which I still capped at 30fps yet it was way smoother. And thanks to that experience I upgraded to the Nvidia Tesla M40 12gb. I upgraded to play Metro Exodus cause it was giving a bad experience no matter what I could mess with on my old GPUs 2gbs of vram, and I wasn't going any lower than it's lowest point. And as a bonus thanks to that upgrade, I test animation upscaling programs for others. And I used a broken GTX 1070 blower style heatsink on the Tesla M40 12gb. Not too quite but definitely not a jet engine...not again GTX 560ti....not again 😥 In all of that I have a PC with parts at $350 to $400 giving me a good experience and I'm able to play not only the games I enjoy at a setting and resolution I get to custom select in a way I feel comfortable with, but I'm able to do so much more at a lower cost to get a similar experience to someone paying way, way more. And thanks to all the extra money I've gotta much more expensive gifts for my family for birthdays and christmas just now. And I've even upgraded my setup for a much nicer case, fans, lightning, keyboard, mouse, storage, etc. which makes my experiences much more comfortable. The best part I've learned from personal PCs and PC gaming apart from regular console gaming which I grew up and still enjoy with. It is the vast amount of tweaking, modding, customising, settings, and programs you can run to achieve your goal not only in gaming but in so much more ways to make it your way without spending huge amounts of money. If this doesn't sound like someones cup of tea, it's okay to just play console. I played God of War abd later on again Jedi Fallen Order(which looked and ran better) on my PS4 Slim I got and repair for $70. And those games were definitely meant for controllers anyways. Whereas the Metro and Halo series, they are much better to play on PC cause a mouse amd keyboard felt to me better for FPS games in my own experience. So if someone is getting in PC gaming or is wanting to go to a way, way higher and more expensive upgrade. I'm gonna show them a video like this so they can understand that settings and resolutions are something they can mess with and before spending a butt ton of money on a PC built for way more than just games. They can instead go for a much less expensive route to play and enjoy there experience for the games and settings they want to play at.
100%!!! There is definitely a sweet spot, both in terms of the settings that look good and give good performance, and also in terms of how much to spend to get a good experience. The low end of the mid range is good for most, the high end of the mid range is good for those who want more, the high range stuff is just for enthusiasts who are willing to blow money on hardware that they really don't need to have fun (I'm guilty of this, but I'm trying to be better!).
@@TechDweeb Nothing wrong with spending money on that high end as an enthusiast. You earned that RTX 3080. And that setup is dope. Like the keyboard. If I wasn't responsible over others in my family and I had more time in my life over than a 10 and a half to a 12 hour job for four grueling days. Then I would be getting a some pretty big stuff too. 😁 Really like your videos too. There awesome. Watching some before I head to work. So keep it up! I like your style and voice. You sound a little like Rob Paulsen talking about tech and it's cool. 👍
Great video! I didn't mind embracing my inner neanderthal cave man bro when gpus where actually reasonably priced. Like the last reasonably priced high end gpu was probably the 1080ti. Now when they tell me I need to pay out $1200 to $1600 just to play videogames, I start to think default settings, 60 fps 1080p/1440p, is looking good. Even what AMD is asking for the 7900xt non-x uh, 7900xt is too much.
Oh man. The 1080 ti was such a legend. The 30 series was SUPPOSED to be just as amazing (huge generational improvement at great prices) but the shortages squashed that hope, by the time they were reasonably priced they'd worn out all their good will and AMD had competitive offerings. And of course now that we have crazy super high end flagships we have games that are cranking up their ultra settings just because they can (not because they should). That's why we're in this low-vs-ultra tug of war!
@@TechDweeb Yea, I agree. And I think Nvidia could be on a path to find themselves in a high end niche and their gpus will become crazy expensive. If you look at how they are chasing automobiles and a.i., they have other things in mind besides affordable gpus. I'm glad AMD exists.
I believe your answer key has some issues for Clip#1 at 7:09. Your multiple choice letter doesn't match the typical answer for that letter. Which is the correct answer? Depending on the answer for Clip#1, I got either 5/8 or 6/8.
I like the visual candy so I crank the settings up on 4k. As long as the game runs at around 60fps Im a happy camper. For example: I have an RTX 3060 12gb that SOTTR gets 57fps everything ultra at 4k with dlss on and it looks beautiful.
Am in a similar boat - have a 2080ti and DLSS is a godsend , for example I was able to run medium draw distance , and high/ultra settings in Plague Tale Requiem and use DLSS Quality (occasionally balanced) to get a steady 50-60fps :)
Not really! Having fps higher than your monitor will help a bit when the FPS dips in the 1% lows, but basically if your monitor is 60hz, 60fps in game is all you need.
High/ultra are just a few additionals layers and effects but they will never make the scene as reaslistic as full ray tracing (understand CGI). But seriously, graphics are not that important. Video games rely too much on graphics and not enough on story telling, atmosphere, dialog, animations, believability, music, ui (that became very flat ant MTX oriented), even game install menu back in the days were immersive. For example watching a compressed divx of Lord of the Rings in 480p gives a more pleasant experience than watching a crap movie very well rendered 4K.
@@TechDweeb yeah what I forgot to mention is having the right artstyle. For example most games nowadays have a medieval fantasy dark avenger manga mainstream style with oversized monsters that makes no sense. Whether 2K, 4K or 30K Ultra settings I can't look at those games. Nothing is more important than the right artstyle imo
I am grew up on console versions of PC games, and also had an under powered PC. So as longer as the game feels like it is going at a comfortable frame rate, doesn't freeze up, and no screen tearing, I will have a great time. Will you be doing a video about the various frame rates of gaming? Like, how consoles used to be mostly 30fps, and the rise of the 60fps, and beyond? It reminds me of the cinematic mode of movies, where folks enough it at 24fps for a movie, but scoff if it is too high as it changes how they get into the movie. What I think I am getting at is, what fps makes a game feels right?
As an ultra and RT addict, I prefer to just strangle my GPU by limiting it's temperature and fan speed, and lower only the least noticeable settings like LOD if I can't get near 60. If I can't, I'll probably end up just resorting to dlss. Also, I just found this channel from Iceberg Tech, great content.
That's a good balance. I find on games with DLSS I don't need to really worry about the settings, but I often bump them down a bit just to know that I won't dip below my framerate cap, and also to just let my GPU run cooler.
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Very informative video , i was like low looks worse and its for potatoe pc's , but actually after watching your video i realize that game if pretty fine on low , and difference is barely noticeable on side by side 😅 i have an rtx 3070 i think it can hold up for the next year's hopefully by doing some custom settings. Thanks +1 sub
I just can't really notice the difference between High and Ultras, meanwhile playing, most of cases. I'd rather check a video with optimized settings (which settings stupid NVidia Auto-Opt can't do...), and accept game as is. Otherwise if any setting is truly noticeable, I cranck that one up. But sometimes it's ridiculously high demanding, like Ray Tracing vs Path Tracing.
