Destroying the best graphics I've ever seen

Running on Unreal Engine 5, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II has some of the best graphics of any PC game I've ever seen. The engine, and the visuals come with a cost, and that is the need for pretty capable hardware.
But what if you're willing to completely decimate the graphics in the name of playability? Well let's see...
0:00 Intro and Initial Performance Impressions
1:40 The Potato PC Tries It's Best (G7400, 8GB RAM, RX 6300)
3:00 Swapping Out The GPU and RAM (GTX 1630, 16GB RAM)
3:29 Upgrading CPU, Downgrading GPU (i3 12300, 16GB RAM, RX 6300)
5:32 Upgrading The GPU Again... (i3 12300, 16GB RAM, GTX 1630)
6:54 A GPU That Will Actually Run It Well... (i3 12300, 16GB RAM, RTX 3050)
7:46 Final Thoughts
Thanks for watching :)

[@NelsonPimenta93]

"Vaseline Mode" should be a graphical preset in all videogames.

[@grumpyratt2163]

Just turn up motion blur to 100% 🤣🤣🤣

[@nicane-9966]

Go uo u earned it.

[@silverwerewolf975]

You mean TAA enabled?

[@damianabregba7476]

That's rather grainy vaseline. Full of sand i would say

[@FireFalcon]

Nah Petroleum Jelly mode since Vaseline would have a fuss 😂

[@ca9inec0mic58]

Almost thought LowSpecGamer went back to his old-style videos

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Haha those really helped me out back in the day

[@dovahkiin2108]

That dummy flopped hard by trying a pointless change.

[@priyanshusharma1812]

Me too haha

[@superqaxclub]

The successor of LowSpecGamer

[@justinpatterson5291]

​@@superqaxcluband their nemesis- Linus Spec Gamer... For those casual, $10,000 builds.

[@mruczyslaw50]

That RX 6300 is performing worse in this game than Steam Deck, a 15W TDP APU. That's a true potato GPU.

[@itsuadman]

I had to look it up on techpowerup, my old 780 TI is almost 100% faster than the rx 6300 according to their list. I couldn't believe it

[@pc_screen5478]

2gb of vram with a 32 bit bus will do that to performance, theoretically the 1630 is even weaker than the 6300 but did much better for this reason alone

[@HunterTracks]

The iGPU in the Steam Deck has basically 3/4 of the cores of this card, but it's not nearly as constrained by VRAM and bandwidth, and already operates at the power efficiency sweet spot for the chip (meaning that RX 6300 having double the TDP actually has little if any effect). Also, I'm guessing that RX 6300 uses leftover garbage chips that basically only needed to be able to turn on to pass performance expectations.

[@Healcraft]

i think its the CPU as well, i dont even know who would buy a g7400, on newegg its about 20 dollars MORE than a 12100f

[@THU31]

@@pc_screen5478 Holy moly, I had no idea that existed. Is that the first 32-bit memory bus in history? That's some real innovation on AMD's side. 😂

[@saifullahkhan3213]

Loving the graphics on RX 6300, feels like a PS1 game, so nostalgic

[@RandomGaminginHD]

😁

[@brianhoggard3763]

It looks like how I remember FMV sequences looking back in the mid nineties. Very nostalgic

[@BC-lg7hf]

Watching this video at 144p is an experience...

[@HerpaDerp-ht8hy]

Can confirm.

[@keech100]

we back to needing to change InI files rather than have it in settings

[@mrman6035]

You don't want cinematic black bars obscuring your vision? lol

[@HYDRARMOR]

@@mrman6035 there are no black bars at 21:9

[@christianmino3753]

@@HYDRARMOR My tv has a native aspect ratio of 17:9 so playing games in 21:9 is actually a really nice experience if you aren't sitting back super far from the TV. it may sound silly, but that little extra screen real estate from being a 17:9 display instead of a 16:9 display, makes a big difference when it comes to the black bars (which when on the top is called letter boxing, and pillar boxing when on the sides for example if you were to play an older game/watch an older movie/show from the 90's/early 2000's in a 4:3/5:4 aspect ratio) makes a very big difference and makes the letter boxing SEEM a LOT smaller.

[@TobyRieper48]

Love ini files and messing around with config.sys and autoexec.bat :D

[@musguelha14]

​@@christianmino3753what TV do you have? I've never seen a 17:9 TV.

