Games have several graphics settings that you can tweak to get better performance. Most games don't have the exact same menu settings, but several graphics options appear time and time again. Knowing how these game settings affect performance is crucial to helping you set a game to its proper level. Crank the settings too high, and your frame rates will plummet into the single digits. Go too low, and you might end up sacrificing too much image quality for nominal performance gains.
Roll your mouse cursor over the image to see the comparison shot. The first shot has the game running with 4x antialiasing and 4x anisotropic filtering. The second shot has both of those settings cranked to 16x. Both settings look great, but the 4xAA, 4xAF settings will give you a much higher frame rate for a smoother game. Knowing how far to push the settings will help you get the most out of your hardware.
We’ll cover six settings you're likely to encounter in games. You can find the first three settings in just about all games or in the driver settings for your video card. The latter three settings are common but you probably won’t find them in all types of games. In the following pages, we'll examine the performance costs associated with each setting and show you the image quality benefits each setting offers.
Antialiasing
If you look at the edge of building or even along a character model, you'll often see a jagged stair-step pattern that doesn’t look quite natural. Antialiasing smooths out the lines and reduces the amount of crawling, but the process uses a significant amount of graphics power. Even the most powerful video cards can have trouble if the antialiasing is set too high. Depending on the game you're playing, you might see frame rates fall into the single digits if you crank antialiasing all the way up.
Anisotropic Filtering
Anisotropic filtering helps preserve texture detail on angled surfaces. It's also used to clean up mip-maps. Games swap in low quality textures called mipmaps when rendering objects in the distance, and high quality textures for items closer to the player. Anisotropic filtering helps to clean up the picture by bridging the area where these sets of textures meet. Most modern video cards handle this setting without a problem.
Resolution
Increasing the resolution is the easiest way to make a game look better. Higher resolutions add more detail through extra pixels. Processing more pixels also makes the workload for your video card that much harder.
Draw Distance
Increasing the draw distance setting lets you see farther into the game's field of view. Of course, the farther into the distance the card has to render, the more work the video card needs to do. You'll typically find this setting in 3rd person games such as Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights 2.
Shadows
Good lighting and the shadows (that are created with good lighting) save us from boring rooms full of uniform colors and drab, lifeless objects. Try playing Doom 3 without shadows and you’ll notice that much of the suspense disappears. Enabling shadows usually has a performance cost, but the amount can vary greatly from game to game.
Textures
The detail of a game appears in its textures. Large textures can turn a simple black street with yellow lines into a gritty stretch of asphalt full of cracks and gravel. Some games will automatically use high-resolution textures if it detects a powerful video card with lots of fast memory.
469 Comments
No difference between 8xAA & 16xAA and a LITTLE difference between 4xAA & 8xAA.
In C&C 3 4xAA = 8xAA.
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Very Useful Guide Thanks.
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Not a lot of visual difference for COH from High-Ultra High
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Extremely useful "How to Guide", thanks Sarju!
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Thanks nice guide very helpful
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I totally agree with 0 draw distance thing. I always max that setting in every game (Like the witcher) lowing the resolution 800x600 won't hurt.
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its very useful...tanx
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very usfull
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This guide is very nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Exelent comparison and tips to boost the games!!! thx!
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LOL@playing at 1680x1050 with 256MB VRAM. I guess this guide left out the importance of Video RAM at high resolutions.
:Shakes finger at Gamespot.
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usefull
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i love this guide
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I'm still choking the life out of my 9200 as I'm currently playing Half-Life2 and its performing quite smoothly, but the line clearly stopped after I tried to run Bioshock without knowing that it requires a Shader Model 3.0 GPU.
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Sorry to tell you but the 9200 is crap.
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I have a ATi 9200 it isnt bad.... Its just about enough.
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From 8x to 16x doesnt make that much diference...
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Most of this stuff is general knowledge to anyone who has been gaming on PC long enough; you really have to see these settings at a full screen resolution to get a idea of the impact on visual quality, seeing them on these shrunken screenshots really doesn't do them justice. Anything above the playable frame rate is free for upping eye candy, no point in getting 120+ fps when you can slap some more AA or AF on there.
I see console users are complaining about the performance tweaking that goes into PC gaming, and how it is too much of a bother for them. That's why we will always have superior looking games, because we do bother. While they get what they are given, each new generation of hardware lets us push games further than consoles can ever achieve.
Whose looking forward to Gears Of War at above 360 resolutions with full AA and AF?
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hmmm thats nice to know that
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That's why console sells, so many people don't even know how these stuff works, all they know is play, no technical intelligence.
consoles are basically PCs, but smaller ones and dedicated only for gaming and perhaps some degree of internet.
Gears of War looks stunning but suck at the same time on console cuz they can't turn on AA, and they won't allow you to choose it. which doesn't give console gamers the
"hey, it might look even better if I turn this on."
and you don't get to choose 2560x1600 resolution, cuz consoles only give you 3 options, and highest only goes to 1920x1080.