You are really busting some common gaming myths here, Thanks a lot for putting up such valuable information, but I am sure that GPU manufacturers will hate this video😂😂
Dont know why but even at ultra settings with a RX 6800 XT I said the game could be better 😢 im never happy with modern graphics and my brain hate when settings is not at maximum. How to change ? Change my GPU ?
I also like dual pass dlss so use 2.25 dldsr + dlss performance. will look better then native. And for amd users use a radeon virtual super reselution, highe res then native with fsr 2.0 performance setting.
Far Cry 6 I could also notice the difference from ultra to the other settings so God of war and Fary cry 6 I notice the difference in tomb raider I only notice the water but after medium or high I see no difference practically. Also there is Ray tracing which makes things worst
Wow. the comparisons are revealing. Ultra settings gain negligible advantage. My monitor is only 50Hz. So, reaching 50fps is excellent for me. Higher frame rates are invisible because the monitor only refreshes the screen at 50fps. So, the increased frame rate does nothing for me. Regardless, this video revealed that many items are often unnoticed. Shadow detail, bolts on tire rims, flower detail, et cetera are low priority items during a game. Gamers are searching for objective items. Developers place more effort in game specific items and less effort in supporting elements to conserve resources. Hence, why a handheld weapon has greater detail than pink flowers or tire hubs. thanks for the video.
I don't think presets are a good enough way to balance performance & quality, I prefer manually tweaking each setting to see which ones make the most difference in graphics and/or performance
in God of war I wanna say the difference seems quite big even with youtube compress visuals, so I magine it will be even more noticeable when playing that on your pc. maybe on some games it is not that noticeable but God of War is not one of those games I will keep watching and see if I notice the difference in the other ones but God of War seems to be worth the Ultra setting
i've noticed that if I apply ultra textures (AND Ultra Texture Filtering/Mesh Quality), I can get BF2042 most of the way there quality wise without sacrificing the performance of applying the other high-ultra settings. Textures by far make the most difference in the majority of games, and are usuallty the one setting I try and change (along with 16xAF) to upgrade from low settings while still maintaining good performance on lower-tier hardware.
@@TechDweeb yup, even turning up Anisotropic filtering can have a huge difference in the look of a game. It’s why consoles will always look muddy even with a graphics upgrade, due to devs refusing to use 16xAF, so textures in the distance will never be as crisp as they could’ve been.
It's a bit of me, and a bit of an act. I believe have a condition called VPI (Velopharyngeal insufficiency) which causes my voice to be more nasally than most people's. It was so prevalent when I was a kid that my nickname was The Dweeb when I was in gradeschool. I found out I could control the nasally-ness of my voice when I concentrate on the way I pronounce certain sounds, being careful to open the back of my throat, and I basically trained myself to talk 'normal' as I became a teenager, and now my 'normal' voice has barely a hint of The Dweeb, I can talk like a normal guy all day, but The Dweeb has sort of become my alter ego and I can slip into that voice at will. And then for these videos I embellish it by acting extra dorky. 🤓
@@TechDweeb oh wow. I was gonna say that you've done a superb job at the character. Also, it's the first time i've heard of VPI. I respect how you went full throttle with the character and made a name for yourself haha. Keep it up
Max has been dead for like 7 years. The only times it shows a big difference is with games like Exodus/Lords/mirror Edge 2, where it has an extra setting above the normal max.
I decided to go all out on my new pc. Bought a 3090. Now I'm being told that's old and buy a 4090 instead. I think I'll just stick to high if games start asking too much of us. Thanks for comparisons.
Nah that's perfectly fine, people get comfortable with luxury and forget what it was like without them, the people you're talking about are either marketer's trying to empty your pocket or reporters also trying yo empty your pocket. A 3090 is basically one of the highest end graphics cards, along with the 3090 ti, 4080 16 gb and the 4090. I have a GTX 960 4gb and the thought of having a 3090 is insane.
fps hack Cap framerate 2 frames under freesync premuim monitors refreashrate range mine is 48hrz -165hrz so I lock fps to 46fps then low frame rate compensation will kick in making 46fps look and feel smooth. becuase of the higher herts. so then you are getting 92hz at 46fps and its still enjoyable. Then you can crank up the ress and use dldsr instead of anti aliasing. Like using 1620p with dldsr looks insane on 1080p monitor and at 46fps my gpu is at 54% usage on spiderman miles morales max settings ray tracing off. rtx 2060 super. and if I use optimized low settings I get 35-40 % gpu usage. so gpu is at 54c -59c max so then my parts will last longer and use less power with less heat and noise
@@TechDweeb yea I am a gaming optimization nerd. It’s amazing how different the game will play when optimized and with Nvidia freestyle the low settings will look better then ultra. Since colors is more important then higher quality stuff other then what I mentioned previously with textures and so on
@@TechDweeb I also made a video testing low to ultra but its unlisted and in a diffrent language. made it for my friend to teach him somthing. But I teached everything. changed the colors, framerate tricks. virual higher res. monitor overclocking. moniror tuning. and nvidia freesytle. I also want to start a channel like this testing stuff but right now. I need to focus on collage. not enought free time.
Bro god of war and hell blade two are good examples. I turned it to low and my gf was like. Bro it still looks good. Just goes to show u dont need high or ultra much anymore. Medium and low could be hella optimized asf its just that companies needa put in that effort
I got 3 answers 1 setting out, 4 correct and the last I got completely wrong (maybe its just that game or the specific clip that threw me :P).. Overall, I thought I could see the differences, but I will admit it wasn't as big as I thought it would be. Things like shadow detail, shader effects and post processing you can tell the difference if you're a bit of a nitpicker like me xD
Old school PC gamer here with a fancy new Legion Go and trying to figure out if I'll miss my high end gaming laptop. Your dweeby preaching has converted yet another. You make solid points about the assumption of perceived value and it's clear to see that there's very little actual value provided by higher settings. Thank you, you freaky little guy. I appreciate you.
i went from a 1060 3gb to a 4070 ti super and i will agree that its not that crazy different now a days back then yes but now medium or high are so good ultra feels like a rip off just make sure you got decent vram and you should be fine
Great video! Haven't seen any video so far which compares the settings so well. IMO medium settings would be the way to go. And depending of course on the capabilities of a PC system, you might want to go with more details. But the point was well made by you, that basically one almost cannot tell the differences between eg mid or high settings. And usually you would move when playing the game, even less time to spot any detail in the game. I would have maybe one usecase for buying a more expensive GPU. Let's see you are about to change your GPU and dont want to renew it already in a couple of years, a more expensive model would have more power for now and could perform even new games in a couple of years much better like at least being able to display new games then in medium settings. Or would it be cheaper to buy a new GPU every, lets say 3 years to be able to play the newest games in low/medium settings? I wonder... Anyway, awesome advice!, thank you TechDweeb!!