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

Developers: "system requirements are fine." Also, Developers and publishers: "Just adjust the settings, it'll run fine" The results of the settings:

[@mrhappy8966]

Never thought I would be happy to see rtx 3050 gameplay.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Haha it was a joy to use after the other two

[@mrhappy8966]

@@RandomGaminginHD lol

[@k3ywarrior]

never thought 16gb ram will become the low end so soon lol

[@HunterTracks]

Say what you will about upscalers, especially FSR, but the fact it's even able to reconstruct a visually parsable image from an internal resolution of 240p is still insanely impressive.

[@100Bucks]

I love upscalers. I use Lossless Scaling and also a hardware method called 4k Gamer Pro. 720p is lowest you can go to still have a good picture. 540p is good too but it ain't no HD. 720p if you use Lossless Scaling. 1080p to play in 4k, use 4k gamer pro.

[@qqwui9989]

The even cooler thing about FSR is that it runs using only shaders. Despite adding more work to the gpu shader cores it manages to be faster than native resolution.

[@yarost12]

That same image would still be parsable at 240p. FSR plays no role he

[@100Bucks]

@@yarost12 Anything below 720p is a waste of time. 720p is your limit for HD.

[@100Bucks]

@@yarost12 There's one resolution that's still good that's below 720p but it's only worth using on "2d" games only. 640x360 is a special resolution that works on 2d games. Example of Fraymakers a 2d fighting game. If you played the game 360p or 1080p, it really doesn't make that much of a difference. 360p and 1080p are almost the same resolution if used on 2d video games. You can't do this with 3D games. 360p is nHD which stands for a ninth of 1080p. Fact check it yourself and try it with 2d games.

[@LeandroMartinscg]

Here in brazil there is a pc gamer popular saying that is: "If it opens, it runs"

[@selohcin]

"I hadn't seen the 'Compiling Shaders' screen before, but I'd have plenty of time to look at it now." 🤣

[@steel5897]

5:00 switch port looking good

[@maxrobe]

Watching that end sequence, I wonder, (in an unrelated way), how much of the history of man has been dedicated to moving rocks from one place to another for aesthetic purposes.

[@Mancan76]

I do like this video

[@polyhedron4258]

I also like this video

[@bhxlegend]

Hey me too I liked this video

[@sir.fender6034]

Bro, you made it look like an FMV from the Sega CD.

[@mior5882]

This is fantastic! I'd love to see a series on optimizing games, like lowering graphics settings.

[@3vReanimated]

That quality is like cutting my eyes with razor blades. Nail on a chalk board.

[@donpablo6533]

Potato Supremacy 🎉

[@nikname2697]

i love how the low resolution + fsr combination looks like a claude monet paiting

[@KokoroKatsura]

a n i m e n i m e

[@LukeTheJoker]

🎼How low can you go? 🎶

[@itsuadman]

That song went through my head as well when he said it lol

[@SeahamV2]

I love all your video's man, great work, nice to see you trying new stuff.

[@naamadossantossilva4736]

2:57 It is not negative,it's just doing seconds per frame.

[@berkeokur99]

You always make me crack a laugh, “At this point I had square eyeballs”🤣

[@nimbydimby]

This is a brilliant video. I was expecting some INI tweaking to get rid of textures or some extra horror stuff like that to drive the point of this video home a bit more :D

[@djaybeetoo]

it is good you are doing these experiments

[@azym_equinox]

I am sad one of the most beautiful story based rpg games with visuals more beautiful than this one yet less realistic graphics than this one didn't get this much attention and exposure. I am talking about none other than A Plague Tale: Requiem!

[@bugarsandor2504]

Plague tale Requiem is a masterpiece. But Hellblade 2 is the first real photorealistic game and it's also a masterpiece. But I agree with you, Plague tale Requiem didn't get attention it deserved.

[@azym_equinox]

@@bugarsandor2504 hellblade 2 is photorealistic?

[@bugarsandor2504]

@@azym_equinox This game is the closest for that.

[@inceptionsd]

No matter how impressime the graphic fidelity is, that rocky scenery would bore me to death.

[@jeffreyjohnson5823]

Not when you're supposed to be looking for hidden faces, it won't.

[@kowboykel665]

Dude you had me laughing, great commentary.

[@Zenefor]

next can you do a vid on overclocking the arc a310 and how it compares the before&after with other gpus.

