Quality Settings - What quality settings do you adjust first for better framerates?

[Actaeon]

I'm getting back into some more modern PC gaming (I was just playing older games for a while) and realized there is a whole new slew of quality settings that didn't exist just a few years ago.

MSAA
SMAA
SSAO
FXAA
TressFX
HDAO
AAA
SSAA

I don't really know what many of these things are. I assume anything with an 'AA' in them is some variation of Anti-Aliasing, but the quality differences and performance hits between them are a little unclear. I've learned that TressFX seems to make Lara Croft's hair look better.

Anyway, I'm not looking for an explanation as to what each of these things are, I can look that up myself, I was just sharing that its a little overwhelming with the options we have available. But I would like to understand the process you use to adjust settings that achieves the highest quality possible while maintaining smooth gameplay.

I know it won't be apples to apples for everyone as we all run different configurations, but surely there must be settings that are the first to go because they are demanding while only offering minor improvement and there are also a set of must have settings for image quality that we wouldn't want to sacrifice.

So... what settings are must have? What settings are the first to go? What are the viable substitute for another setting that gives almost the same quality but much better performance?

Thanks.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

AA typically is where I start, and then Shadows.

Or buy a better/more video cards (usually my first choice)

 

[Actaeon]

AA typically is where I start, and then Shadows.

Or buy a better/more video cards (usually my first choice)

Thanks, do you disable AA altogether, lower the AA setting (4x to 2x), or move to a different version of AA?

To your 2nd point, I'm already doing that by buying a better GPU setup. A pair of 290Xs that are on sale. With my current 1080p display I expect to run everything maxed out pretty easily but I'm now looking at 4K displays I am just wondering what sacrifices I'll need to start making for when I do.

 

[Actaeon]

Found this article that was posted last month. Haven't had the chance to review it yet, but looks to be helpful. I'll be checking this out.

http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-graphics-options-explained/

 

[BSim500]

I'm getting back into some more modern PC gaming (I was just playing older games for a while) and realized there is a whole new slew of quality settings that didn't exist just a few years ago.

For various AA methods (inc screenshots), try this (pages 6-9):-
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/03/12/crysis_3_video_card_performance_iq_review/6

In short:-

MSAA - Multi-Sampling AA. Basically what's been the "norm" for years. Most people use as standard in the driver level if game doesn't support it.

FXAA - Fast approximate anti-aliasing. Like a "post-process" AA filter - it's very fast but can be a bit blurry.

SMAA - Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing. Works like FXAA but generally better and less blurry.

SSAA - Super-Sampling AA. Probably the slowest. Works by rendering higher internally then downsampling. Avoid if performance is your priority.

TXAA - Temporal (works on time rather than space). Can be a bit blurry. Not that good quality/performance ratio last time I looked.

SSAO / HDAO - Screen space ambient occlusion. This can be very GPU heavy. I've seen it soak up +40% GPU on some games. It can also be the most subtle, ie, on vs off is far less noticeable than AA on vs off. Personally this is the option I'd turn down / off first for better performance with the least noticeable difference.

TressFX - Turn this off too if you want more fps. Caused stable 60-> 25fps drops off vs on in Tomb Raider.

Personally in order of priority (first to go -> last to go) I'd choose:-

1. Depth of Field / Motion blur / head-bob (mainly because I personally dislike the often unrealistic / overdone effects and turn them off anyway regardless of performance)
2. SSAO / HDAO & TressFX (such a massive negative performance impact for often little visual difference).
3. Swap MSAA for faster SMAA
4. Ultra -> High shadow quality
5. Ultra -> High texture quality
6. High -> Med shadow quality
7. High -> Med texture quality
8. Med -> Low shadow quality
9. Reduce draw distance (of large open-world games)
10. Lower resolution below native TFT
11. Disable AA

Whilst I have happily turned down Ultra textures to High or Medium in a number of past games with little "enjoyment reduction", "low" quality texture setting is often a step too far in a number of games. I'd also never actually disable AA and have never had to lower resolution below native 1080p as Ultra to Medium + SSAO off has always made 1080p Med playable even on budget cards (eg, 7790 / 750Ti).

A lot of your question is entirely subjective though. Some people don't even notice jaggies, whilst they irritate me enough that I'd never play any game without AA (even isometric RPG's / RTS's). I hate 720p -> 1080p upscaling but others don't mind it, etc. Reduced draw distance affects gameplay beyond eye candy. Realistically though, if a game still didn't run well after hitting 7-8 in list above, I'd simply put it aside and save it for a GFX upgrade.