2560x1600 on 30" monitor means dots are a LOT closer which means detail is WAY better than only 1920x1080 (and they advertise it as if that's the highest end, ha!) on a 50" TV.
simple enough, consoles= for lazy@$$/clueless gamers, but you don't get to do all kinds of fun tweaking, and that's what keeps you clueless, and that's what make their pocket bigger.
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See I really would like consoles and I have a gamcube, xbox, and wii but i barely ever play them. I like PC cause i can do a lot of other things fast with it. Multitasking and stuff. Plus the mouse, is the most intuitive device for the hand, I can get far more accurate with the mosue than with 2 analog sticks. That's why the Wii really got me excited it blended the console with the control of a mouse-like control remote. However there isn't enough power to play BF2142 and stuff like that which I love on the PC. What sucks the most is the price you could buy 2 wii's for the price of a performance videocard. I really hate having to update unless the games wont work at all like lostplanet. I thought my computer was great but not enough. I know it sounds weird now but I really wish Nintendo Sony and Microsoft made a console pc hybrid for cheaper than the PC. Basically if own monitor keyboard, etc hooked up to a conosle and ran windows that would make me very happy.
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This would be why I prefer console gaming. You don't have to mess with all kinds of settings and get upgrades just to play the latest games. This stuff always bugs me.
I find it interesting that past a certain point, the antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are barely noticeable. Sure, to the eagle-eyed scrutinizer, you could spot something, but 8x AA looks great, and 4x or 8x AF is just fine. I'm glad to know how to get rid of the ultra-lag in these games.
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bigmick07 , that card is comparable with that footy team you seem to like...
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im having an issue... i can run C&C 3 maxed out everything and 1680x1050 res and awesome f.r. but in HL2 or fear i cant max the AA and AF at 1680x1050 without having something like the upper teens in frames. i have to run round 4x and 8x. now i ran the demo of 3dmark and scored a little over 14k but i know thats cause the demo has everything turned off and res set low. here are my specs:
C2D e6600 @ 2.4
asus p5n32-e sli current bios
2gb ocz pc2-6400
evga 7600gt 256mb
800w ultra psu
vista home premium
running os on a 500 gb sata II
games installed on a 320 gb sata II
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how will my comp run on next gen games? i have a intel core 2 duo e6400, 2gb ddr2 ram, vista, sata hard drive, And geforce 8600 gts
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@ dante77_virgil
No way. Try Quadrupling your RAM and new CPU and GPU, then yes you can.
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airwalk-
There are there are no sale tax and shipping on most stuffs are free for newegg in the US. Some US States and our government charge income tax, but not stores.
I don't know about international policy. Maybe buy something cheap first or email customer service.
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i am thinking of buying a new video card from newegg.com but does anyone know the income tax for it coming to the UK?
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i have to upgrade my computer to run the next gen or newest games but it still play some of the game i have that just came out.
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i have a 5500 geforce256Mb 2.4Ghz with 512 mb ram.Will i be able to run the next gen or newest games.
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bennycal-
newegg is the best if you want to buy and compare and tomhardware guide is where you learn about PC components or devices. That how I built my rig. Gamespot used to review PC hardware, but cnet it's mother company does most of that. For consumer stuff, it is cnet. Cnet reviewed some stuff way after they are release.
bigmicki-
that is really bad for top games, more for everyday softwares and web-surfing
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Awesome, very helpful indeed. Thanks guys!
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any one know where to download some updates for card? i have a ATI 256mb and 768mb of RAM
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i have like an intel950 graphics card is that bad?
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i have a core 2 duo cpu, an 8800gtx, and 2 gigs of ram, so none of this really matters to me lol
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You can't play it with 0 Draw distance, it would ruin the game completely!
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Anyone know a good website for building custom pc's or buying pc components?
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OMG Oblivion on 0 draw distance is just horrible! i think im gunna sacrifice the shadows for the draw distance
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yeahh
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Anybody know how can i open the frame rate of command and conquer 3 tiberium wars
and it's a great guide
keep it up GS
ARI
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one of most useful guides from GS - but i don't know why they included x1300, it's such a poor card
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Great guide & very informative. I always have my AA at x4 and AF at 8 @ 1680x1050 on all the latest games. I average 50fps. And I always have Draw Distance on Max, never compromise on this. Most games still look great without any Shadows enabled but its all about person preferrance; I hate games that are too dark anyway.
I wish they did a test with the popular 8800GTS 320Mb as well for a better comparison. A few of my mates have that card so its hard to judge to this guide to decide how high to put the settings when the 8800GTX has 768Mb RAM. High textures manages fine if you have 2Gb RAM & Ultra is for 2Gb+ and two Raptor's in RAID0 for fast texture swapping when GPU mem gets full.
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Wow antialiasing doesn't do as much as I thought it did...
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@Bennycal
Pretty high settings, thats a good computer. Should run most games on high settings (not maxed) for some time now.
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wow...nice!! I can run my GRAW very well now!!!
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Great
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veryyyyy cood
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