Ultra Settings Vs High Settings In 2023...

[@astoraan6071]

I think 90% of the time unless you're someone who pauses at each frame to analyse the visuals you won't notice a difference, but I'd be lying if I said whacking everything on Ultra didn't feel good

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Haha very true for both statements

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

Yeah, maxing everything out is fun tbh. This is why I after building a new PC, the first thing I do is revisit the older titles.

[@jponz85]

Just like you can't tell the difference from 144hz to 165, 240, 300... you guys swear you see a difference even with 100fps and above

[@level8473]

@@jponz85 But we do, our eyes are just built different, if you can't, I feel sorry for you

[@fallentrash1673]

My laptop can go to Ultra >70fps but I still only use High or Very High in single player games then low on multiplayer. Anytime I use Ultra settings... It's just for screenshots, selfies/photomodes, and recording in-game cutscenes because that's the only time it felt really good to use anyway.

[@_Devil]

From my experience, the only real Ultra Setting that actually makes a difference and I recommend is the ultra Texture Quality setting for RDR2. If you put that at Ultra, but set everything else at Medium, the game still looks utterly fantastic, and it will run pretty well.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah my sentiments exactly with red dead

[@eniff2925]

In any game textures can be maxed to the limit of your vram.

[@purehollow]

Ultra textures in rdr2 is the equivalent of consoles and anything below it is pretty bad

[@sms-ux5kl]

shadows definitiely high but otherwise yeah

[@greendude0420]

Otherwise dogwater pixelation not that it’s bearable on lower end hardware tbh

[@Mr.Genesis]

Nice to see that "Maxing out" games is still unnecessary.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah definitely

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

I thought it was less unnecessary in old times when even the slightest improvement in graphics felt big.

[@1988Demien]

In most cases it is but on higher resolutions you can notice changes easily that's the thing and reason ULTRA exists

[@mikkodoria4778]

Always has been

[@pottingsoil723]

@@DragonOfTheMortalKombat Yeah, when they started including things like anti-aliasing and ambient occlusion, it felt pretty sweet to be able to turn those things on.

[@mezolite]

got the chance to finally play rdr2 and it came set to ultra by default. Ran the benchmark, got 60fps with some drops to 45~50. Then I tried Digital Foundry's optimized settings and got 100fps+ and couldn't even tell the difference in graphics

[@mrducky179]

The biggest killer of fps for me was msaa, imo taa does a great job with the slider being turned halfway up

[@josedorsaith5261]

​@@mrducky179 For me, it was screen-space reflections (SSR) Most games that use SSR end up taking a big performance hit, for almost no gain in the quality of water reflections

[@beardalaxy]

@@mrducky179 i really, really wish MSAA was still an option in video games. i fucking LOVE MSAA i don't care about the performance hit. TAA looks gross.

[@dmywololowol]

@@beardalaxy TAA is a disgrace for picture quality.

[@Riya-mv1sm]

What's your pc specs

[@jmxtoob]

The other great thing about older gaming is that older games cost s fraction of the price. One of the benefits of being 2-3 years behind is that great games are €10

[@drumyogi9281]

Story of my life and I work in IT lol

[@beardalaxy]

there's a whole subreddit for this sort of thing called "patient gamers"

[@shaneeslick]

Yeah totally agree, here in Australia while new games are generally $90-$150AUD at the moment the whole Metro Series is on sale at Steam it cost me under $20AUD for all 3 games with DLCs, Plus GOG are always having a sale & there have been some interesting games for the EPIC Weekly Freebie.

[@marlowfr1208]

This is what I do. The games are way cheaper, it's one thing but they also have been patched , fixed, optimized by the time I buy them. And I don't have to sell a kidney to buy the latest Nvidia high end rig to play a couple of AAA games on ultra.

[@jonathanwright1507]

@@beardalaxy Purchased GTAV in 2015 for PC & still waiting for GTAVI, lol

[@robiculous3913]

Nowadays games have become so demanding even on low settings that a mixture of med + high settings are a good balance between performance and quality. Good informative video by the way, learnt a lot!

[@dantemeriere5890]

The problem is that despite modern games still being demanding on low, most still look terrible with muddy textures that rival the PS1 era games yet somehow take up 4 to 6 gigs of VRAM. You'd expect it'd look like ultra from 10 years ago, but no, but no, not even close. That's why I'd like to see a comparison between modern low settings vs old ultra settings, visually and performance-wise.

[@PrashantMishra-kh1xt]

​@@Snow.2040 Oh BenchmarKing, yeah that's good

[@PrashantMishra-kh1xt]

​@@dantemeriere5890 Truer words have never been said.

[@lost4356]

Is not texture fault but shaders or particle effect that you cant turn it off tlou example the game rendered each leaves with respective light

[@kasimirdenhertog3516]

I don't know if it's in all Assassin's Creed games, but Origins has a nice interface when adjusting graphical settings, showing you the differences for each setting. Then you can decide whether you'd really miss the 'tad sharper text from a great distance' or 'extra puffy clouds'. And then it also has a performance graph running while you play to show exactly the loss or gain.

[@princepeachfuzz]

DOOM Eternal has the best graph data give it a try

[@hack_ur]

Its in Odessey too.

[@rubenbordea]

and AC Valhalla

[@jasssedine]

the newer Resident Evil games also have a showcase screenshots for each graphical setting. Which is super handy!

[@carltonleboss]

Couldn't really tell the difference...