On a small monitor and in fhd - there is not much difference. On a 4k TV with a large diagonal (at least 65") the difference is often VERY noticeable. Ah yes, any comparison of graphics in fhd video on RUclips - meaningless entirely and completely - video compression ruins everything.
Hey game dev here, I'm a tech artist and I usually do optimisation for game graphics and scripts and it's really nice for people to check out low settings in videos like these. I tend to always set low settings as how the game should be seen, if it doesn't look good at low then I talk to our level team about creating a better scene as it won't be a good or accurate scene.
Optimisation techniques have been lost to time. It's obvious, how can some Devs get a game like gears of war running on an Xbox 360? There is nothing special you can do to get it to run on that hardware, so the designers designed their artstyle around the hardware. A good analysis is silent hill, using the fog to hide mesh load in, that camera distance from the player is to hide horrible geometry.
Modern video game graphics have gotten to a point which we live in a luxury that particles can use individual light sources, realtime shadows with colour blending shadows, subsurface scattering (where light shines through objects), all at the low quality preset.
But with this, becomes a complex process which why people like us have jobs in the game industry. We are essentially the people who know how to optimise 3d graphics and code to let you run our game at low settings and not notice a major difference in fidelity. We usually just tack on the extra graphics presets for the long term for when hardware can eventually run it and it's just us turning on postfx options and engine features.
We (tech artists) came around because at the time when video games were very indie and new, they were already optimised for the very harsh low power hardware but as tools became more easier and less archaic to use, the more we think less about the game performing well on systems especially when they are just expected to run well regardless which is reckless thinking, you don't need more than 1-3gb of vram if we know how to optimise and utilise texture streaming.
Thank you for this video, I loved it. Good to know that people really appreciate optimisation because man, it's a lot of work and knowing. Tech art isn't the easiest of jobs in the games industry.
Dude thanks for sharing that. Nice to know that low settings are where the hard work is done, and then high settings is just additions and future proofing (memories of the original Crysis come to mind, people saying "Oh no PC can run at the highest settings, that's for PCs in the future"). That's the way I hope it stays. In some ways I feel like the existence of consoles (especially the low tier consoles like the Series S) is sort of saving the low end of the setting spectrum, because devs are kinda forced to optimize for lower end hardware. If games were developed with high end PCs as the goal we'd get low settings that are just derivative subtractions from the high settings (Red Dead 2 is a good example of this, the low settings look dramatically worse than even medium settings, it's obvious they just took a bunch of detail away because there's no way the game would look that bad if it was designed by hand with the low end in mind). When I fire up a game, and it runs amazing on low settings, but the game looks really good, THAT'S what gets me excited. I'd rather say "HOW did they make it look SO GOOD and run SO WELL!?" than to say "WOW look how good it looks lol my 4090 is going to catch fire".
@@TechDweeb lol playing at low with a 4080 is the smartest thing to do, super efficient at rendering.
But, but if everyone starts agreeing with you and deciding they don't need to push quality to the max, then they won't buy new graphics cards! The whole industry will crumble to dust overnight, and it's all YOUR fault!
Gameplay alwasy will be the Winners i mean look at sekiro and elden ring they 2 are hardcore game and sell more than casual ubisoft game... I hope Dev thinking more of feature of gameplay imagine skill making comeback like on bethesda title oblivian
Don't worry, they'll find a way to make it so you require an RTX 5090 to play on low.
@@TechDweeb so tru
It can't fail it's not even possible.
Company's pretend they had a bad year but that's compared to the insanely high estimation they gave themselves.
These companies have been making billions for years.
And it's all because people can't accurately measure what the product actually costs.
That's the beauty of pay to win, they always win.
I think instead this highlights the problems with quality presets. In many games you can get 90+% of the visual quality of ultra, while getting medium frame rates by going through and tuning your settings to match up specifically with the strengths and weaknesses of your hardware.
Elden Ring moment.
👆100%
I recently purchased a laptop and in the search for a balance between heat and graphical fidelity I started noticing what you are talking about. Super high graphics settings are not worth the heat they generate (I am trying to make my laptop last, not melt it into a puddle).
That's why I undervolt, cap my FPS, and run at modest settings. I like knowing I can crank the graphics when I want to but more important for me is quiet and comfort.
Your voice sounds just like your cartoon avatar if that makes sense the voice fits the toon lol
I swear some graphics settings do literally nothing but drop fps to satisfy the human hamster brain.
"Ooooooooh look how much better it MUST be!"
As a wise man once said: _"Ultra it's for screenshots, High it's for gaming"_
edit: i tweak every game, starting from medium all the settings one by one, to find the balance between visual gorgeousness and fps cost. It was necessary on my old pc with i5-3550, 2x8gb ddr3 1866mhz, gtx970, 7200rpm seagate barracuda... but i'm still optimizing games now that i game a r7-5800x, 4x8gb of 3600mhz cl16 ram, xfx merc 319 rx6750xt (with oc+uv tweaks i have same performance as an oced 3070 / more closer to stock 3070ti), 4.0 nvme for os and programs + 3.0 nvme for games, sata ssd for old gen games and my previous mechanical hard drive for backups.
I can game on ultra 1440p@144hz without issues but i prefer to have less heat and more fps at a minor visual difference 😎
I'm with ya. In this vid I just talked about the presets but when I actually choose settings I carefully go through all them and do a cost-benefit analysis of how much it affects the visuals vs how it affects the performance. By the end my settings menus look like the ramblings of a madman - a random mix of ultra and low.
are you trying to tell me to game while being high?
@@crackeddoge702 Also yes it's up to you XD
@@TechDweeb hahahaha i feel ya :)
As a person who plays at 720p low settings i had a hard time telling which was ultra or low
APU high five
I enjoy ultra low settings just fine. It saved me a lot of money over the years.
The test is not doable with youtube compression on 1080p but I do agree that while ten years ago low settings was essentially ruining the game making it look like a gba port, nowadays low on pc is equivalent to 8th gen consoles and devs make sure that even the lowest preset is somewhat respectful of their presentation and art direction. This is not like the days of the 7th gen where cod4 (og) in lowest settings looked like cs 1.5 and you could get kicked from servers since you would have grass not rendering at all and could see enemies hiding. Yeah, such an advantage my gts7300 in 1024*768 at 27fps was, server admin, lol
I have a 4080 super and I turn down settings on every game that isn't almost ten years old. Medium is usually the sweet spot for me. Smoothness matters so much more.
