Gaming at Max Settings is Really Dumb

[Plouffe]

Why do max settings even exist if we can barely run them? Should you buy a 3080 or 3090 if you have an older monitor, or will your older card keep you afloat for the time being?

 

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[da na]

Me with an RX 460 and 720p monitor: yes

[Chris Pratt]

DigitalFoundry often tests various quality settings for performance impact and what level(s) actually noticeably improve or reduce quality for the PC games they review. That's been really helpful to me for squeezing out every last bit of performance while still being a quality snob. I like eye candy, but the 3060 Ti I got for $500 is just about as much as I'm willing to part with for the privilege.

[RejZoR]

You guys kinda missed the point. Also using just Metro as an example is a bit weak.

 

And to the subject of high quality settings vs low quality settings looking identical, that's not quite true. Especially today when we have actual real time ray tracing. The issue is this physical computation of lighting is super demanding. But through years, we learned to fake things so well a lot of people can't distinguish faked effects from realistically done ones. But you'll create a huge performance gap with it. And if in the past effects were being left out entirely at lower settings, today it's more a scale between faked ones and real ones or instead of having something either fully ON or fully OFF, they perform it using less samples at lower levels. Effect will still be there, but won't be as accurate. Then there is screen space reflections vs ray traced reflections. For untrained eye or unseasoned gamer, faked stuff will look just as good. But if you're a gamer for 30 years and you just can't stand screen space flooring reflection being misaligned with windows in the room, you'll want the real deal. Some might say it's a petty reason, but the stupid misaligned reflections have bothered me for all this time and I'm shocked no one tried to perform perspective correction on them so it would be perfectly aligned with light sources and user's field of vision. Yet we went from dumb faked screen space reflections straight to super demanding ray tracing.

 

You can use 8x anisotropic filter, but why would you when there is 16x and would give you uncompromisingly sharp ground textures at any distance? You can use 4x MSAA and it'll give you smooth image, but why not use 8x MSAA which will give you uncompromising edger smoothness under all conditions where 4x might sometimes create eye sore with the jaggies? Why use SSAO when HBAO+ has much higher precision and might not visually artifact at any point where SSAO might in few places? Why use screen space reflections if you can use ray tracing? Everything I listed will be indistinguishable for most casual people, but when you're a gamer for really long, these things are important and matter. To some at least.

 

Most effects are very progressive and adaptive today where in the past they were just there or they weren't. Which is why it's harder to spot the differences today compared to lets say the 90's. So, really we just got very good at faking things. Which is not bad because we can have decent visuals at small expense.

[themrsbusta]

3 hours ago, Plouffe said:

Why do max settings even exist if we can barely run them? Should you buy a 3080 or 3090 if you have an older monitor, or will your older card keep you afloat for the time being?

 

Simple: If you have a 22 inch monitor makes no difference, but if you have a 30+ inch monitor and you seat at 1,5 meters of distance, makes all difference.

Really guys? C'mon, I remember Linus putting a Titan V in Ultra on his home rig because he can't see the pedestrians in Anno 1880 with his 40 inch TV...

"Ultra" isn't dumb, you just don't tested every case.

[Egg-Roll]

"Our resident gamer god"... God? More like a true gamer... A true gamer can usually tell the difference (based on game and monitor), is it worth it or not is a different story.

Please stop putting people who clearly don't game (on computers, outside of high FPS/competitive games) or don't care and expect them to resemble the masses who are going to play games with resolution and quality in mind vs balls to the walls FPS...

At 5:30 there are clear differences outside of the 2>4K and draw distance. The fire is far more animated the shadows are more lively, the over all quality is just better and that's me watching a compressed hellhole of a YouTube video instead of actually playing the game... Equally you don't need a 4K monitor to make use of Ultra, it's a nice to have but not needed...

 

Maybe once the pandemic is over actually invite real gamers over (who play other than high FPS games) to test their abilities to see the difference instead of doing this and calling/claiming it accurate? As sometimes taking the hit in FPS is oh so worth it, even if it doesn't feel like it should number wise. Plus anything over 30FPS that's not real time online PvP/E gaming is basically playable. However that's user preference more than anything.

[Vishera]

As a developer myself,here is my take on the topic:

Ultra settings - That's a setting we optimize for looks,the best looking it can be at the expense of performance.

High settings - Ultra settings optimized,looks similar to Ultra settings,best of two worlds - performance and looks.

Medium settings - We disable an effect here,reduce the quality of another,it's a noticeable downgrade from high settings,balance of performance and looks.

Low settings - Effects are either disabled or at the lower quality,optimized for performance,it may look ugly but it's faster.

 

I strongly recommend to use the High settings if you can.

[Luscious]

I'm gonna have to call BS on this piece, simply because there is a massive difference between games and their settings. When I got into PC gaming it was FPS all day all the way (Far Cry, HL2, Doom 3). Today I find myself playing games that are NOT high frame rate and first-person shooters (golf sim, truck sim, cities skylines, WoW, snooker, pinball, casino, car design, etc...) The drastic difference in frame rate on these games is barely noticeable, yet cranking up the quality settings has very noticeable improvements. My monitor is a 3440x1440 panel running off a 980Ti.

 

Yeah, I would love to upgrade that 980Ti to a 3080Ti... if I could even get my hands on one let alone FOUR. But while I paid $800 for my EK blocked 980Ti, that newer EK blocked 3080Ti now runs over $1400 - that's a considerable markup, and questionable given the manufacturing cost of the card. So that 6 year old GPU I have will need to keep grinding well into NEXT YEAR before I get any realistic chance to swap it out. It's definitely lived a long life.