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Exactly 😁

[@wanderingwobb6300]

You'll be able to tell that 10 FPS difference though

[@kornelvasarhelyi8123]

What is also worth mentioning is that if you play games that don't require high framerates, you can lock the framerate and still benefit from lower settings in the form of decreased power consumption and temperatures. Especially if you use a power hungry card.

[@mrbobgamingmemes9558]

True, also undervolting could help

[@PowrUsr.]

Absolutely. I have a 3060Ti and a 120hz oled tv, yet I always play at 1440p, locked at 60fps (+undervolt and mild underclock on cpu, but heavy overclock on memory). My GPU is usually running relatively silently at 85% usage, at 70-75°c. Great for my electricity bill and the longevity of the GPU too.

[@armyofninjas9055]

I always undervolt and cap the framerate. Why melt your card to give yourself screentear?

[@mrbobgamingmemes9558]

@@armyofninjas9055 its for benchmark purpose, for playing regularly undervolting and fps cap is highly recommended for any games just with different number

[@oldmanonyoutube]

I have a 3080 and never use Ultra settings on newer games. The visual gains are too small for the sacrifice in framerate.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah I think I could have a 4090 and still avoid ultra lol. Just a habit at this point

[@chlorobyte_projects]

@@RandomGaminginHD I would take a 4090 to run at 4K with high FPS. I'll gladly turn things down if they have no effect on visuals, but boost FPS when turned down.

[@DeanerNotTechTips]

Lol I play some games at 1080p low on a 3080

[@beardalaxy]

i have a 2080ti, playing games on ultra means i have less FPS and i always try to hit at least 90 when possible. still playing at 1080p too lol.

[@sopcannon]

i got a 4070 here and mostly play on high unless its an older game.

[@ChisponGroxo]

There's also the fact that common settings like SSR, AO, Shadows and Volumetric effects are the most resource intensive these days and should be the first ones to crank down when tweaking.

[@Rokabur]

Shadows can have a huge drain on FPS. My favorite indie Grim Dawn, the difference between off and Very High (or Ultra) is around 20 or so fps.

[@TheRealMikeMichaels]

Ultra is simply a marketing ploy to make people spend more on GPUS. Very few games are actually "Ultra."

[@TR1PLE_6]

Interesting how little difference there is between the ultra & high settings in terms of graphics but quite a bit of a jump in performance. Done some tests on my specs - RTX 3060 Ti / R7 5700X / 64GB (2x32) DDR4 RT (where available) is off for all tests. Also turned off is motion blur, DOF & bloom for personal preference. Readings taken from CapFrameX. Numbers from left to right are average FPS, 1% & 0.1%. Assassin's Creed Valhalla Ultra - 101.4 / 65.4 / 42.8 Very High - 110.8 / 76.9 / 60.3 Borderlands 3 Badass - 94.7 / 76.6 / 9.8 (!?) Ultra - 100.1 / 81.3 / 58.8 CP 2077 Ultra - 90.6 / 63.8 / 52.7 High - 96.4 / 65.3 / 54.7 FH5 Extreme - 91.2 / 75 / 66 Ultra - 102.6 / 79 / 64.7 Hogwarts Legacy Ultra - 65.5 / 41.3 / 30.4 High - 69 (nice) / 38.8 / 26.1 Spider-Man: Miles Morales Max - 99 / 62.1 / 41.6 High - 111 / 68.5 / 54.6 Shadow of the Tomb Raider (SMAA4x) Max - 113.8 / 81.4 / 53.2 High - 127.9 / 96.7 / 69.7 Watch Dogs: Legion Ultra - 86.2 / 68.9 / 59.3 Very High - 103.1 / 76.1 / 68.8

[@wile123456]

Hardware unboxed used to do optimized setting guides, testing what was most bang for the buck (their RDR2 video still the best), but they stopped. DF does the same but in less detail, but Alex has been sleeping and not done it for many of the new releases, so we kinda stuck in the dark on what settings are actually best.

[@AssassinKID]

Major PC games this year so far have been lackluster and horribly optimized. Notable major titles: Forspoken, Dead Space remake, Hogwarts Legacy, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, The Last of Us Part 1, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. They all needed multiple patches after launch to get to playable state. Not worth deep-diving into "optimized" settings when they are so broken on launch day.

[@zeedude8026]

Idk if youve noticed but almost every AAA pc port has launched so unbelievably unoptimized that changing settings doesnt fix anything, which is why youtubers who normally make optimized settings guide for games have not covered some of the more recent broken ports such as jedi survivor for instance.

[@darrens3494]

Thank you for this video. We always see videos tested with high end machines but this area of hardware is where tests need to be made the most, not the high end stuff. So, thank you 😊

[@builder396]

Two bits I noticed: Forzas Extreme preset had a notable difference in that the car cast shadows on itself, where it didnt on Ultra, which was one of the more visible differences. Hogwarts Legacy was the other. The high preset had this annoying fog that I think was the greatest difference in looks between any of the examples. It would annoy me to hell in a game if I ever found out. Also, the thing with stutters is definitely an issue of stuff loading in, bigger textures cause a bigger stutter. Nothing groundbreaking here, but it can be a big factor in certain games that try to load things on the fly when they get paired with old HDDs, or even SATA SSDs, where the data rate just doesnt meet the games demands. But thats honestly on the game as its an optimization issue, and the textures could be cached ahead of time into RAM if enough is available...which in this case it certainly was.