Edit : You really have to work out what bothers you the most. I'd pick 60fps-Med over 30fps-Ultra every time and seem to be relatively "insensitive" to SSAO in general. Others though are quite happy sticking to Ultra even at 30fps. It's ultimately down to personal preference, and there really is no "one size fits all" right answer.

Edit 2 : And like you I play as many older games as new ones and have long appreciated that "eye candy" and "fun" are two completely different things...

 

[skipsneeky2]

Motion blur is always off in my games, then followed by MSAA unless the game is pretty dated then there's a moderate setting enabled.

 

[Rakehellion]

SSAO looks like ass. Give me real AO.

I just crank everything to the maximum setting. I use the fastest 4x AA available for the engine. I like to keep shader detail at the max if possible.

 

[futurefields]

IMO it always depends on the game

for example most games dont require anything for anisotropic filtering but its actually one of the bigger ones on the newest COD

 

[futurefields]

i kinda of like the fake SSAO

it tends to stand out more than the more refined HBAO

and i like things that stand out, versus things that are computationally expensive and only barely noticeable

 

[xantub]

Typically I reduce shadows to the minimum (without disabling them), remove bloom, set it to a 2x AA, disable anisotropic filter. Other than that I don't require a high FPS, as long as it is 20 or more I'm peachy.

 

[Rakehellion]

i kinda of like the fake SSAO

it tends to stand out more than the more refined HBAO

and i like things that stand out, versus things that are computationally expensive and only barely noticeable

SSAO stands out because the algorithm is obviously incorrect. VAO is best.

 

[Actaeon]

For various AA methods (inc screenshots), try this (pages 6-9):-
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/03/12/crysis_3_video_card_performance_iq_review/6

In short:-

MSAA - Multi-Sampling AA. Basically what's been the "norm" for years. Most people use as standard in the driver level if game doesn't support it.

FXAA - Fast approximate anti-aliasing. Like a "post-process" AA filter - it's very fast but can be a bit blurry.

SMAA - Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing. Works like FXAA but generally better and less blurry.

SSAA - Super-Sampling AA. Probably the slowest. Works by rendering higher internally then downsampling. Avoid if performance is your priority.

TXAA - Temporal (works on time rather than space). Can be a bit blurry. Not that good quality/performance ratio last time I looked.

SSAO / HDAO - Screen space ambient occlusion. This can be very GPU heavy. I've seen it soak up +40% GPU on some games. It can also be the most subtle, ie, on vs off is far less noticeable than AA on vs off. Personally this is the option I'd turn down / off first for better performance with the least noticeable difference.

TressFX - Turn this off too if you want more fps. Caused stable 60-> 25fps drops off vs on in Tomb Raider.

Personally in order of priority (first to go -> last to go) I'd choose:-

1. Depth of Field / Motion blur / head-bob (mainly because I personally dislike the often unrealistic / overdone effects and turn them off anyway regardless of performance)
2. SSAO / HDAO & TressFX (such a massive negative performance impact for often little visual difference).
3. Swap MSAA for faster SMAA
4. Ultra -> High shadow quality
5. Ultra -> High texture quality
6. High -> Med shadow quality
7. High -> Med texture quality
8. Med -> Low shadow quality
9. Reduce draw distance (of large open-world games)
10. Lower resolution below native TFT
11. Disable AA

Whilst I have happily turned down Ultra textures to High or Medium in a number of past games with little "enjoyment reduction", "low" quality texture setting is often a step too far in a number of games. I'd also never actually disable AA and have never had to lower resolution below native 1080p as Ultra to Medium + SSAO off has always made 1080p Med playable even on budget cards (eg, 7790 / 750Ti).

A lot of your question is entirely subjective though. Some people don't even notice jaggies, whilst they irritate me enough that I'd never play any game without AA (even isometric RPG's / RTS's). I hate 720p -> 1080p upscaling but others don't mind it, etc. Reduced draw distance affects gameplay beyond eye candy. Realistically though, if a game still didn't run well after hitting 7-8 in list above, I'd simply put it aside and save it for a GFX upgrade.

Edit : You really have to work out what bothers you the most. I'd pick 60fps-Med over 30fps-Ultra every time and seem to be relatively "insensitive" to SSAO in general. Others though are quite happy sticking to Ultra even at 30fps. It's ultimately down to personal preference, and there really is no "one size fits all" right answer.

Edit 2 : And like you I play as many older games as new ones and have long appreciated that "eye candy" and "fun" are two completely different things...

Thank you! This is precisely the kind of feedback I was looking for. I reviewed the HardOCP article and it was very helpful in explaining the differences between the various AA settings. Looks like the FXAA is the one to stay away from, while the SMAA may be a decent compromise. I reviewed a few other similar articles that covered a few of these as well.