[@samuel90497]

Mommy, I want a PC that runs Hellblade. We have a PC that runs at home. Pc at home:

[@Dtr146]

Oh my God this brings back memories of me using my old Toshiba techro laptop to play borderlands 2. I was in the any file just disabling setting after setting into I found something that worked and gave me at least 30 FPS

[@Solvargen]

Using the 7900XT and the game looks beautiful 😍. Interesting to see what hardware it takes to play it on the lower side though!

[@Gerenocidiac]

This game is definitely a looker! Appreciate that ini settings tidbit at the start about disabling chromatic aberration. I cannot stand that effect, same with shitty lens flares. I think the main visual effect I can enjoy is good depth of field, and if it's a cinematic game, maybe light grain. This game also makes my 14900k and 4070ti work hard that's for sure.

[@antitunnelvizie5877]

wow that is kind a intresting to see your hardware exsorsising the game that hard i get 57 fps high in 4K and not much 1% problems or any so man i feel you hardware man this realy does something with my zen man

[@dodolurker]

Some of these settings reminded me of the voxel-based shooters from the early 2000s. Outcast, Delta Force, etc.

[@pacomatic9833]

I genuinely laughed seeing that thumbnail Still though, surprised they let you even do this.

[@emanuelbalahur6037]

does anyone know the name of the font from hellblade's subtitles?

[@13Drawork]

Lovely pixel-art game!

[@Mike17865]

what software do you use to get the framerate/cpu temps in the top left?

[@Gerenocidiac]

RTSS, fantastic software. I use both MSI afterburner + RTSS. You can also achieve similar results with a lot of other OSD monitoring software as well; another example being HwInfo I believe.

[@TheSpotify95]

Haha, I knew that the Pentium, GTX 1630 and RX 6300 would not work very well! The RX 6300 is so limited, it's like trying to game on a GT 710 or 1030 a few years ago, and Pentiums are no good for gaming on either. Though I do believe that game developers could try and optimize their games to make them run on lower end hardware just that little bit better.

[@Taorakis]

I was hoping for one of those videos where the textures are removed and everything is low poly and such. :D

[@alispeed5095]

This was funny but also relatable. I did such things back when l was a kid playing games on my sisters intel hd graphics laptop

[@bierrollerful]

absolute madlad

[@JerryTzou]

My humour is officially broken. This part 4:32 made me just laugh out loud without even knowing I would I after that fact I did

[@hyperix-dead]

oh man this is Alan Wake 2 all over again

[@Ammageddon89]

Hellblade 2 is absolutely the best looking game i have seen so far. It is a bit strange to me that it hasn´t made a bigger splash in press and youtube.

[@dobberdanger3584]

what is going on with the pcie conector on the gtx 1630 at 5:56

[@jeffreyjohnson5823]

It's from the weight of the GPU making it sink into his hand creating a slight impression that makes it appear uneven or grinded.

[@ObieCS2]

The GTX 1630 footage at 30 fps looked so smooth after everything before that 😂

[@denisruskin348]

Using FSR2 at low rewsolution is like if your monitor suddenly fell on the beach.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Haha it is a bit of a mess

[@renanzanella1729]

Having a ultrawide monitor I didnt even know there was black bars..

[@JavierRiquelme]

5:51 what happened to the PCIe port pcb???

[@itsuadman]

you noticed that too? looks like scissors were used to cut a few millimeters off the bottom... idk, it looks messed up

[@Juzimaster]

Hopefully it's only camera doing some tricks.

[@gtijason7853]

Yikes, who took a grinder to those pcie fingers

[@jeffreyjohnson5823]

It's from the weight of the GPU making it sink into his hand creating a slight impression that makes it appear uneven or grinded.

[@WithoutNumbers]

Can you test 10 years old HDD, 5 years old SSD and new NVMe? Something like that to see how the type and newness of hard disc effect your system and game in the future? In some games in the past I've noticed differences not only in save loading times, but also when objects appear in real time, like in Kingdom Cam, depending on the disk type, so it would be interesting to see how all these cards, processors and memory react to different base in new games.

[@Rezzell]

First time I played A Plague Tale, the first one, I had a laptop with an Intel 4c/4t and a 1050ti... Had to overclock the heck out of that laptop, put extra fans outside, with everything on low, just to get about 27fps, up from 20 with no overclock... Good times.