[@MaxIronsThird]

Forza on Extreme(max) added fog, but looked much better than Ultra. In Hogwarts Legacy the fog is also higher on Ultra(max).

[@igl8969]

In Forza the position of the sun its different...

[@stylie473joker5]

There's always the point where you cross it you start seeing diminishing returns and that's the line between high and ultra while taking a 20-30% performance hit or more generally, and the days of setting everything to low-medium or high is not enough anymore as there are settings that if you put on ultra-high or low they take no performance but others that take a lot of performance yet still look roughly the same on other settings which is weird. That's why youtubers that benchmark and compare every setting from low to ultra and finding the optimal points between performance and visual fidelity are a must these past years

[@Johannesklement154]

Subscribed on this video. Your content is just perfect these days, keep it up.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Thank you :)

[@ConfusedStu]

Really like how you try so hard just to present the facts with as little spin or personal opinion as possible. Another great video.

[@sneekeruk]

I think High is enough most of the time, I even went to get my glasses halfway through the video as I wasnt noticing anything that different between the options. The main thing I noticed that ultra sometimes seems to have better lighting on things like hogwarts, but that seemed to be about all.

[@itwasntme761]

yeah yt compression also does not help. Anyway, I agree, the biggest difference is probably lighting/shadow, but not significant during gameplay

[@kieron88ward]

Big difference in the draw difference in Hogwarts. Forza you can see a difference in lighting/reflection in a pause screen but in game you ain't gonna be looking at that.

[@Anon1370]

sometimes i wont lie i can't tell if raytracing is on or not unless its mentioned in the video because things are not raytraced enough in alot of games.....

[@ramhenricksilva3099]

Me watching in 480p: Ultra settings really are useless.

[@ys053rious6]

I have seen many split decisions on the settings of the highest and next one down, but most tech tubers would surmise that the highest setting would be more used for the photographic people out there who like to take huge amount of screen shots more than for the playability as the fidelity is like you said a lot more on a still image. I most of the time on my 6700XT playing at 1440p will use the setting down unless of course it can get cranked to the highest without much trouble. Great video yet again and just confirms really my thoughts on how I already do things.

[@ys053rious6]

@@RocketRenton My 6700XT cost £600 when I had no choice to replace my 1660ti If it had been 3 months later I would of got the 6800XT for the same price however I needed it at the time lol I would defo favour the 6700XT over the 3060ti any day. With the way things are going with Vram AMD saw this coming a long time ago which is why most of their reasonably priced cards are 10gb or above. I fitted my son a 6700 with 10gb as his budget wouldn't accommodate the XT variant but he plays at 1080 so big issue. The only thing Nvidia cards have slightly better is DLSS however there really is not much difference between FSR and DLSS when your actually into the game. For me team green lost my confidence a long time ago and have been team red for a while now and will probably stick that way in the future, my next upgrade is going from a 3600x to 5800x3d to maximise my AM4 platform until the AM5 gets over its hiccups.

[@jalma9643]

How many fps that you got in recent title using RX 6700XT on 1440P resolution and high graphic, the problem with benchmark nowadays is that they use the highest graphic option while i am just gonna use high setting, and also apparently video recording take some fps (some argue that it is false and some argue that it is true), so i want information from the real owner (I want to buy RX 6700XT in the near future or maybe something better if the market goes right)

[@ys053rious6]

@@jalma9643 I've never done much recording with it but I would assume I wouldn't be able to run the very highest whilst recording as it probably would take a performance hit, however for instance with Hogwarts Legacy I'm get around 75-100 fps on max settings with FSR on. If there's been any dips I have not noticed them what so ever. With games that people play online like cod and fortnight I wouldn't know but people use competitive settings so one can assume there is more than enough grunt for those. One of the main games I do play is Farming Simulator 22 (yes I know its just farming) however I'm able to play that completely maxed out with 200% res scale so essentially 4k with changes in the ini to further distance rendering by 4x and I'm getting a comfortable 60-75fps on average more than enough for me. The cost to performance is defo in AMDs corner for that gen of cards. I cannot fault this card in anyway. The only thing I would suggest is if your an RT fanboy then probably not the card for you though it's capable its not very strong at it in anyway but I don't use it so that feature to me is irrelevant. I have XFX quick and its really quite quiet under load also even OC so for me it's a winner and would highly recommend it as a med/high end card.

[@bitlionhart1746]

I remember playing games like sekiro with 15 fps on 800 × 600 on lowest settings with my radeon HD 6670

[@ps2progamer814]

Thats tough

[@purehollow]

That's literally me up until this year I bought an actual gaming pc The funny thing is that I managed to beat isshin with only 12fps You can't imagine my feeling when I fought him again with 60fps

[@magicman9255]

*Insert meme*: "Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture"

[@RandomGaminginHD]

😂

[@The.Crawling.Chaos.]

Actually you can often get away with with low settings but Textures at Max looking really good in my opinion. Recently did that with Crysis Remastered. I almost did not notice a difference, only when driving cars in third person FOV did I notice some popin. I bet I could increase one of the video options just one notch and get rid of that. And the FPS gain was massive by the way.

[@Motion_God]

I was just playing this on my 4090 maxed settings with ray tracing and got about 120 fps sometimes higher depending on the area

[@abhinavps2319]

my gt 710 can do 720p and fsr ultra performance and get 2 fps

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Better than 1 fps haha

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

At least it got "ultra".