Another 'throwaway' from what I gathered are the bloom settings too. This falls in the same category as motion blur and depth of field to me. Looks pretty, but too distracting.

You make a great point, it'll be up to personal preference. Once I get my new hardware in I'll start to play around with them. It was great hearing your personal preferences though.

And yes, I like playing what most people would call older or non-graphic intensive games. Game doesn't have to be brand new or graphically intensive to be fun. Diablo, Walking Dead, Starcraft, Portal, etc. I usually wait for games to go on sale through Steam, then play them. With the next generation console games finally starting to be on sale, I've started to be more interested in these more recent releases. I know games like Assassins Creed 4 is a bit demanding.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Motion blur is always off in my games, then followed by MSAA unless the game is pretty dated then there's a moderate setting enabled.

Thank you, agree that stuff like motion blur are the first to go. MSAA sounds like a viable fall back position for AA settings.

SSAO looks like ass. Give me real AO.

I just crank everything to the maximum setting. I use the fastest 4x AA available for the engine. I like to keep shader detail at the max if possible.

I will experience the SSAO and AO for myself. Can't say I've ever seen it in action. I will try to crank everything to max then if its choppy, use some of the suggestions here to smooth out the game play.

 

[Actaeon]

IMO it always depends on the game

for example most games dont require anything for anisotropic filtering but its actually one of the bigger ones on the newest COD

Good to know, thanks. The more recent CODs are also on my radar. The last one I played was Modern Warfare 2 I think. Though I do think I have a copy of Black Ops somewhere I need to play.

Typically I reduce shadows to the minimum (without disabling them), remove bloom, set it to a 2x AA, disable anisotropic filter. Other than that I don't require a high FPS, as long as it is 20 or more I'm peachy.

Thanks. I looked at a few articles and Shadows seem to be one of the first to go. Just chunkier shadows instead of smoother shadows. I'm OK with that. Bloom was another one I found too.

Interesting you disable AF. I thought that was a non-taxing setting, yet provides a good image quality benefit for texture quality. I figured that would be one of the last to go?

 

[alcoholbob]

AA, SSAO, and Shadows. Turn these down and even 4K is pretty easy to run.

 

[escrow4]

AA, SSAO, and Shadows. Turn these down and even 4K is pretty easy to run.

True, From memory my 780Ti GHz @ 1200p in AC4 ran at a solid 60FPS with AA disabled and shadows adjusted. Rest maxed.

In Far Cry 4 say, you will have HBAO and PCSS shadows, both of which are Nvidia only (and will whack your FPS), along with Hairworks, Nvidia's version of TressFX.

I normally disable AA by default and up the rest, only enabling AA if anything is left in the tank.

 

[AdamantC]

The first things to go are DoF, Bloom, and HDR because they annoy the ever living hell out of me 99% of the time, and I only tend to use AA (blurry full screen AA like FXAA needs to die in a fire.) if a game is exceptionally noisy.
Then comes shadows, fancy lighting like AO, and draw distance and LoD settings.

I pretty much refuse to lower model and texture quality unless they are causing a major performance problem.

 

[BSim500]

Another 'throwaway' from what I gathered are the bloom settings too. This falls in the same category as motion blur and depth of field to me. Looks pretty, but too distracting.

I find bloom / HDR (High Dynamic Range) varies from game to game. Oblivion & Skyrim can look superb with them on with little performance difference. Such games are usually highly moddable so you can adjust the level to suit personal preference. In fact, even some 90's games have been patched to add bloom (Thief, etc) which really adds a lot to ambient lighting. It depends on implementation. One thing I hate is developers who just because they can use an effect / shader - go and way overdo it. Bloom / HDR done well can look great, but over-done "snow-blindness" just looks silly. Likewise, if I saw someone walking down the street with the same head movement as reflected in some games "head bob", I'd immediately rush them to the nearest spinal injury unit... :biggrin:

Another thing I should clarify is shadows & textures. In some games, performance drops due to shadows can be quite large with little visible difference, so in those I'd drop shadows to "low" first. In other poorly optimised games, "Ultra" may run at 30fps vs "High" at 50fps (just an example), yet the only difference may be ultra uses uncompressed textures. But since High weren't over-compressed in the first place, they literally look no different, but on a GFX card with less memory, it can slash fps by 60% or so due to soaring VRAM requirement inflation. Again, it's a game specific thing.

 

[Zenoth]

Two things generally-speaking...

1) Shadows: Lower them, from say... Ultra, down to High, or Medium, or just turning them off occasionally in certain types of games in which I don't care having them off, Diablo 3 (for example) or most RTSes, etc.