[@CamperCroftTecnoTips]

hahahahahahaha OMG great video the screenshot part was amazing

[@ElVid]

i first writed this one below first, but i just want to say first that i love your videos i like the approach of how 1 game handles individual components, give it a 1050ti, rx 4/560, gt1030 and the intel A310/380. i know you are not an mmo person, but could you try using such hardware in one or 2 of the bigger ones, these mmo's having a different structure and demand games way different than singleplayer games do.

[@ElVid]

sadly i wrote first that i wrote something else

[@TheGrizz485]

🤣The fact that this is a well optimized game only make this video funnier...well done. I get 50-70fps 4K (balanced fsr) on my 6700xt

[@Ali-dp6xv]

I find it weird that this performs so much better than xbox with very similar GPU power.

[@pc_screen5478]

​@@Ali-dp6xvinfinity cache making a difference probably, especially since it's an unreal engine 5 game (ue5 games like having it)

[@Healcraft]

so not 4k but 2259x1270

[@TheGrizz485]

@@Healcraft No I removed the black bars and it looked %90 as good as native 4k on my S90c OLED

[@Healcraft]

@@TheGrizz485 false u have bad eyes

[@ImperialCitizenn]

This was really funny

[@gtijason7853]

7:39 "The game still looks really good at low" You sure your newly downgraded square eyes didn't have something to do with this. I kid I kid, TYVM for sacrificing your vision for us low budget gamers

[@philtkaswahl2124]

Pentium sees someone trying to game on it again: "I'm tired, boss."

[@Napostriouf]

I wonder how the game would perform in a more classic MS-DOS resolution of 320x200?

[@Hirooshii1]

Video is even better for me because im watching it on a campsite just BARELY able to get 4g , as im running this video in 240p so it can load and i can enjoy the entertainment of the video.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

The full pixelated experience haha

[@Hirooshii1]

@@RandomGaminginHD Perfection!

[@CorrichetiLagga]

Love this type of video 😂. Pixelated graphics is the best

[@Rmm1722]

Wow 😮

[@necuz]

- 3200GE + A580 runs it at shaky 60 fps when set to 1080p Low and as much XeSS as you can throw at it, reported 100% GPU utilization but 100W power draw. - 5800X3D + 4070Ti runs it at solid 60 fps minimum when set to 1440p Ultra and DLSS Quality, despite the overhead of running on Linux.

[@zangetsu6638]

could you try going one step up from the RX 6300 to the RX 6500 XT 4GB?

[@zangetsu6638]

or from the GTX 1630 to the GTX 1650?

[@giserson2]

You can actually go even a bit lower by changing the desktop resolution to 640x480 by going into display adapter properties and clicking on the "list all modes" button

[@XZ-III]

I'll do you one better because a lot games don't acknowledge anything that is t 16x9 make a custom 480 widescreen res by adding 854x480 you can also do this with cru, custom resolution utility. A more accurate 480 16x9 resolution is also 864x486

[@mbsfaridi]

Remember when games lookes so clean on these low resolutions. Moderns ggame need to scale down more (graphics wise).

[@Epsilonsama]

It helps that this game is a walking simulator therefore it runs well enough on low end hardware. I was able to get this running on my old pc which is a can RX570 and a Ryzen 5 2600 easy at lower settings.

[@InvokeSoul]

If you take screenshots of this you can make old school pre-rendered backgrounds for psx game.

[@Dtr146]

New series idea. Take the 7600g and push it as far as possible to see what it can do in the highest demanding games around.

[@manfred3166]

5 hours of torubleshoting for 5 hours of gameplay, perfectly balance.

[@liamness]

I've found that UE5's built in upscaling option (TSR) is better than FS6 when you're dealing with low resolutions. From playing games on Steam Deck with both options available, at least. The image is a lot more stable.

[@GashetitaOwO]

i got it running on my i3 10100f, 16 gb ram 2666 mhz, 1 tb hard drive and an rx 6700xt with 500w psu at max settings, 1440p with xess on ultra quality with between 45-80 fps depending on the area, hovering more around the 60-75 fps mark c:

[@Monarchias]

It was running well on my phone and not in fullscreen. It was always crispy! ;)

[@iceangelx22]

Capping FPS to 1 with RTSS when compiling shaders in any game will dramatically speed the process up. Hope it saves time for people :)

[@nilst93]

To get more performace turn off the volumetric fog, the skyanimation etc. if the game allows it

[@saricubra2867]

How many frames per minute on the potato PC?

[@Healcraft]

good graphics with the gameplay of Gone Home with QTE combat

[@MyManJFKTV]

Metal Gear Solid faces are my fave.