[@abhinavps2319]

@@RandomGaminginHD true... Better than nothng I guess

[@abhinavps2319]

@@DragonOfTheMortalKombat 🥲

[@NCR_trooper-69]

You got me on the first half😂

[@CaptToilet]

to be fair the last time a game really looked massively different at the highest preset was Crysis of all games. Everything else is just "future proofing" by increasing things that you can't see without pixel peeping. Ultra used to mean something and now its just a term.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah remember the difference in Crysis between low and ultra? It was like two different games 😂

[@dd22koopaesverde58]

Ultra isnt noticiable becuase high is good graphics in 2023

[@smeezekitty]

I think the textures in Hogwarts Legacy actually looked crisper on high than ultra

[@venomyx204]

I went from a 1080p display to a 4k display recently and noticed resolution is infinitely more important. Since you wont see the tiny details with the difference between high and ultra without being in a higher resolution. I tried staring at a wall in 1080p and 4k and going to between them is like turning quality from low to ultra. In 1080p i saw a massive cobbled wall. In 4k i saw the fingerprints of the man who placed the bricks there and was able to estimate the date the wall was constructed. (both in max settings) Edit - After getting used to 4k, i do wonder how i ever was able to see anything in 1080p. Sounds silly but my god it looks mushy now.

[@madbeastgamming5716]

TIP FOR OLD BUDGET GPU GAMERS : to increase fps in pc games, just turn you shadows to low and anti aliasing to fxaa or equivalent. If game supports Ambient occlusion, please turn it on cuz it makes a huge difference in visuals without sacrificing fps. TEXTURES ALWAYS ON MEDIUM-HIGH. And this works for every pc games.

[@ketrub]

ambient occlusion makes a big fps difference when gpu limited though

[@Ninjaski24]

@@ketrubkiryu chan

[@madbeastgamming5716]

@@ketrub may be in some games that I wouldn't have played. But most of the time not a big difference. And it makes games more beautiful

[@tcelltech2518]

This was a fantastic video... You've actually changed my mind on ultra settings... I usually just go for the absolute best visuals, but I quite literally can't tell ANY difference in most of these comparisons.

[@djam7484]

there is a diference. dont forget youtube compresses videos.

[@EngineerMikey5]

@@djam7484 A difference that isn't worth the fps loss.

[@djam7484]

@@EngineerMikey5 never said anything about it being worth the fps loss or not. just that there is a difference..

[@EngineerMikey5]

@@djam7484 I didn't say that you said that either... I was just adding to it.

[@djam7484]

@@EngineerMikey5 why did you tag me then when this has no relevance to my original comment. Sounds lime your just trying to be smart ass about it.

[@nzn46nk]

the fact that I played Crysis Remastered on the maximum settings, including RT, despite using 1650S. my justification was "I finished this game dozens of times, I don't care I'm getting 15fps stable, I want maximum visuals" it was something...

[@fiece4767]

Everything above 10 fps is doable i would say, 15 fps is premium exp.

[@nzn46nk]

@@fiece4767 hey, as long as it's stable, I can bear anything

[@eniff2925]

Og crysis looks better than remastered and runs better too

[@nzn46nk]

@@eniff2925 exactly why I did what I did. agreed on that, original looks so much better

[@dragonhart6505]

there are instances where there is a very clear difference in quality between Ultra and High (not necessarily that they're WORTH, depending on who you are, but if you're looking for them you can find them). KZbin compression, however, says "nah...these are the same picture"

[@mingyi456]

I think this comparison should have been done with a 3060 instead of a 3050, the 8gb vram buffer might mean that games might be silently downgrading or compressing textures so as to fit within the vram buffer. Hogwarts legacy and forspoken have been shown to do that, leading people to think that the game looks uncharacteristically bad on their 8gb gpus.

[@SIPEROTH]

This is interesting. He should try again with a higher GPU.

[@marcograsso1386]

Yes, i recently switched from a rtx 2060 (6gb vram) to a rx 7900 xtx and on hogwarts legacy with same setting look much better.

[@Nyahnator]

I never see the differences in Ultra vs High comparisons on KZbin, but when I play games myself and in Native Resolution, without the KZbin compression, it always looks noticably better.

[@DorkBr]

The differences are more noticeable at higher resolutions. Yeah, wont see much on 1080p, but things like lightning, thextures and shadows have a great jump on 4k, you can CLEARLY set presets appart.

[@Youtube-Censorship-Police]

graphical settings in 2023: low: looks good! 182fps ultra: would you look at that extra pebble! 13fps

[@MsMarco6]

It's worth noting that Ultra setting are really designed for 1440p-2160p nowadays. Playing at 1080p is going to obscure the differences in texture/shadow resolution, draw distance, geometry etc. Ultra settings are usually more about hiding flaws visible at higher resolutions rather than improving the overall image, though obviously their are exceptions it's usually better to mess around with specific settings rather than worrying about presets. Nowadays the RT options are the more transformative high end settings and should be prioritized over ultra textures or whatever.

[@DeadPixel1105]

I got into PC gaming back in 2018 and I always followed the "never use ultra settings" rule, because I always had lower-end GPUs (1050 Ti, 1660, 1660 Ti). But last week I upgraded to a 4070, which is a massive leap in performance from the 1660 Ti I've been using for a few years. Now that I have the GPU horsepower that can max out games even at 1440p, I'm finally able to just set all graphics settings to max. Definitely feels good. Though I will admit that with all games, there really isn't any significant or noticeable difference between ultra and high graphics - unless you're comparing raytracing on vs raytracing off visuals, of course. And even then, in some games you can't even tell the difference between raytracing on vs off. But it does still feel good to know I can just set everything to ultra, turn on raytracing, and just play the game while maintaining a 60+ frames per second performance.

