What are the first settings you turn down to boost FPS?

[YoungBlade]

You loaded up a game for the first time, put it on max settings, but you're getting just below an acceptable framerate for the game.

 

What are the first setting(s) you would try turning down to raise your framerate?

 

For me, I generally try turning down post processing effects first, as in most games, it tends to have a big performance impact compared to other settings while not doing much that's really noticeable to me. I'll also try turning down shadows, as generally, Ultra shadows look about the same as High, but have a huge performance hit associated with them. RT shadows in particular generally seem bad in terms of the performance hit vs visual improvement.

 

On the flip side, I usually try to keep textures, view distance, and level of detail as high as possible, as bad textures, pop-in, and texture pop-in are all big pet peeves of mine. So I'll gladly give up 20-30% performance if I can mitigate those while maintaining 60+ fps.

[Tan3l6]

Motion blur is a sickness needed to be rooted out. First thing in every game that offers it.

[podkall]

I usually try first reflections then ambient-occlusion/post-processing

[Tan3l6]

Yeah, in Witcher 2 days there was also the chromatic aberration - gave very little in terms of visual fidelity, but cost a lot in frames per second.

[Agall]

10 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

You loaded up a game for the first time, put it on max settings, but you're getting just below an acceptable framerate for the game.

 

What are the first setting(s) you would try turning down to raise your framerate?

 

For me, I generally try turning down post processing effects first, as in most games, it tends to have a big performance impact compared to other settings while not doing much that's really noticeable to me. I'll also try turning down shadows, as generally, Ultra shadows look about the same as High, but have a huge performance hit associated with them. RT shadows in particular generally seem bad in terms of the performance hit vs visual improvement.

 

On the flip side, I usually try to keep textures, view distance, and level of detail as high as possible, as bad textures, pop-in, and texture pop-in are all big pet peeves of mine. So I'll gladly give up 20-30% performance if I can mitigate those while maintaining 60+ fps.

Its a toss between Shadows and post processing, usually depending on if the Shadows were a main selling feature for the title.

 

I however haven't had to do any of this since October, for obvious reasons  Last time I had to was for Dying Light 2 when I had my 6900 XT. Ray tracing was a chore for that card, especially on launch, and the shadows had to get dialed down for that.

[podkall]

2 minutes ago, Agall said:

Ray tracing was a chore for that card,

exactly why I try reflections first, even though classic reflections are 20x less demanding than Ray Tracing

[Hinjima]

I just play at high or very high instead of Ultra.    That being said, I do have a 7700x and an overclocked RTX 4080 so I am not too worried about low performance at the moment.

 

[Agall]

12 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

I just play at high or very high instead of Ultra.    That being said, I do have a 7700x and an overclocked RTX 4080 so I am not too worried about low performance at the moment.

 

 

13 minutes ago, podkall said:

exactly why I try reflections first, even though classic reflections are 20x less demanding than Ray Tracing

Just buy an RTX 4090 and overclock the snot out of it and it'll rip through any application at 4K ultra  

 

Sometimes DLSS is useful to get higher framerates, but I will say in some applications, its REALLY bad. Last of Us Part 1 was disgusting looking with DLSS, but I could get a solid +60 fps without DLSS at 4K ultra.

 

I really wish there were more applications that would give custom DLSS percentiles, since in my experience, 80-85% is practically free performance at 4K. When the maximum is Quality, being 67% and therefore 1440p, it just looks terrible in some applications.

[Tan3l6]

16 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

I just play at high or very high instead of Ultra.    That being said, I do have a 7700x and an overclocked RTX 4080 so I am not too worried about low performance at the moment.

 

Yup, ultra is for eagle-eyes suckers who find actual difference between ultra and "high/very high"  noticeable. Got to have very good eyes to tell the difference in most games that offer ultra graphics settings.

[Brooksie359]

17 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

I just play at high or very high instead of Ultra.    That being said, I do have a 7700x and an overclocked RTX 4080 so I am not too worried about low performance at the moment.

 

Yeah I am way to lazy to adjust individual settings. I usually just lower my settings to high as nvidia or the game always set my settings to ultra crazy high settings when I would much prefer higher fps.

[YoungBlade]

3 minutes ago, Agall said:

 

Just buy an RTX 4090 and overclock the snot out of it and it'll rip through any application at 4K ultra  

 

Sometimes DLSS is useful to get higher framerates, but I will say in some applications, its REALLY bad. Last of Us Part 1 was disgusting looking with DLSS, but I could get a solid +60 fps without DLSS at 4K ultra.

 

I really wish there were more applications that would give custom DLSS percentiles, since in my experience, 80-85% is practically free performance at 4K. When the maximum is Quality, being 67% and therefore 1440p, it just looks terrible in some applications.

Apparently you haven't tried playing Immortals of Aveum. Even the 4090 can't get 60fps at 4K Ultra without upscaling.

[Agall]

1 minute ago, YoungBlade said:

Apparently you haven't tried playing Immortals of Aveum. Even the 4090 can't get 60fps at 4K Ultra without upscaling.

But do they overclock said 4090?

 

Its about 10-15% extra, which relative to the RTX 4090, is quite absurd with another 150W available to it.

 

I'm currently in a 90% TDP efficiency mode since its been triple digits, but I'll gladly suffer another 150W of draw to get a solid gameplay experience even if its hot.

[podkall]

24 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

I just play at high or very high instead of Ultra.    That being said, I do have a 7700x and an overclocked RTX 4080 so I am not too worried about low performance at the moment.