[@nilst93]

so because i have a 4k 16:9 43" screen I love the feature to switch the screen modes in youtube from small to huge. the difference is from okay to eyecancer xD

[@axelchill5395]

Intresting. I would like to see how this game performs on an android phone with mobox or darkos.

[@evagorasioannou7505]

With a 5800X3D and a 3060 Ti, I can run the game maxed at 1440P, with DLSS performance. EXCEPT, 8GB VRAM just isn't enough, so it frequently gets flooded during fight sections, which sees the frame rate tanking massively until I reload the whole area. I also think there are significant shader compilations happening at times, as indicated by lock-ups and hangs that build up as I play more lol.

[@Tiboo08]

there is a tool called nvidia profile inspectore can give you the "vaseline" mode by configuring it

[@_RL348]

Finally my 1650 will be able to run it

[@danielstovell3764]

It's insane how demanding some of these releases have become My 5800X3D, 32 GB DDR4 3600 and RTX 3070 manages around 70-90 FPS at 1440p DLSS quality with optimised settings. Tried 4k DLSS performance but the VRAM wasn't having it 😂

[@ChillBuilds]

You should connect this to a CRT TV and play it that way.

[@ACurbo]

On my i7 9700k and rtx 3080 (10gb version), I ran it on high settings at 1440p with dlss quality and locked the frame rate to 60. It never dropped below

[@jeffreyjohnson5823]

With 10 GB VRAM what would you expect, when the minimum is 6 GB?

[@hill2hell]

The game looks like what I see if I take my glasses off. 🤣🤣

[@Gaming_TechBench]

can uou try to oc rtx 3050 6gb plz

[@Tellea]

Should have tested photo mode with those graphics!

[@Haplo699g]

I find that even at 1440p maxed, the game itself goes into vaseline mode quite often anyway.

[@arontieske833]

Don´t complain, looks better than gaming on an Commodore Amiga!😁

[@WayStedYou]

6:36 Sacrifice was the first game!

[@alelokox88]

Ran fine and was kind of nice, but the chromatic aberration and filter gave me a headache and as it was the Gamepass version and I couldn't change it just uninstalled it in 2 hours.

[@daelionmr4782]

Close to finishing the game on a 3060 Ti/12600KF. 2560x1080 21:9 Ultrawide monitor/res so I don't have black bars by default, mix of medium and high settings and DLSS Quality enabled and this way the game stays around 50+ FPS on average which is fine with me in a game like this. For me the game is an amazing experience tho I've already liked the first game and finished that 2 times in the past years.🙂

[@onejaw9616]

This game is surprisingly well optimsied in the VRAM/RAM department. My 6gb card is able to run high textures and it uses less than 5gb vram and 9gb ram.

[@lynackhilou4865]

That's the one thing UE5 seems to do amazingly well and better than most engines , a lot the its games released in the past 2 years look great and can run high textures on an 8gb gpu at 1440p . Although texture streaming does have issues sometimes .

[@onejaw9616]

@@lynackhilou4865 It depends on the game tbh. Gray zone warfare takes a ton of VRAM.

[@lynackhilou4865]

@@onejaw9616 well i haven't played it but most the games i played like robocop , lords of the fallen , layers of fear ...etc all ran well .

[@chanithurithmal3717]

I already don’t have the black bars cuz my display is 21:9

[@LightyDust]

I'm having a blast with this game on my RTX 4080 Super and Ryzen 7 7800X3D. As a huge fan of original Hellblade, I'm loving this one a lot and it looks like nothing else I've seen. Sounds that way, too! Amazing, in short. (:

[@johnboylan3832]

Yeah, graphics and audio at the cost of no gameplay is totally what I look for in a game too - screw movies!

[@Healcraft]

@@johnboylan3832 🎯

[@LightyDust]

@@johnboylan3832 Different games for different people. (: I would take something like HB2 over mainstream junk food of a game like Counter Strike any day of the week.

[@Bimon1234567]

Some of the footage reminds me of PS2 era graphics.

[@theonerm2]

After seeing the horrible low resolution the 1080p dlss result looks amazing. And I'm used to 4K. I guess if you want to get used to playing at 1080p after being used to 4K, then you should play 720p FSR Ultra Performance mode for a while first. 😄I wonder how it would play on a laptop RTX 3050 4GB version though. Luckily, I have one and I have PC game pass.