[@KellyClarkD]

Sometimes I lock games at 30 or 45 fps just so that I can enjoy the highest settings.

[@1988Demien]

If you are on 1080p sometimes there is no reason there are miniscule details in that case

[@triforcelp131]

it really annoys me that most benchmarking channels on youtube only test on ultra settings. Especially when the videos make it look like the games not playable on certain hardware. for example, looking for Forza Horizon 5 benchmarks with the RTX3060, most videos make it seem like you cant play on 4K60fps with the card, when in reality you get 70+ fps at 4k if you just turn the graphics down to ultra and maybe use DLSS Quality. In general, 4K benchmarks with RTX cards should always show DLSS aswell.

[@chrisbullock6477]

Having actually working for small development startup studios it actually comes down to the quality of assets the team is using or the abilities of the engine. Some tie the fidelity of the assets and textures to the resolution and its already a set graphic quality, and some actually change the entire game from textures, filtering quality, draw distance, hair, lighting, etc. In order to really notice you have to use a wide variety of games. Games from big talented studios like Naughty Dog will be harder to spot because their art direction and animations are so good. You need to use indie and non-AAA games in order to notice alot more.

[@kekistanifreedomfighter4197]

I agree with other comments. The only "ultra" or truly max setting I ever enable is texture quality because I have the VRAM for it, and it's the most noticeable improvement with the smallest impact on frame rate. Lighting settings are by far the most intense and usually past "medium" or "high" you're just giving up half your frames for tiny differences that you can barely notice.

[@jessterman21]

I usually start with the High preset, then adjust settings if I see object/LOD pop-in, pixelly shadows, or blurry textures

[@tech-bore8839]

Even if my rig is capable of Ultra, there are some settings that just seem silly. For example, "shadow resolution" seems unimportant. Sure I don't want pixelated shadows, but I've yet to see a game where I need to set shadow resolution above "medium" at most. Then again, it's not the dumbest/useless setting I've seen (i.e. DOF, Subsurface scattering).

[@KurosawaIsamu]

Shadow resolution depending on the method used can be far more noticeable at higher render resolutions than low. Same with volumetrics or any other setting with a resolution independent of render res. If each setting level is a static resolution rather than a % then lower will look fine at 1080p but can be really distractingly ugly at 4k. Oftentimes high matches 4k though so ultra is more than needed. Then there are games that tie resolution and draw distance into a single setting. It can be really annoying seeing the shadows being painted in only a metre in front of the character.

[@minnidot]

I miss the days when low settings would basically remove all textures but made the game playable. Now the differences between low/med/high/ultra can be difficult to even see. I can only imagine companies dont want their games to 'look bad' anymore which is why we no longer have the lowest of the low options available without tweaking files ourselves. I like your videos. Thanks

[@MLWJ1993]

I mean, just turning off dynamic shadow maps & ambient occlusion make for gigantic performance differences (and visuals).

[@PineyJustice]

Because this isn't 2003, textures have basically zero impact on performance if you have vram to spare it. Vram isn't mostly used by textures either, it's used by everything the gpu is doing, effects, geometry, compute, engines offload as much as they can to the GPU to avoid cpu to gpu bus penalties so that vram gets used for a lot.

[@archishmanroy2874]

Am I legally blind as i couldn't see any differences 😨?

[@lilpain1997]

This is why I optimise my settings or find others who have already done so, even though I can max games out. Unless its LOD settings, which I max out instantly just to reduce as much pop in as possible. Cant wait for nanite to help drastically rude that.

[@EDARDO112]

I think in most cases in this video i liked the lower presset more than the higher, probably the better illumination makes stuff looks shallower in the higher presset

[@FeniksGaming]

I would love similar video for medium settings. I think you can push some older hardware quite a bit and not lose that much in quality

[@Anna_Rae]

Ultra settings are usually built for future hardware in mind. Typically the best experiences is mimicking the settings consoles use if applicable. Lots of console games often have the best mix of visuals to performance given their hardware. Replicating those settings on a PC and potentially getting higher framerates with your better hardware is nice. On my 3080 and 5800X3D I play Forza Horizon 5 using the settings the Series X version has, but with the game running at 60 instead of 30 since I have the extra power. Max settings above the console version doesn’t really look all that better.

[@iNubpwn3r]

Do you remember the old days when one level of graphical fidelity looked like completly different game? Recently I played Heretic 2 for nostalgic reasons. Great looking game for the time, especially with Glide or OpenGl, but you wouldn't want to play in on medium or low.

[@charlesburris6314]

Had that and Hexen. Fun games.

[@Torchim49]

I remember the first Forza Horizon Port running kinda bad on pc only if you ran on Ultra but it ran great on high and the dev said something along the lines of "Ultra is meant for taking pictures, High is meant for actually playing the game" and ive stuck with that mantra ever since.

[@B16CXHatch]

One thing I've learned is often when you are actually playing a game, you just don't notice a lot of this stuff. If my computer can run a game maxed at over 120FPS at 1440p, I'll go ahead and crank the settings. If not, I'll dial them back. But, I've actually dialed some settings back before even if my system was handling it fine, because I wanted to reduce the load on the video card to make it run cooler and quieter, especially during certain times of year. Maxed settings are nice until your room turns into an oven.

