What would you sacrifice for better frames!

Hi Guys ,
This is the first time I actually spent so much on my a Graphic card [My GTX 460] now most would consider this a medium range card but for me it was close to being high end.. but alas it is not............
So after playing some good looking games by today's standards of widely accepted settings viz
1920x1080
4x AA
16x Af

I would like to know what settings can be sacrificed without a noticable loss in the image quality.
For my take I tone down shadows [who looks at them any ways]
AF toned down to 8X [I donot see any differnce in most game with it maxed out]
Texturing [I would not tone unless i have less than 1GB VRAM]
HDR [Some game look really bad with them turned on ]
AA [For me I think 4x is more than enough]

So with newer games like Metro 2033, Crysis 2[should not mention but...], Bullet storm, etc.

So what would you tone down to gain performance?
[applies to people with mid-range or low-end cards]

 

resolution and shadows. and also 2x aa is more then enough for me.

also play @ 1080 but have to reduce my res some times to get good fps.

 

If ur going to play at 1080p, anything higher than 2x AA is barely noticeable, but it makes a huge impact on performance...

 

My ideal framerate is 60 fps; I see no point in anything above that as (a) I cannot notice it visually; (b) the difference in feel between 180 fps and 45 fps is far more obvious than the one between 60 fps and 40 fps; and (c) I cannot abide screen tearing so v-sync and triple buffering are prerequisites for all of my games!

Fortunately, I can play pretty much all of my games without sacrificing anything but if I have to then I usually drop AA down from 16x or 8x to 4x (not so noticeable at 1920x1200 anyway) or, in extreme cases, lower the shadow quality a notch. I never reduce texture or model quality though!

To be honest, I hate compromising a game's visuals so if I can't run more than a few games at maximum settings with high AA then I know it's time to buy a new graphics card!

 

I see no difference in performance by changing AF from min to max

But AA makes a big difference, I stick to 2x unless I can max the game out and more with full everything

Metro 2033 I can max out, but its smoother on High settings rather than V High and I dont really see a long of change in quality that would bother me anyway

 

Shadows and smoke - OFF

 

First thing I drop or turn off is AA, then AO (if present). I like the shadows and AO only makes them better. If these don't help, I drop the resolution to 1600x900 and test with those features on again.

Usually lowering the res fixes everything and I can increase AA. I never change the texture qualuity though, that always needs to be at max

 

Resolution, AA, AF. Shadows. *some* fancy effects. (whatever is available, SSAO or volumetric effects for example)

I dun like to tone down shadows if they re good (ie, i deactivate them on FO3 and FO NV).

But always more or less the same. First AA or AF, then post proccessing effects, shadows, and then textures or geometry.

I think that 1080p made to be stantart too soon for current GFXs. LCD panels got cheap pretty fast but proccessing power didnt go up as fast. So there are a lot of cheap 1080p monitors but no cheap gfx card to run nicely at that kind of resolutions (without lowering detail i mean). Im going to get a 560GTX for future 1080p monitor (i hope). And create a monster hybrid between 2007 tech (C2D E6xxx and DDR2) and 2011 tech (GTX560), but i like those kind of things lol.

 

Yep totally agree as long as we have the bank balance :wanker::wanker:

 

IMHO I have seen using 1680 as horizontal res with 2x AA does not compromise the aliasing.I have observed this on most of the 21.5' models.

 

Smoke option is the one I have seen in NFS Shift and pro street , most games
donot have it configurable unless it is properly deployed...

 

i only turn off motion blur, everything else is maxed to the max.

 

aa, blur and lower shadows.

 

I personally like to tweak all by myself. My method is: set everything to medium, and then manually raise to high/higher anythin i think its worth it. Aa at 2x, more than enough

 

Motion Blur always goes off if possible and if I need more frames, it depends. Most of the time I want my game to be as crisp as possible, so I'll try and keep texture detail/AF high. Though Metro 2033 was an exception.

I ended up running Metro 2033 (back when I had a 8800GTX), maxed out on DX9 on 960x600. Sure it looked jagged, but the game is so much more immersive due to the lightening.

 

Shadows, HSAO/HBAO, 'effects' and bloom.

Though I do like the lighting bloom (and HDR) gives when done properly, it can be sacrificed.

AA and 16xAF are both musts IMO - jaggies and mushy textures annoy me.

I game at 1920x1080, and aliasing is ALWAYS apparent unless decent AA is applied, so at least 4xMSAA combined with a form of TRSAA if the game uses lots of alpha textures.

How someone cannot notice aliasing in modern games I don't know, its rife in most modern game engines - you can see the edges of objects 'crawling' with jaggies. Ugh.

High res only removes aliasing if your screen size is suitably small (a large pixel pitch only compounds the problem).

I like to keep everything above 60fos if possible, but anywhere from 45fps up is generally acceptable. I can deal with a little tearing, but it can get annoying.

 

Again Once you get used to the visuals all that matters is the game play.
It happened with me In FEAR

 

My wife and 2 kids...

Seriously blur and lower shadows then AA high settings...

 

I first lower rez then Blur SSAO anti aliasing and lower shadows but not completely off

 

Sacrifice for better frames?
Depends on the game i guess. I only game at 1280x1024 so i can pretty much max out everything. Only game which i can't max out is GTA IV, but than again the 2 distance options which i have set at ' 1 ' really doesn't need to be max out/increase. Those options are view distance and Vehicles distance. Which are really pointless to increase. But all the other options are max out, and its only possible due to my new 450.