We need to stop caring about graphics....i grew up on nes and SNES.....trust me graphics don't make a game
I always spend hours tweaking the best performance to graphic ratio on settings, but when I'm done I'd play the 15 minutes tutorial only and never touch the game again after that. 😅
We all do 😏
Tinkering with settings was the fun part anyway
Same here. Modding and tweaking the imposible is the real game after all!?
The guy who spent 3K (at least here in Australia) on a RTX 4090 and complains he's only getting 30 fps in games on there 5K ultra 4K PC.
Yeah, but it's worth it because of the super high definition eyelashes on the NPCs.
Gigglebytes sounds like something quagmire would say
Giggity
Thank you for doing this comparison for us. I think I prefer to stay on high settings or medium after seeing this video. I will rethink if ultra is really necessary for now on. I am playing Sackboy a Big Adventure on PC, I'll test high settings to see if I see any difference.
You opened our eyes and still there people that think that the industry will crumble if everyone agree with you. For those people I suggest buying all new graphics cards to spend a lot of money and not most of the time playing barely on 4k ultra. I don't blame them, but don't blame us for give extra life for our cards.
My machine is a laptop with 3070 and it runs almost all games on 1080 ultra 60fps. The games to come in next years probably won't run at maximum, but if I put on high or even medium settings I'll ensure that I'll give to it some more years of life.
Thanks
Very well said. That's one benefit of having a GPU that can play at ultra settings today, for years to come you will still be able to play it high or medium and still have a great experience.
High frame rate > ultra Graphics
I agree on that since I'm on high refresh rate monitors.
60fps is the best framerate, if you game can run at 60fps 1% low framerate, you can tweak the settings to ultra. i have played Red Dead Redemption 2 at 45fps minimum framerate on Ultra settings (wirth DLSS) on RTX 3050 mobile refresh, that GPU is awesome, and relatively "low cost" for today laptops.
using 1080p monitor.
Ultra graphics are crap compared to medium settings.
Cranking shadows and view distance to the max is indeed a waste of fps. But texture quality is always worth keeping on ultra if you can afford it.
i think it's a lack of optimisation problem... sometime it's pointless to change video graphics... they are built for consoles in mind, not pc.. I agree with you completely!
the level of sophistication has obviously increased to the point where it is harder to discern higher settings. unless you specialize in some aspect of video game graphics development or playing professionally, the average consumer won’t notice or even care about the differences. the main thing is whether it is playable at an enjoyable level or not and whether you think as a player if the game is good or not.
I game at Ultra settings all the time. With one SMALL catch though. I game at 1024 * 768 resolution. Because I have my PC with an older projector with that native resolution and I mainly play older games with that PC. And I also love trolling everyone about buying a 3070 and playing at 4:3 768p Oblivion at Ultra High! For all the other games my Xbox S is more than enough, and cost me just 250 euros! Excellent video my friend!
Haha that's a gaming life hack right there!
"Well this is my video so who the hell cares what you think?" 👏👏👏👏👏
Forza Horizon 5 at 1440p+DLAA on a 5700X / 3060 Ti:
Very low: 182 FPS
Low: 161 FPS
Medium: 145 FPS
High: 130 FPS
Ultra: 94 FPS
Extreme: 73 FPS
I think ultra is the way to go here. While the drop from high is large, trees are horribly blurry and very easily noticeable.
Extreme is barely any different and not only is the performance drop significant but stutters also happen due to the VRAM usage getting close to 8GB!
I don't rent my basement to a family of 40 sweat shop workers to play games on low settings. I like the lights to dim when my gaming rig starts.
Are you a supervillain?
The lows were obvious but other then that it was very hard to see a differance
Maybe the best is to have mixed settings that's the beauty of pc gaming
Bang on bro. Some are negligible and just uselessly use resources
Dweeb, I think part of the reason you're seeing these small changes is because the games are console first oriented. The lowest common denominator will always be the console market. For example, this generation, every third party game will be made to run on the Series S. Because the consoles are still fairly new, right now that means on average medium to high settings on Series S at resolution (1080-1440p). As time passes and the systems become older, it is very likely that games will be running at The equivalent of PC low settings. At that point, developers usually make one set of assets and visuals, and then throw in a couple of little changes that can be implemented on the higher settings, which will be used on the PS5 and Series X, and of course, a few more little changes for PC. Basically what I'm saying is, for the vast majority of games, the lowest common denominator is a console. As such, they plan for that system and develop for the lowest system, then they splash on a nice little layer of polish for everything higher than that but it doesn't fundamentally change the core game. I wonder if this test would be different if you looked at PC only games.
I actually prefer console gaming and Xbox is my go to, but I do have a decent gaming laptop where I can definitely see a difference between lower settings and higher settings on PC only games like Europa Universalis IV and Guild Wars 2.
I'm not so sure about that. First, I can barely recall any PC only games that actually have graphical options that change the experience to a significant degree. I searched google for "PC only games" and found a few articles and they're mostly strategy games and indie games. For the really good graphical games like Half Life Alyx, they are exactly the same as I'm describing (I don't have that game but I looked up a comparison, and again, low looks nearly identical to ultra). Same thing with Total War. I'm sure there will be outliers but I think in general my point still stands - ultra settings offers marginal improvements over low settings. Maybe the fact that we have so many console games releasing on PC (and vice versa) means the devs need to spend more time making sure the games look good on the low end, but that's a good thing, that we can get games that look nearly as good at low settings but without the huge hit to fps that we get on ultra settings.
So I opened my atari 7800 emulator upscaled it to 4k and I couldn't tell any difference at all.... But thats my generation from my first atari through 8 and 16 bit and beyond, games these days all look great at any settings compared to those systems. Great video TD....good point, really like your back and forth
The reason you couldn't tell a difference is because it doesn't have ultra settings. Obviously. What we need is a re-release of Yars' Revenge with ultra settings added. But you'll need an RTX 4999 to run it.
My FPS drops when whenever I switch off my GPU RGB lights
I have fairly low PC specs for these days. An RX 590 in an old repurposed HP H620 workstation with 48gb of slow DDR3 RAM and a pair of XEON E5-2690 CPU's in it. I use "optimised" settings for Battlefield 5 and can hit 100-130 FPS in multiplayer games which helps keep the input lag as low as possible. But in AAA games it doesn't matter so much so im happy at medium and you'll be surprised at the decent FPS that i can get. In slightly older titles i can bump up to ultra and have similar or the same experience as everybody else who spend thousands on their hardware.
as someone who love ultra-graphics i couldn't tell it was so hard i though all the games where on medium to high settings
There's been previous studies done showing when a game is in motion, the average person cannot differentiate between performance or presentation settings. Nor can they differentiate between 1080P VS 4K, when the game's in motion. Diminishing returns is a nice way to put it, BS waste of money is more accurate.