[@THU31]

Worth noting that quite often using lower settings will increase CPU usage as the framerate goes higher. That can actually be seen in this video. Most settings only affect the GPU, only certain settings will affect the CPU (like draw distance, physics/animation, ray tracing). With a low-end CPU, you might actually find yourself CPU-limited and lowering the settings might not even help.

[@palaashatri]

I honestly feel like for modern games, even Medium settings is fine. Most games now bundle 4k textures for greater than medium settings, which are a VRAM hog, and those settings can further be used to boost other aspects of the image quality, like RT Shadows or RTGI, that significantly increase graphical fidelity, while even on 6/8GB GPUs at 1080p. 4GB VRAM users should avoid RT at all costs in modern games. Considering how even GPUs like RX 6600 are easily pushing upwards of 6-7 TFLOPs, 1080p Medium with no/some RT effects can easily provide a GREAT 1080p60 experience.

[@BReal-10EC]

Seems like the Vram usage changed when switching between the highest and second highest settings. That's something to consider if you are running close to your max Vram.

[@chlorobyte_projects]

I swear, there's often no difference between the highest and 2nd highest preset screenshots. I would have to take the 2 screenshots and take a difference with GIMP to see what's up. Might be that they're at 1080p though, there may be an actual difference on higher resolutions.

[@Anon1370]

its really hard even for me on 4k to see the difference in the youtube video between the ultra and high...and don't forget youtube compresses videos to hell and back

[@lynackhilou4865]

Like you said mixing up settings and going with a custom balanced preset is always the best choice , for example the ultra and high settings in cyberpunk are very similar in terms of visual fidelity and the biggest difference is reflections (SSR) as ultra is very expensive to turn on and costs more frames than Ray traced reflections , so it's a no brainer to turn it off

[@Boogie_the_cat]

Jedi Survivor looked (to me) to have the biggest improvement going from high to ultra. But to tell the truth, I'm shocked at the small amount these changes make. Been a gamer since the 90's (1890's, feels like) and like you said, the gap keeps closing. It used to make a quite large difference going from "high" to "highest" (or equivalent) settings.

[@raresmacovei8382]

Jedi Survivor also does crap like lowering resolution scale without telling you when changing graphic presets.

[@ItsAlwaysRainyInSAndreas]

Cyberpunk's SSR setting is brutal on higher settings and has almost raytracing level of performance hit. Turning it down to high while keeping rest of the ultra settings makes up around 90% of the improvement between ultra and high.

[@obi0914]

I can't remember the video I saw once that Ultra vs high (or equivalent), but the point he made was that it often came down to psychological reason then the actual results which often didn't really matter.

[@KiraSlith]

The reason why is pretty simple, we hit the quality wall for raster graphics at 1080p with the GTX 16xx/RX 5xx series GPUs. The future for raster graphics is in higher resolutions. 4k is the arena where AMD and Nvidia have chosen to compete now, and what most "Ultra" settings are targeted at. There's little room to add more that isn't annoying, lost on 1080p, or only looks good when done with ray tracing anyways. To the point you could probably get away with using a Quadro P4000 with "RTX Experience" (Nvidia's Quadro equivalent to GeForce Experience) to game comfortably @ 1080p (cheap and power efficient to boot) for years to come.

[@Gomcio]

Thats why optimization guides are amazing, you can boost your performance by 20-40% without even losing important visuals.

[@AssassinKID]

In newer games, Medium settings can still look very good with the consoles using those settings. I'd say for gamers on a budget, playing on a mix of Medium/High in most newer games will perform well enough, and you won't miss out on much.

[@CJNG_1]

consoles??? like ps5 ? isnt ps5 runs on high settings and ray tracings ??

[@lolpl0000]

you know that meme that goes like "its the same picture."? well, that was me while watching this video.

[@wm3709]

For me if I have always found it far more immersive to have 144fps rather than high/ultra settings. A consistent 60fps at high is def more immersive than an inconsistent 144fps at low, but in any situation where i can comfortably stay above 144fps, I will opt for that option regardless of graphically fidelity. I just personally value a smooth gameplay experience without stutters much more than a stuttering but high quality experience

[@ImperialDiecast]

really? youre saying consistent 60 fps is better than inconsistent 80, 90, 100? so youre saying i shouldnt get e.g. a 1440p 144hz monitor unless i have a 90 class gpu that can stay above 144 fps?

[@Clawthorne]

I love that this entire video is just that "they're the same picture" meme. The only major difference I could see was the fog, and that certainly isn't worth cutting your FPS. It's nice to see that we've gotten to the point technology wise where even budget cards can play games that look gorgeous.

[@alumlovescake]

Ultra was always meant to the option for people in the future or high end computers. The real issue is the lack of options in general games used to go from ps2 game at low and best looking game for the time at max + the lack of upgrades over console being 0.

[@AC-dd3rb]

This will vary from game to game for sure but high settings look good with ultra textures in most games. Games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey/Valhalla though for example you'll notice things like Terrain, fog, clutter and water when lowered but even then at the high settings rather than very high they still look really good. I go with ultra if my GPU coasts it otherwise I don't mind tuning a few settings. That's the beauty of PC gaming over console gaming you can fine tune the game to run as smooth and look as good as possible on your hardware. At least when the ports aren't released needing a dozen patches to get them running well. Great video mate don't see these ones very often.