 

Quality settings impacting frame rate can be trivial. I got into GTA V fairly late and played through a major chunk of the campaign on medium settings, only to see later that I could get better image quality on higher details without affecting game play or frame rate. Did I feel cheated out of a better game experience? Perhaps, except that I can always play it again or reset my progress. I was definitely happy though playing through the remainder of the game being able to enjoy the new eye candy.

 

Changing and upgrading monitors can also play into this. Just bumping up resolution can make an acceptable game play chug along and make your GPU feel inadequate. The same can happen when you push refresh rate. Then it's the chase to upgrade your GPU to go along with the monitor swap, then your CPU isn't quick enough, then the mobo needs to go... At that rate we are replacing the entire PC - do you even call it an "upgrade" at that point?

 

All that said, my setup doesn't at all feel slow, despite the fact that at 6 years old now many would have thrown out the hardware I still run. Again, it just depends on the type of game that you play. Even with demanding titles like X-Plane so much can be done by tweaking the finer details and sliders to nail in that frame rate target you want without impacting image quality. At the end of the day it's always better to run a game even at lower settings than not be able to run that game at all.

[PocketNerd]

1 hour ago, Luscious said:

All that said, my setup doesn't at all feel slow, despite the fact that at 6 years old now many would have thrown out the hardware I still run. Again, it just depends on the type of game that you play. Even with demanding titles like X-Plane so much can be done by tweaking the finer details and sliders to nail in that frame rate target you want without impacting image quality. At the end of the day it's always better to run a game even at lower settings than not be able to run that game at all.

 

Wait, so you call BS but you also agree with the premise?

 

I think most people are reacting to the title rather than taking a look at what the premise is. There's no point to getting a 3090 if you have a 1080p 60hz monitor and aren't planning on upgrading. Likewise, there's almost no point in getting a i9/r9 CPU (heck, even i7/r7) if your focus is -just- games and you aren't pairing with a high refresh rate monitor. Why waste your money when you can put it towards some other aspect of the build or save it for the next one?

Of course, if you don't give a shit about any of that and just want to inflate your gamer ego I get it and can't really stop you.

[iRazorXS]

Hi all, does anyone know which case it is in the Intro at 0:18 ? 

The aluminium one with the semi-open side panel. Is it a custom cut on this panel ? 

[Luscious]

8 hours ago, PocketNerd said:

 

Wait, so you call BS but you also agree with the premise?

 

I think most people are reacting to the title rather than taking a look at what the premise is. There's no point to getting a 3090 if you have a 1080p 60hz monitor and aren't planning on upgrading. Likewise, there's almost no point in getting a i9/r9 CPU (heck, even i7/r7) if your focus is -just- games and you aren't pairing with a high refresh rate monitor. Why waste your money when you can put it towards some other aspect of the build or save it for the next one?

Of course, if you don't give a shit about any of that and just want to inflate your gamer ego I get it and can't really stop you.

Not sure I understand your point there. I call BS on it because depending on the TYPE of game you're playing going max settings can either have a substantial effect or very little effect. For frame rate sensitive games that means no slideshow. But for games that aren't frame rate targeted it will most likely mean a boost in image quality and detail.

 

I mention my setup purely because it still plays those other non-high-frame-rate focused games particularly well.and I can still enjoy a relatively high resolution 3440x1440 and even 4K60 if I enable 4-way SLI. The 980Ti was perhaps the ONLY GPU to scale linearly across 1-2-3-4 cards in more than one game tested at the time, but picking the right driver for that to work was key.

 

I agree a 3090 won't help you if you are struggling with 1080P. Similarly, for a lot of people going up just one generation of GPU isn't worth it. But for some on older hardware who don't want to completely hose their setup and replace everything just that simple GPU upgrade is all it takes to keep their gaming rig online and play the games they want, especially if they don't have the money to buy a complete new PC. It's a whole other question after that if you are buying new/used, msrp/scalper or just need a particular GPU that's matched with the other hardware you're using.

[LAwLz]

It's good to see LTT make some good content for once. This is something I have been advocating for ages now and I really appreciate you also saying it.

Also, a lot of comments in this thread and in the Youtube comments reminds me of audiophiles that swear they can hear the difference between a 99.9% silver cable and a regular copper cable because they have honed their senses so much...

 

I think people WANT to feel special and look down on others so they fool themselves into thinking they can tell the difference. On top of that, they probably want to justify spending a lot of money on something they don't actually need, so they convince themselves that it was a good buy.

[Vishera]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

It's good to see LTT make some good content for once. This is something I have been advocating for ages now and I really appreciate you also saying it.

Also, a lot of comments in this thread and in the Youtube comments reminds me of audiophiles that swear they can hear the difference between a 99.9% silver cable and a regular copper cable because they have honed their senses so much...

 

I think people WANT to feel special and look down on others so they fool themselves into thinking they can tell the difference. On top of that, they probably want to justify spending a lot of money on something they don't actually need, so they convince themselves that it was a good buy.

In the games i work on we remove the Ultra settings from the options,since with the high settings there is no need for the Ultra settings...

[MultiGamerClub]

Cranking it to the max is not the same anymore when i first got a 1070 for 4000NOK.. Jumping to a 2080S and it felt good running Cyberpunk 2077 all maxed out at stable 60fps ish until it got a patch.

 

Maybe one day the feeling will find myself again.