Oh interesting. I assumed that about the settings but not about the resolution. Makes good sense though.
People can easily see the difference in performance man...
shadow hack set to low shadows and lower brightness in game
I grew up with weak PCs, so I can play at pretty low details and framerates and still not care. I've played Skyrim, entered a game and was shocked to see my save somehow got completely corrupted. I had some old save up, my gear was lousy, my skills were lousy, untill missus asked me why it looks so bad. Yeah, I've fired up OG instead of the remastered version and haven't noticed.
However, sometimes I do notice big time. I've already mentioned it, but after playing through the Witcher 2 and starting the Witcher 3 on medium settings, the lighting was so bad I had to wait to get a better GPU. It's a solitary case, but man those lightning effects looked awful back then.
I did notice differences between high and medium in SOTTR, I don't think it was a placebo effect. However, the absolutely awful imput lag while playing in local steam streaming made me play it at medium. I didn't really care one bit, the game looked perfectly fine to me.
It used to be different though, take Fifa 2000 for example. It looked fine to me at low settings on my Pentium 133, but when I upgraded to a Celeron 433 (Mendocino core btw, like the new AMD chips), I've set it to high and it looked like a completely different game. Same with Oblivion, try running that at lowest and highest settings. The jump in quality is just massive (the faces will still look like aliens, no matter the settings).
Oh, and in your examples, I've noticed a big difference in Far Cry with texture pop in when going up in quality. Then you went to ultra, and it looked bad again so, thank you RUclips algorithm.
Oh, and also I tried (free) GeForce now, to see what it looks like. The game I chose was AC Origins. Man, those compression artifacts were bad enough to be offputting, I don't care how ultra those settings are if it all looks like bad RUclips compression. Maybe it's different when you're closer to the server, but I'll take low settings over those glitches any day.
Haha yeah that RUclips compression is a killer. And I had the same experience with GeForce now. Great performance, but it looked like a poorly compressed video. Hopefully AV1 gives a considerable boost to the quality of game streaming in the near future.
@@TechDweeb thanks, I was wondering if you guys who are closer to streaming servers had better experience.
I only play games on a laptop so I can’t afford to melt the components to get a game to perform well. I have to stay within a certain budget anyway.
8:21
At low settings, it looks like standard console graphics and it looks way better than the Nintendo switch. PC gamers are just spoiled, not everything is about numbers just have fun that’s what gaming is all about
5/8. low frame-rate and youtube compression made it difficult. but you can still see the difference in picture quality. i agree, ultra is often not necessary, but low is just too low. medium or high is often the sweet spot for quality and performance.
Watching on youtube is different than looking at the real thing so comparison is not really good you need to test it for your self to see the difference by your self i always play on high graphics
My rig is
I5 3570
16gb 1600mhz
Rx 580 8gb
Yeah i know i dont have some insane pc or something
And i use a 1366x768p monitor
i can see so much difference in medium to high settings
But im loving to customize my own settings so some settings you can't see any difference
Very true. RUclips compression kinda killed this test :/
And that is why I'm making a 1440p PC build with similar specs to a PS5 Pro.
Art direction and medium or low settings > Ultra settings.
Darnit, this showed me how far I'm out of the loop by now 😁 - the last time I was 'seriously' gaming (for varying values of 'seriously' 😉...), 'low' settings looked more like mush in most games... But back then, 150 fps would have been absolutely unobtainable anyway - or, only for people with *waaaay* more money to sink into their rig than sense... Seems like much has happened since Borderlands 2, in 3-Player LAN Co-op Mode 😁...
Oh man Borderlands 2 was great. I played that with my cousins, some of my best gaming memories right there.
Normally, I can tell the difference, Especially when it comes to the AA method. I love playing in 4K and when there's aliasing, i gotta turn up the AA method or resolution scaling. I don't mind the lower FPS because I love taking screenshots. I have a folder of about 2K screenshots since November 2022. Once you see max settings after playing a game for awhile, it's tough to go down in fidelity. Very different comparison than just watching this video and trying to pick out what's high and low. The RUclips compression also doesn't help the case either.
Even if higher settings wastes fps what matter will it make? You will not feel a diffrens gameing in 90 fps or 120 in a singel player titel. Farcry 6 uses a engine i belive is same as farcry 3 so around 10 years old. Tomb raider i dont remeber the engine but its older to and god of war being a 2018 consol port. Reason to include this? Thank you
Here is a question for you:
Assuming you have a GPU that can play your favourite game at 4K, Medium settings and at your ideal FPS.
You now have the option of purchasing a PC Monitor.
Would you purchase a 4K Monitor or would you purchase a 1080p Monitor and (as a result) play the game at Ultra Settings?
PS I can merge this with my previous comment if you want Dweeb :)
Depend on Monitor size
24 for 1080p
27 for 1440p (Wqhd)
32 and beyond 4k
@@animationmann
I agree with the above. But what gaming experience would be better? Gaming at Ultra 1080p or Medium 4K? There is of course the option of using DSR (Nvidia) or VSR (AMD) on a 1080p Monitor...
I mean, is the higher price of a 4K Monitor worth it if you can only play at Medium settings?
Hmmm. That's a good question. I personally would get more enjoyment out of 4k than I would out of ultra settings, but realistically the CORRECT answer to this situation is aim for the middle - high settings at 1440p.
@@TechDweeb
And that was a very good/ interesting answer! Thank you TD 😁
I've found that running a game at a non-native resolution negatively impacts the visual quality far worse than lower settings. So really I think your choice depends on how likely you are to upgrade your GPU in the next year or so and how new are the games you like to play.
I could see that the tests were done appropriately and thanks for providing a lot of details. It gives a lot of insights. However, it missed on the comparison between 1440p, 4k, or 1080p. Having higher end graphics cards would definitely support 4K resolution while lower end graphics cards do not support them. Therefore, comparison should have been made between 1080p, 1440p, 4K as well to also show the difference. This would push people to buy higher end graphics cards for sure when they look at 4k resolution haha. But great review overall.
I use a 65 inch 4K TV in lieu of a monitor. Under certain conditions, the difference between high and ultra is obvious. It depends on your personal setup. Honestly, I am in love with 4K content right now.
on a 4k TV the diferencis are morwe visible, more pixels to "show the details".
No pen and my mom's makeup was all dried up but I think I guessed them all right
5800x and 1080TI user here witha 1440p 144Hz and a 2nd 1080p 60Hz display.
my 5800x runs at fixed 4GHz, 1.08V, all boosts disabled.
my 144Hz monitor runs always at 120Hz. Somehow display AND GPU use a lot more power at 144Hz. Maybe because of the 2nd 60Hz display and 120 is 2x60 ?
for single player games i cap my FPS at 60-100 depending on the genre
only for multiplayer i cap at the 120 FPs my display can even show.
overall safes up to 50% power draw depending on the game, a lot of heat and noise
I start with high settings and then tweek it, but I also don't need to have very high resolution as I prefer streaming to my steamdeck or use a smaller curved monitor
That's a gamer hack right there. Just game on lower res monitors. All your FPS issues suddenly vanish!