[@soad11dude]

My 980ti ran everything I needed it to (at 1080p) and almost everything I wanted to play ran at max settings (I don't care for a lot of games that came out after 2016 so it makes sense) ... until I ran Doom Eternal. I think I played through that game at medium settings and overclocked my card a bit (which still looks great). But last year when the market was decent, I snagged a 6950XT. I still like running old hardware when possible. I have a blower R9 290 that sits in a spare rig for LAN parties... Loud, but still crushes most games we play. I always ask people to look at their most recent games to justify an upgrade. CoD WaW, CSGO, Risk of Rain, TF2, Borderlands 1, Saints Row 2/3/4. Portal 1/2. Fallout 3/NV. Bioshock series. Half Life. Plus more indie games than I could ever count... Most of these will run on a R9 290/390 or RX 480 from AMD... And from Nvidia a 970 or 1060 will still play lots of amazing titles (scored a good deal on a 1070 for build I did for a friend a few months ago). Which might explain why the 1060 was top of the steam hardware chart for years.

[@KeradSnake]

What about mixing High with medium and High and Ultra comparison? I do also kinda think Medium nowadays is less dogwater than it used to be and Medium - High mix settings is a good balance that I find heavily underrated

[@zeedude8026]

We are now in a period where graphical fidelity has advanced so much that the ultra settings has become obsolete as evident by how microscopic the differences are in this video between high and ultra. You can only improve visuals so much and we are really hitting diminishing returns. At this point ultra is simply for bragging rights nothing more.

[@TheACTIONZ]

You can notice a big difference in 4k, and KZbin compression isn't good at all, so it's harder to spot the details.

[@sporobeast9618]

im happy with my RTX 3050 & i dont mind playing all triple AAA games on high instead of ultra settings for better performance thx for testing my card in TLOU1 & Hogwarts legacy i thought 8GB Vram is not enough for them in the highest settings but i was wrong now i can buy both of them without regret but before that do u think 16GB of ram is enough?? or should i upgrade to 24GB? i hope ull answer me i rly appreciate it :))

[@shodan2958]

High and ultra seems subtle if anything. I'm personally not surprised by the returns these days. Back in the later 360/PS3 days, PCs could utilise a lot more memory than consoles could and as a result, together with the dawn of DX11 features meant that texture quality could really go all in, replacing muddy looking PS3/360 textures with super high quality equivalents. I would wager those sort of improvements are no longer worth the trade off of additional install sizes and as a result the fidelity difference is much diminished. Personally if things are quote "good enough" I don't have a reason to complain.

[@peterwolfe2328]

When balancing the performance of their games, devs usually follow this system: Low is for players with lower end PCs Medium is for consoles High is high-end PCs Ultra is not intended for most people's PCs at release, but rather for future-proofing. It's for 10 years from now when the average PC can run the game like butter and players want to squeeze a little more fidelity from the game.

[@ROCKSTAR3291]

Low and medium settings used to really bother me in the PS2 - PS3 era, but not anymore. Modern games simply look too good for traditional gaming now. My PC can max out a lot of games, but playing in 1080p at medium settings is also fine, the level of details is already good enough to me. There are no bad looking games nowadays. Only in VR where everything is super close to your eyes, that's where 4K Ultra makes a big difference.

[@Luckysonofagun1]

i watched ur vid 32 secs after release please say hi😁

[@WiseRiley]

damn i love ur channel, great in-depth analysis and commentary, thanks!

[@Plague_Doc22]

Ultra for me has always been something that's futureproofing. As it's not worth it with modern hardware a lot of the time due to the performance hit, but down the line it can help the game look decent. Sadly a lot of the time there's barely a visual difference between high and ultra.

[@MMBaconslice]

High settings are usually the way to go; I personnally find it sad that most people don't have the knowledge to personnalize their settings themselves, as it has always been one of the best parts of PC gaming for me. I really wish people knew how to get the most out of their hardware. We need more comprehensive benchmarks to let people know what they can achieve with lower tier hardware IMO!

[@1NIGHTMAREGAMER]

what i do is low to medium preset then setting the texture quality to high or ultra it looks way better then low textures and with less fps drop compared to setting every thing high or ultra you can confirm with a test of your own

[@freddiejohnson6137]

It almost seems some developers put these options in PC games for the sake of them being there rather than if most people will notice any difference. Even older games if you play on a higher resolution than most were able to back in the day some of the AA settings become pointless the higher you go. There there are more modern games and some of them even on lower settings look very good. Although I remember back at one point lowest settings pretty much meant stripping almost all textures and details out the game until it didn't even resemble what it was supposed to look like.

[@bigbear514]

One thing that would presumably be different would be things like effects when action's occurring like explosion's or magic spells. I already agree that they're not enough difference between max settings vs the next best for the performance downgrade most of the time. It's just that with effects, makes me wonder if max setting might actually end up seeing lower lows as a result.

[@heart_of_a_daedra3649]

I’ve always had things on medium - low settings throughout my years on pc, just never saw the minor graphical improvements worth losing frames. Current rig is a 2070s & 9700k and will likely continue to do this even if i won the lottery

[@FX-Z5Black]

FH5 is the only game shown where I would recommend Ultra or Extreme if you can afford it. The difference in the LOD of the vegetation is abysmal between low/med/high and ultra/extreme, even playing on high settings you can see how the LOD of the trees changes in front of your face, on ultra the transition is much smoother.