Some ultra settings are noticeable, some aren't

[YoungBlade]

1 minute ago, Agall said:

But do they overclock said 4090?

 

Its about 10-15% extra, which relative to the RTX 4090, is quite absurd with another 150W available to it.

 

I'm currently in a 90% TDP efficiency mode since its been triple digits, but I'll gladly suffer another 150W of draw to get a solid gameplay experience even if its hot.

It was not overclocked, but even if it was, that still wouldn't do it. He didn't do a proper benchmark run, but it looked like it was about 52 fps average, which would only get to 59 fps with a 15% performance boost. The card also regularly dipped into the 40s, so there's no way to get a locked 60 fps, even with an overclock.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Textures usually hang out at Medium. View distance and details usually stay High.

 

Post processing is almost never enabled in any game I play.

[Agall]

17 minutes ago, podkall said:

Some ultra settings are noticeable, some aren't

I personally try to prioritize textures and view distance over everything. I don't ever change resolutions unless I'm testing lower end GPUs, then going down to 1080p is reasonable in some scenarios. In Diablo 4, an RX 6600 however, can play at 4K just as easily as 1080p, however, that's without the extra texture pack. It looked far better too.

 

Textures can be a trouble, depending on VRAM, not an issue for an RTX 4090, but is for most cards in a lot of newer games.

[Eigenvektor]

17 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Textures usually hang out at Medium. View distance and details usually stay High.

Textures should cost very little performance (unless you run out of VRAM) and have a big impact on visuals, imho

[podkall]

Just now, Eigenvektor said:

Textures should cost very little performance (unless you run out of VRAM) and have a big impact on visuals, imho

depends, textures are individual pixels over fixed area, with higher textures, usually there's more pixels to the same surface area, applies to all objects so enough texture settings increase can translate to almost literally increase in resolution (but not entirely)

[Eigenvektor]

32 minutes ago, podkall said:

depends, textures are individual pixels over fixed area, with higher textures, usually there's more pixels to the same surface area, applies to all objects so enough texture settings increase can translate to almost literally increase in resolution (but not entirely)

Not quite sure what you're saying here.

 

When texturing a projected surface, every pixel needs to be filled, regardless of the texture resolution. For every pixel, a lookup into the surface's texture is done, to determine which color to use (and then modified by lighting etc). If your texture resolution is low, more pixels on the final image will map to the same pixel on the source texture.

 

But the card needs to fill the same amount of pixels on the final image, regardless of the texture resolution. Having a larger texture means there is more different pixels available to look up, increasing visual detail. It does not increase the resolution of the final image.

 

Those additional texture pixels will increase VRAM usage (and potentially bandwidth usage, since more data means caches can hold less of it), but it shouldn't affect anything else.

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 hour ago, Eigenvektor said:

Textures should cost very little performance (unless you run out of VRAM) and have a big impact on visuals, imho

I just don't care a ton lol

 

I do also only have 8GB VRAM though

[podkall]

3 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

But the card needs to fill the same amount of pixels on the final image, regardless of the texture resolution. Having a larger texture means there is more different pixels available to look up, increasing visual detail. It does not increase the resolution of the final image.

does it really work like that? I thought it worked something along each object being rendered in lower resolution (their textures) which would explain the low VRAM requirement

 

3 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Those additional texture pixels will increase VRAM usage (and potentially bandwidth usage, since more data means caches can hold less of it), but it shouldn't affect anything else.

ever tried comparing just textures, and higher/lower? I'm sure the fps difference will be noticeable, at least on a counter

[T487]

4 hours ago, Tan3l6 said:

Motion blur is a sickness needed to be rooted out. First thing in every game that offers it.

I used to hate motion blur, too. But I have more recently started to appreciate it, if implemented well. For example, in racing games it can give a sense of speed. Or it can make motion look more fluid, cinematic or natural.

 

 

[T487]

Yeah I think it depend on what type of game. I usualy go for a more balanced approach. & echo what other have said... use the high setting opposed to ultra.

[Eigenvektor]

8 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I do also only have 8GB VRAM though

Same Still fine for many games.

 

6 hours ago, podkall said:

does it really work like that? I thought it worked something along each object being rendered in lower resolution (their textures) which would explain the low VRAM requirement

VRAM is primarily used by textures, ray tracing and some buffers. Without ray tracing the largest chunk is generally textures.

 

The memory used by textures depends on their size and how many there are. For example on high, every texture might be 4096x4096x32 bit. That's roughly 64 MiB of memory per texture. So if your game's level uses 100 different textures, you're already up to 6.4 GiB of VRAM usage. Turning down to medium might use 2048x2048 textures instead, reducing memory requirements to 16 MiB per texture (×100 = 1.6 GiB).

 

When rendering an object, for every pixel in the resulting image, you do a lookup into the texture applied to the object's surface. This runs through some filters (e.g. anisotropic filtering), to determine which pixel (or blend of pixels) from the texture should be used, then combined with things like lighting effects to determine the pixel's color.

 

6 hours ago, podkall said:

ever tried comparing just textures, and higher/lower? I'm sure the fps difference will be noticeable, at least on a counter

I did a quick test with Cyberpunk, Low vs High, the result was within margin of error.

 

High (68.03)

Spoiler

 

Low (68.06)

Spoiler

[podkall]

2 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

I did a quick test with Cyberpunk, Low vs High, the result was within margin of error.

 

High (68.03)

interesting, I'd wonder how, shouldn't higher textures be more demanding due to the anisotropic filter having to be more precise, since there's less blend and more fine details?