I can tell if a game is set to low or not usually easily, but I can't tell the difference between medium or higher unless I keep going back and forth between them. In most cases, low setting usually have a more solid single colour in the texture when compared to medium or higher, I usually notice this on the character's skin or hair. GoW is one of the few exceptions where I can't tell the difference between them.
In all honesty, I don't mind playing all these games on low, especially since the low settings looks much better than playing older games (which I still do).
at the end of the day just make sure all settings are turned on atleast exept ray tracing. then when possible set atestropic filtering to x16 and textures to max. and screen space reflections to max. rest to low but make sure they are atleast on. then make reselution higher then display and turn off anti aliasing unless its fsr 2.0 or dlss 2.0 and enjoy high res with insane fps. and game looks amazing.
This depends on your hardware. You should ajust the resolution last, ajust the texture quality based on how much vram you have,
Filtering drops your fps by like maybe 1, maybe none it's so worth having at max. If you want a nice experience using fast vsync keeps the screen tearing down without imparing your latency.
This. This has been literally me with some guys at work wanting me to help build PCs for them. Which I'm glad to do for free cause I actually like building units again. Your video is the same reason I keep telling them guys new to the gaming scene to go for a much cheaper albeit newer hardware spec PC that can easily be turned into a low powered office machine down the road. Mainly i3 12th gen and Nvidia 1660 super/ti combo.
In gaming, get a pc that does a great job at lower settings like a console. I still game on a PS4 Slim, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Switch. I've never been too crazy for gaming settings and resolutions. Just want some good looking quality and framerate that doesn't let me lose even more hair from my bald self.
Cause I was pretty much good with my previous GTX 1050 2gb playing Halo Infinite and Jedi Fallen Order(being my most demading games)with base clocks pushed to increase CPU clocks amd GPU power draw. A custom coded Nvidia Sharpening to make 720p as close to 1080p(more like 900p) within its driver files. Plus I had the GTX 1050 overclocked like crazy with MSI Afterburner and adding a huge heatsink from a broken R9 270 and good thermal paste and pads. I went from low at 30fps to low with some medium settings and anti aliasing at 45fps which I still capped at 30fps yet it was way smoother.
And thanks to that experience I upgraded to the Nvidia Tesla M40 12gb. I upgraded to play Metro Exodus cause it was giving a bad experience no matter what I could mess with on my old GPUs 2gbs of vram, and I wasn't going any lower than it's lowest point.
And as a bonus thanks to that upgrade, I test animation upscaling programs for others. And I used a broken GTX 1070 blower style heatsink on the Tesla M40 12gb. Not too quite but definitely not a jet engine...not again GTX 560ti....not again 😥
In all of that I have a PC with parts at $350 to $400 giving me a good experience and I'm able to play not only the games I enjoy at a setting and resolution I get to custom select in a way I feel comfortable with, but I'm able to do so much more at a lower cost to get a similar experience to someone paying way, way more.
And thanks to all the extra money I've gotta much more expensive gifts for my family for birthdays and christmas just now. And I've even upgraded my setup for a much nicer case, fans, lightning, keyboard, mouse, storage, etc. which makes my experiences much more comfortable.
The best part I've learned from personal PCs and PC gaming apart from regular console gaming which I grew up and still enjoy with. It is the vast amount of tweaking, modding, customising, settings, and programs you can run to achieve your goal not only in gaming but in so much more ways to make it your way without spending huge amounts of money.
If this doesn't sound like someones cup of tea, it's okay to just play console. I played God of War abd later on again Jedi Fallen Order(which looked and ran better) on my PS4 Slim I got and repair for $70. And those games were definitely meant for controllers anyways. Whereas the Metro and Halo series, they are much better to play on PC cause a mouse amd keyboard felt to me better for FPS games in my own experience.
So if someone is getting in PC gaming or is wanting to go to a way, way higher and more expensive upgrade. I'm gonna show them a video like this so they can understand that settings and resolutions are something they can mess with and before spending a butt ton of money on a PC built for way more than just games. They can instead go for a much less expensive route to play and enjoy there experience for the games and settings they want to play at.
100%!!!
There is definitely a sweet spot, both in terms of the settings that look good and give good performance, and also in terms of how much to spend to get a good experience. The low end of the mid range is good for most, the high end of the mid range is good for those who want more, the high range stuff is just for enthusiasts who are willing to blow money on hardware that they really don't need to have fun (I'm guilty of this, but I'm trying to be better!).
@@TechDweeb Nothing wrong with spending money on that high end as an enthusiast. You earned that RTX 3080. And that setup is dope. Like the keyboard.
If I wasn't responsible over others in my family and I had more time in my life over than a 10 and a half to a 12 hour job for four grueling days. Then I would be getting a some pretty big stuff too. 😁
Really like your videos too. There awesome. Watching some before I head to work. So keep it up! I like your style and voice. You sound a little like Rob Paulsen talking about tech and it's cool. 👍
You really have to wonder what these settings are even turning on sometimes for the fps to go so low
Great video! I didn't mind embracing my inner neanderthal cave man bro when gpus where actually reasonably priced. Like the last reasonably priced high end gpu was probably the 1080ti. Now when they tell me I need to pay out $1200 to $1600 just to play videogames, I start to think default settings, 60 fps 1080p/1440p, is looking good. Even what AMD is asking for the 7900xt non-x uh, 7900xt is too much.
Oh man. The 1080 ti was such a legend. The 30 series was SUPPOSED to be just as amazing (huge generational improvement at great prices) but the shortages squashed that hope, by the time they were reasonably priced they'd worn out all their good will and AMD had competitive offerings. And of course now that we have crazy super high end flagships we have games that are cranking up their ultra settings just because they can (not because they should). That's why we're in this low-vs-ultra tug of war!
@@TechDweeb Yea, I agree. And I think Nvidia could be on a path to find themselves in a high end niche and their gpus will become crazy expensive. If you look at how they are chasing automobiles and a.i., they have other things in mind besides affordable gpus. I'm glad AMD exists.
I believe your answer key has some issues for Clip#1 at 7:09. Your multiple choice letter doesn't match the typical answer for that letter. Which is the correct answer? Depending on the answer for Clip#1, I got either 5/8 or 6/8.
Oh sorry. 1 should be A)Ultra.
