I hate toning down AA. I like my screen smooth. And with the latest cards and drivers, you can turn it up really high and not lose that much performance. However, shadows... even low shadows gives me a noticeable performance hit.
Performance anxiety
- Thread starter iDEATH
- Start date
I find 4x AA is a nice medium. I find it looks noticably better than 2x, and 8x isn't a big enough improvment for the performance hit.
Shadows don't seem to be the biggest deal for me most of the time. I can run Skyrim with shadows on high (with some ini tweaks) for instance. It's ambient occlusion and V-sync that tend to kill framerates for me.
Shadows don't seem to be the biggest deal for me most of the time. I can run Skyrim with shadows on high (with some ini tweaks) for instance. It's ambient occlusion and V-sync that tend to kill framerates for me.
V-sync is supposed to "kill" framerates, in a sense. It's designed to make you have the most consistent frame-rates possible. I also find it tends to limit to 60 FPS most of the time, which is fine.
Oh, I get that, I do. I mean that it cuts into my frame rates too much, but that's probably because I can stand a little tearing if it means I can make things a little prettier, so v-sync is a late addition for me.
I usually need to turn Vsync on, I run my setup through HDMI into my TV so sometimes the refresh rate gets confuzzled and I get massive screen tearing unless Vsync is on. Thankfully triple buffering does help a bit with the speed though.
Shadows I notice, I used to have shadows off back in the day and everything ended up having a bright washed out look, kinda unnatural. I don't often notice the difference between like....super shadows and regular shadows though. I don't usually notice AA or AF though, it's very subtle to me but people say they look good and I like believing I'm getting the best possible graphics/performance ratio for my setup so I usually set them as far as I can go. I'm a bit of a tweaker though, I notice when even little things go wrong and it bugs me if I can't get them to look or feel right =P
Shadows I notice, I used to have shadows off back in the day and everything ended up having a bright washed out look, kinda unnatural. I don't often notice the difference between like....super shadows and regular shadows though. I don't usually notice AA or AF though, it's very subtle to me but people say they look good and I like believing I'm getting the best possible graphics/performance ratio for my setup so I usually set them as far as I can go. I'm a bit of a tweaker though, I notice when even little things go wrong and it bugs me if I can't get them to look or feel right =P
If you are using a TV, AA and AF is not going to be very noticeable. At least, that has been my experience. I always turn on vsync and triple buffering, regardless of what game I'm using, followed by AA, and then AF.
Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that! I wasn't fond of the look in Skyrim, but I'll check it out with SRIII and see how it goes, thanks for the tip.
EDIT:
FXAA works brilliantly. The art style of SRIII compliments it well.
Some more tweaks and I found that Lighting on High was a major FPS hit. Turning that down (I'm not even sure I can see a difference between High and Low lighting most of the time) I was able to up AO to Medium (very noticeable on characters) and turn on V-sync and still hit the low-30s for FPS most of the time. Still the occasional dip into the mid-20s, but it seems to be pretty much restricted to when I'm flying from one island to the next now.
Thanks again for all the great advice guys! Hope to see some of you for some co-op in 2 1/2 weeks!