[@Morgan423Z]

To my 40s eyes on most of these games, the highest setting is a tough sell. It's like, "Make your game look 2% better, at the cost of 10 to 15 FPS!" No thank you! EDIT: I realize after saying this, that YT compression is a thing. But still... I'd have to be blown away by the difference to take that high of a performance hit, personally.

[@mingyi456]

Sometimes it might be a vram limitation, games like hogwards legacy and forspoken actually silently downgrade your textures in order to fit within the vram buffer, and you can only tell the difference with a gpu that has more vram.

[@ocudagledam]

For Cyberpunk, I would like to point out one thing not obvious from the footage in the video. High preset (at least at launch) had Contact shadows off and this made a big difference for character faces, without it they looked a lot flatter. The setting came with a performance hit, but was IMO worth it, so my actual settings ended up being based on the High preset, but with Contact shadows turned on and Aniso 16x. I think that after some updates (after I finished the game) they changed this (broke it up into more than one setting, and I'm no longer sure which preset does what).

[@bat9929]

Your voice is so calming to listen to

[@mrbobgamingmemes9558]

Talking about graphics ,I dont remember the last time i use graphics preset in games cuz i always set my custom settings in every single games that i play

[@Beef1188]

Is it just me or do some games look actually sharper with reduced settings?

[@marcelosoares7148]

If that's the case, the higher settings probably turns on the Temporal anti aliasing which can make the image blurry

[@DynamicalisBlue]

Ultra has always been that "max everything even tho it isn't worth it" option. It's just there to push the engine to its limit and doesn't have any meaningful tailoring like the other options do.

[@ckg-CaribbeanKnight]

High settings looks great and the performance boost is very good to have.

[@tristanwegner]

I love to watch digital foundry for the technical aspects. But when they have to slow down the footage while zoomed in, so you can see the difference after they pointed it out, you can notice it, when you look straight for it. Tells me barely make a difference in game. Shimmering from bad AA on the other hand can be distracting even in the peripheral field of view. In the 90s, you could tell from across the room, if someone was still running a 3D Game in software mode, or had one of these new fancy 3D Accelerators, with all smooth and warp free textures.

[@Bry.89]

In Forza, extreme looks less detailed than ultra because of the background fog added to the scene lol

[@falandobadheeu8801]

Can you do a comparison between low and high settings ? As nowadays low settings also looks pretty good !

[@gamingedition5165]

Watched this on my 4K tv and honestly I couldn’t tell the difference at all. Newer games on newer engines look great at lower settings that turning things up not always makes massive impact visually.

[@Anon1370]

im on 4k either i couldnt tell a difference and youtube is compressed to hell making it look worse so its actually better in game

[@dadgamer6717]

Lol I thought high looked better in most of them and wondered if you pulled a surprise for us and switched them around :)

[@dani-zc9tl]

To be fair in Forza Horizon 4 & 5 the differences are pretty big between presets and for the 20fps drop i feel like the sacrifice is worth it, if your fps is above 60 all the time of course. In motion you can't see the difference that clearly, but while steady or in photo mode the difference is significant.

[@Nemesizzonline]

I for one usualy go for 'custom' settings :P Ultra in my opinion has usualy been useless, hardly visual gains but usualy quite bad performance hits. It's a bit figuring out which settings has the biggest performance impact but the least visual impact. I for one still like to play World of Warcraft, but just setting everything on 'ultra' (they use a number preset, from 1 to 10, so ultra would be settings 10) performance tanks even on high-end hardware and you gain pretty much nothing in visuals. Biggest impact there is view-distance, on 10 it just costs a lot of performance but it adds little to none to the actual experience. Also very high Anti Alliasing settings is something that costs loads of performance, but adds lesser and lesser to the visuals with each step. I play on 2160p resolution so I either turn AA off completly (AA is not realy needed at 2160p anymore) or keep it at 2x just to smooth edges out. But a game like Diablo 4 (beta), the only options you had were either 4x AA or 8X AA , no option to turn it off at all. And that's another thing, some games start to lack options. Again the example is Diablo 4 beta, the first time I could change texture quality, the second beta (server slam it was called) I couldn't change that setting anymore. The texture quality of the second beta was noticeble less than the first (still it filled all VRAM with caching, lowering settings actualy increased VRAM usage...). Removing some options is anoying, as you can't tweak a game to run better and still look good. I don't need 4x or 8x AA, 2x or none would be fine, and my hardware could have run the said game even better (still hit 60FPS most of the time in Diablo 4, but some dips during cutscenes). Bit older title (quite old by now), but Crysis. It only looked good at high or ultra, lowering settings there make the game look horrible and still run horrible too. Back then I ran it on a Radeon 1650 Pro, mid-range card, but it could do Bioshock quite okay whilst looking okay, Crysis ofcourse ran like (manure :P ) and looked horribly bad on lower settings. A game like Farming Simulator 22 (yeah, I like the series :P) , useless settings like sky-detail absolutly destroy performance but add very very little in return (I mean, how often do you stare at the sky and go like "yeah, totaly worth it running it on ultra"?). Sky and cloud details add so little, but they absolutly tanked performance (took me a while to figure out why it ran so bad at first, as sky or cloud settings usualy don't impact performance that much). I could pretty much max out everything else, as long as I kept sky/cloud detail on low (again on 2160p resolution). So long story short: if there is a custom-graphics options, I'd go for that rather than pre-set...uhhh presets :P