@@TechDweeb Thank you for the correction! And appreciate the great video and content 👍
High/medium settings are enough
I like the visual candy so I crank the settings up on 4k. As long as the game runs at around 60fps Im a happy camper. For example: I have an RTX 3060 12gb that SOTTR gets 57fps everything ultra at 4k with dlss on and it looks beautiful.
Oh for sure. DLSS makes ultra settings worthwhile. That's what I do as well.
Am in a similar boat - have a 2080ti and DLSS is a godsend , for example I was able to run medium draw distance , and high/ultra settings in Plague Tale Requiem and use DLSS Quality (occasionally balanced) to get a steady 50-60fps :)
Pardon my ignorance but does FPS above 60 matter if my monitor is 60Hz?
Not really! Having fps higher than your monitor will help a bit when the FPS dips in the 1% lows, but basically if your monitor is 60hz, 60fps in game is all you need.
Generally medium setting is the best blend of low + high good textures + lightings with higher fps
I guess this means ill be alright running a quad SLI setup with GTX 260s. THANKS TECHDWEEB!
High/ultra are just a few additionals layers and effects but they will never make the scene as reaslistic as full ray tracing (understand CGI).
But seriously, graphics are not that important. Video games rely too much on graphics and not enough on story telling, atmosphere, dialog, animations, believability, music, ui (that became very flat ant MTX oriented), even game install menu back in the days were immersive. For example watching a compressed divx of Lord of the Rings in 480p gives a more pleasant experience than watching a crap movie very well rendered 4K.
Good call with the 480p LoTR point!
@@TechDweeb yeah what I forgot to mention is having the right artstyle. For example most games nowadays have a medieval fantasy dark avenger manga mainstream style with oversized monsters that makes no sense. Whether 2K, 4K or 30K Ultra settings I can't look at those games. Nothing is more important than the right artstyle imo
I don't feel so bad about my GT 1030 now. Great post, always funny and entertaining.
The GT 1030 was the first GPU that I reviewed on my channel. It will always have a special place in my heart.
Medium/low settings is all I really need for modern games
For older, medium/high is the way to go
:Plays half life, maxes settings and still hits fps cap:
Half life 2 is the same
I am grew up on console versions of PC games, and also had an under powered PC. So as longer as the game feels like it is going at a comfortable frame rate, doesn't freeze up, and no screen tearing, I will have a great time.
Will you be doing a video about the various frame rates of gaming? Like, how consoles used to be mostly 30fps, and the rise of the 60fps, and beyond? It reminds me of the cinematic mode of movies, where folks enough it at 24fps for a movie, but scoff if it is too high as it changes how they get into the movie.
What I think I am getting at is, what fps makes a game feels right?
Great idea for a tropic!
As an ultra and RT addict, I prefer to just strangle my GPU by limiting it's temperature and fan speed, and lower only the least noticeable settings like LOD if I can't get near 60. If I can't, I'll probably end up just resorting to dlss.
Also, I just found this channel from Iceberg Tech, great content.
That's a good balance. I find on games with DLSS I don't need to really worry about the settings, but I often bump them down a bit just to know that I won't dip below my framerate cap, and also to just let my GPU run cooler.
"where can I get a keyboard like one you are using?
, neet-o!!!!"****
Here ya go!
amzn.to/3H8tPKn
I customized it with some retro keycaps from aliexpress.
www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004155396195.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.3.522045128EDqB7&algo_pvid=98f8003c-8abc-4ff6-9fc9-16c1fc3ed794&algo_exp_id=98f8003c-8abc-4ff6-9fc9-16c1fc3ed794-1&pdp_npi=3%40dis%21USD%215.08%214.77%21%21%21%21%21%40211bf3f816815176679063591d0778%2112000028219910604%21sea%21CA%21709525509&curPageLogUid=1tA7yDQSB6ci
I'm looking at the used market right now... I can get a 3060ti for 200 or 3080 for 400.. I'm leaning towards the 3060ti.. thoughts?
I love the 3060 ti, I think it's a great performer at that price point. That's what I have on my TV PC and it constantly exceeds my expectations.
Very informative video , i was like low looks worse and its for potatoe pc's , but actually after watching your video i realize that game if pretty fine on low , and difference is barely noticeable on side by side 😅 i have an rtx 3070 i think it can hold up for the next year's hopefully by doing some custom settings.
Thanks +1 sub
Thanks for saying so! And welcome :)
I just can't really notice the difference between High and Ultras, meanwhile playing, most of cases.
I'd rather check a video with optimized settings (which settings stupid NVidia Auto-Opt can't do...), and accept game as is.
Otherwise if any setting is truly noticeable, I cranck that one up. But sometimes it's ridiculously high demanding, like Ray Tracing vs Path Tracing.
but my cpu is the bottleneck so the settings dont change the framerate
for us old farts, I remember playing DOS games in CGA. Imagine the *horror* of the kids trying to play a video game not in full color.
Amber monochrome for me! I used to have DREAMS, literally, of getting a colour monitor for my 286.
@@TechDweeb Oh I was spoiled, by the time we got a 286 it was 1991 or 92?
Waste of electricity!?
But I game on sunlight!
You are really busting some common gaming myths here, Thanks a lot for putting up such valuable information, but I am sure that GPU manufacturers will hate this video😂😂
Dont know why but even at ultra settings with a RX 6800 XT I said the game could be better 😢 im never happy with modern graphics and my brain hate when settings is not at maximum. How to change ? Change my GPU ?
I also like dual pass dlss so use 2.25 dldsr + dlss performance. will look better then native. And for amd users use a radeon virtual super reselution, highe res then native with fsr 2.0 performance setting.
I love DLDSR. I turn off AA completely and just just run games at 2.25x. It's much sharper and more detailed than native with AA.
This is a must-do with Red Dead Redemption 2 in particular , DLDSR 5k+ DLSS balanced destroys 4k native TAA :)
Keep going bro i love you experiment and i brought rtx 3050 on your opinion😃and I'm very satisfied
Far Cry 6 I could also notice the difference from ultra to the other settings so God of war and Fary cry 6 I notice the difference in tomb raider I only notice the water but after medium or high I see no difference practically. Also there is Ray tracing which makes things worst
Anime games is probably the best test for this as it literally has two phases. Oh God and Wow
Wow. the comparisons are revealing. Ultra settings gain negligible advantage. My monitor is only 50Hz. So, reaching 50fps is excellent for me. Higher frame rates are invisible because the monitor only refreshes the screen at 50fps. So, the increased frame rate does nothing for me. Regardless, this video revealed that many items are often unnoticed. Shadow detail, bolts on tire rims, flower detail, et cetera are low priority items during a game. Gamers are searching for objective items. Developers place more effort in game specific items and less effort in supporting elements to conserve resources. Hence, why a handheld weapon has greater detail than pink flowers or tire hubs. thanks for the video.
bro sounds like the guy on his dp …that’s dope
I play on low settings with view distance on high so I can see more that all
I don't think presets are a good enough way to balance performance & quality, I prefer manually tweaking each setting to see which ones make the most difference in graphics and/or performance
Remember that IRL, shadows from the sun are not sharp
in God of war I wanna say the difference seems quite big even with youtube compress visuals, so I magine it will be even more noticeable when playing that on your pc. maybe on some games it is not that noticeable but God of War is not one of those games I will keep watching and see if I notice the difference in the other ones but God of War seems to be worth the Ultra setting
i've noticed that if I apply ultra textures (AND Ultra Texture Filtering/Mesh Quality), I can get BF2042 most of the way there quality wise without sacrificing the performance of applying the other high-ultra settings. Textures by far make the most difference in the majority of games, and are usuallty the one setting I try and change (along with 16xAF) to upgrade from low settings while still maintaining good performance on lower-tier hardware.