2) Anti-Aliasing: Lowering that of course from the common 4x or 8x down to 2x such as the usual 2x AA used in CryEngine games, or just the Crysis series anyway, and the higher the screen resolution the lower AA can be without seeing a plethora of jagged edges everywhere.

And, sometimes, lowering the screen resolution if the above doesn't give better (satisfying-enough) results.

 

[Wardawg1001]

It's been covered in more detail by others but I'll just throw my vote in for the following which are usually the items I first start changing when I want to get better performance without sacrificing on visual quality too much.

1. Motion Blur / Depth of Field - These can both be big resource hogs in some games (though some games they don't make much of a difference). Personally I always turn these settings off anyway as I just don't like the 'realistic' feel they are trying to provide.

2. Shadows - This is your best bet for some quick performance improvement, especially if you are just trying to squeeze out a little more performance. Again it varies somewhat from game to game, but I find that in most games I can get more performance improvement by simply going from 'high' shadows to 'no' shadows than I will get from dropping any other 2-3 settings combined.

3. Antialiasing / Anisotropic Filtering - These settings can be massive resource hogs, but they are usually the most important graphics effect in terms of overall graphics quality. I try to keep these as high as I can, but as long as you don't turn them off entirely or put them at the very lowest settings, the graphics quality doesn't suffer too massive a hit.

4. Random Other Settings - The available settings will be different in each game, but this includes things like texture quality, assorted 'visual effect' qualities (e.g. spell animations), bloom, HDR, etc. Usually these aren't high value in terms of performance gain, but if you are really struggling to run a game at a playable FPS, then start in on these.

5. Resolution - Personally I hate changing this setting, I like to run at 1920x1080 under pretty much any circumstance, even if it means turning down almost every other setting. That said, if you just can't get good performance at your current resolution, even a small downgrade on the resolution size can provide a massive boost in performance, which may even allow you to go back and turn up some of those other graphics settings for an overall better performance AND better graphics quality. This is always my last resort though.

 

[Black Octagon]

I disable AA altogether

 

[Zeze]

All my life, disabling AA immediately massively improves performance (15-20%) for virtually little benefit for non-FPS (like Diablo or Dota 2).

As well as Vsync.

My 3 year old budget PC ($600) of i3-2120 and HD 6870 runs Dota 2 beautifully at 1080x with max settings except AA & Vsync. Even Crysis 3 ran smooth at 60 fps~ at all High + no AA/Vsync. God that game was pretty.

 

[JeffMD]

I am a lover of ssao.. and anyone who thinks the difference is small is blind as a bat.

It is a sizeable gpu hit, although I find I can survive it using the lowest ssao quaity setting and still have ssao look good. I am excited to see the new ssao settings on my 970gtx.

 

[Bateluer]

TressFX - Turn this off too if you want more fps. Caused stable 60-> 25fps drops off vs on in Tomb Raider.

Out of curiosity, what video card and resolution were getting drops like that? The Radeon 7950B I played through Tomb Raider first on didn't experience a drop like that at 1440p; it was ~30%. I'd have to do another playthrough with the 290X, but from the in game benchmark, its drop is far less than the 7950B.

Edit : You really have to work out what bothers you the most. I'd pick 60fps-Med over 30fps-Ultra every time and seem to be relatively "insensitive" to SSAO in general. Others though are quite happy sticking to Ultra even at 30fps. It's ultimately down to personal preference, and there really is no "one size fits all" right answer.

Edit 2 : And like you I play as many older games as new ones and have long appreciated that "eye candy" and "fun" are two completely different things...

Agreed. Its highly subjective, and varies by the genre greatly. There are people on Reddit that swear they've dropped their CSGO settings to 1080p/low just to get 144fps on their 144Hz display. I'd never do that; whats the point of buying high end hardware if you can't oogle the eye candy?

Personally, my standard process is to turn everything to maximum. Then start dialing down selectively if I find the frame rate insufficient for my enjoyment of the game.

 

[Eric1987]

Thanks, do you disable AA altogether, lower the AA setting (4x to 2x), or move to a different version of AA?

To your 2nd point, I'm already doing that by buying a better GPU setup. A pair of 290Xs that are on sale. With my current 1080p display I expect to run everything maxed out pretty easily but I'm now looking at 4K displays I am just wondering what sacrifices I'll need to start making for when I do.

1080p is pointless with that good of a card. 2 is especially pointless at 1080p.

 

[JeffMD]

1080p is pointless with that good of a card. 2 is especially pointless at 1080p.

lolwut? wait till far cry 4 and unity come out before you start spouting drivel like that. All the benchmarks you see today are doing 60fps..maxed out.. on games 1 and 2 years old.