Totally. As long as you have the vram textures can be cranked up without much of a loss.
@@TechDweeb yup, even turning up Anisotropic filtering can have a huge difference in the look of a game. It’s why consoles will always look muddy even with a graphics upgrade, due to devs refusing to use 16xAF, so textures in the distance will never be as crisp as they could’ve been.
Hey man, love your videos. I have a question, no offense, but are you doing a dweeb voice?
It's a bit of me, and a bit of an act. I believe have a condition called VPI (Velopharyngeal insufficiency) which causes my voice to be more nasally than most people's. It was so prevalent when I was a kid that my nickname was The Dweeb when I was in gradeschool. I found out I could control the nasally-ness of my voice when I concentrate on the way I pronounce certain sounds, being careful to open the back of my throat, and I basically trained myself to talk 'normal' as I became a teenager, and now my 'normal' voice has barely a hint of The Dweeb, I can talk like a normal guy all day, but The Dweeb has sort of become my alter ego and I can slip into that voice at will. And then for these videos I embellish it by acting extra dorky. 🤓
@@TechDweeb oh wow. I was gonna say that you've done a superb job at the character. Also, it's the first time i've heard of VPI. I respect how you went full throttle with the character and made a name for yourself haha. Keep it up
Max has been dead for like 7 years. The only times it shows a big difference is with games like Exodus/Lords/mirror Edge 2, where it has an extra setting above the normal max.
I decided to go all out on my new pc. Bought a 3090. Now I'm being told that's old and buy a 4090 instead. I think I'll just stick to high if games start asking too much of us. Thanks for comparisons.
Nah that's perfectly fine, people get comfortable with luxury and forget what it was like without them, the people you're talking about are either marketer's trying to empty your pocket or reporters also trying yo empty your pocket. A 3090 is basically one of the highest end graphics cards, along with the 3090 ti, 4080 16 gb and the 4090. I have a GTX 960 4gb and the thought of having a 3090 is insane.
Today's 'ultra' is tomorrow's 'medium'.
@@TechDweeb very true.
fps hack Cap framerate 2 frames under freesync premuim monitors refreashrate range mine is 48hrz -165hrz so I lock fps to 46fps then low frame rate compensation will kick in making 46fps look and feel smooth. becuase of the higher herts. so then you are getting 92hz at 46fps and its still enjoyable. Then you can crank up the ress and use dldsr instead of anti aliasing. Like using 1620p with dldsr looks insane on 1080p monitor and at 46fps my gpu is at 54% usage on spiderman miles morales max settings ray tracing off. rtx 2060 super. and if I use optimized low settings I get 35-40 % gpu usage. so gpu is at 54c -59c max so then my parts will last longer and use less power with less heat and noise
Love this!
@@TechDweeb yea I am a gaming optimization nerd. It’s amazing how different the game will play when optimized and with Nvidia freestyle the low settings will look better then ultra. Since colors is more important then higher quality stuff other then what I mentioned previously with textures and so on
@@TechDweeb I also made a video testing low to ultra but its unlisted and in a diffrent language. made it for my friend to teach him somthing. But I teached everything. changed the colors, framerate tricks. virual higher res. monitor overclocking. moniror tuning. and nvidia freesytle. I also want to start a channel like this testing stuff but right now. I need to focus on collage. not enought free time.
Bro god of war and hell blade two are good examples. I turned it to low and my gf was like. Bro it still looks good. Just goes to show u dont need high or ultra much anymore. Medium and low could be hella optimized asf its just that companies needa put in that effort
13:11 playing too much tomb raider 😏
You're not wrong
I got 3 answers 1 setting out, 4 correct and the last I got completely wrong (maybe its just that game or the specific clip that threw me :P).. Overall, I thought I could see the differences, but I will admit it wasn't as big as I thought it would be. Things like shadow detail, shader effects and post processing you can tell the difference if you're a bit of a nitpicker like me xD
Old school PC gamer here with a fancy new Legion Go and trying to figure out if I'll miss my high end gaming laptop. Your dweeby preaching has converted yet another. You make solid points about the assumption of perceived value and it's clear to see that there's very little actual value provided by higher settings. Thank you, you freaky little guy. I appreciate you.
After yrs of playing GTA San Andreas on a PS2 everything is beautiful 😍
i went from a 1060 3gb to a 4070 ti super and i will agree that its not that crazy different now a days back then yes but now medium or high are so good ultra feels like a rip off just make sure you got decent vram and you should be fine
Great video! Haven't seen any video so far which compares the settings so well. IMO medium settings would be the way to go. And depending of course on the capabilities of a PC system, you might want to go with more details. But the point was well made by you, that basically one almost cannot tell the differences between eg mid or high settings. And usually you would move when playing the game, even less time to spot any detail in the game. I would have maybe one usecase for buying a more expensive GPU. Let's see you are about to change your GPU and dont want to renew it already in a couple of years, a more expensive model would have more power for now and could perform even new games in a couple of years much better like at least being able to display new games then in medium settings. Or would it be cheaper to buy a new GPU every, lets say 3 years to be able to play the newest games in low/medium settings? I wonder... Anyway, awesome advice!, thank you TechDweeb!!
if u need hardcore gaming u no need ultra graphics. but if u need cinematic slow gameplay ultrasetting is good.
Dweeb senpai I just jumped into the dark side and joined the PC master race
I got every single one wrong in the blind test. Im not a PC player tho.
1-c
2-a
3-d
4-c
5-c
6-d
7-d
8-a
3/8 wow
On a small monitor and in fhd - there is not much difference.
On a 4k TV with a large diagonal (at least 65") the difference is often VERY noticeable.
Ah yes, any comparison of graphics in fhd video on RUclips - meaningless entirely and completely - video compression ruins everything.
i think we can all make our own choice here.