Graphics settings. One of the defining features of the PC video game experience. That’s one thing that we have a leg over the consoles, as they allow us to completely tailor our experience to how we want it and, most importantly, turn off Motion Blur.
Okay, maybe not everyone hates motion blur as much as I do, but I guarantee you that there are people out there who immediately turn a specific setting or two off when they launch a new game. Who cares whether I can play at Low, Medium, or High graphics settings, I just want to turn off that pesky Chromatic Aberration.
I think Film Grain is another that is a hot topic on PC. As a fan of celluloid films and 35mm photography, I love film grain in a lot of things, but it’s my go to setting to turn off when I launch a new game. For some reason it just looks awful in video games, at least in my experience. I love seeing the sharpness and clarity of a crisp image on my monitor, but adding film grain just seems to turn it into a slightly blurry mess.
For example, upon launching Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time on launch day, before I even checked what I could turn to High or Low, I immediately turned off Motion Blur, Chromatic Aberration, and Film Grain.
I’d say those are the 3 biggest contestants for the most turned off graphics settings. But maybe it isn’t even something to do with a graphics setting and is instead aimed at performance. Maybe you hate frame rate caps and immediately turn those off. Or maybe you know that Anti-Aliasing always takes a huge chunk out of your FPS and so you turn it off or Low straight away. Or similarly with Volumetric Clouds, Reflection Quality, Sharpening etc.
So I’m sure there’s something that you turn off as soon as you launch a game. Is it motion blur? Chromatic Aberration? Film grain? Or something else? Let us know in the discussion area below exactly which graphics settings you turn off immediately and why, and of course… Let’s debate!
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PC Specs
i set to max then i turn off motion blur, depth of field and other effects like film grain, film noice, chromatic aberration, vignette. then i start decresing if needed, thanksfully i dont need to do that yet
PC Specs
I select the high or highest setting and then change:
Motion Blur: Off
Anti-aliasing: FXAA (TAA tanks the performance on my system)
Shadows: Low or medium
Textures: Ultra or High
This is usually enough for a smooth game.
PC Specs
I remember when me and my friend tested RDR2, on his system (1080Ti, 9900K) TAA was tanking the performance a lot, while on my system (at the time - 2080Ti, 5960X) the fps penalty for TAA was 1fps - both of us at 1440p back then. I don't know how it is with AMD, but it feels like Turing and Ampere handle TAA/TXAA very fast, because I can keep those on even at crazy resolutions without a big fps penalty at all.
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That's quite surprising.
1FPS drop for TAA is unheard off (at least for me)
If you feel like it, post a shout and ask other ppl what was their experience with TAA.
PC Specs
I definitely remember TAA being a "luxury" option back when I was on Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal... but with Turing and Ampere I really don't seem to be getting any major hits, so I usually have TAA/TXAA even at 4K+. That's my experience! Though maybe I need to revisit some games, see how they are. It's not impossible that I may be hitting a CPU bottleneck here and there, but I wouldn't put it as the primary reason.
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Tried Far Cry 5 at 5K ultra. In whatever spot I loaded at, I had 79fps with TAA and 82-83fps with AA off. Tiny impact, considering the resolution.
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is there any point using AA when you are at that high of a resolution?
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Yep. It reduces jaggies and shimmering, the same as at lower resolutions. Takes a sharper eye to notice the difference at 5K+, though.
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Excellent settings
Btw do you sometimes force certain settings in Radeon Software, or do you adjust the settings individually in each game?
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i adjust the settings in every game, sometimes I have tried to change things in Radeon Software but with no clear result
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Thx for the feedback.
I prefer to adjust them in-game as well. The one thing that I found interesting about the Radeon Software (and Nvidia-s equivalent), is that you can force a game to use certain graphical effects even tho the game itself might not have them (or support them).
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Majority of you got them right
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You nailed that top 3!
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Settings i always turn off upon first lauch:
vsync(i have a gsync monitor)
motion blur
shadow
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shadows?
why, playing competetive games only?
PC Specs
Settings I turn off if I can:
FXAA or TAA - TAA is ass on its own & always badly implemented. If its combined with another its usually fine. FXAA should be dropped entirely.
Motion blur - Always bad, keeps getting pushed as "making things seem fast" when really it just ruins the image.
Bloom - Almost always horrible and ruins image.
Depth of field
Chromatic aberration
Vsync - if it lowers to fps 30, if it actually removes screen tearing I begrudgingly turn on
Film Grain
PC Specs
Vignetting - I hate it with a passion as it just makes the corners drk for no reason. It doesn't focus on anything just lessens the image.
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I use both TAA and FXAA when I can. I'm not surprised you hate them at 1080p - that's because there are not enough pixels/detail for them to do anything without destroying the image, but they work REALLY well at 4K+. At 1440p as well, but I still choose to supersample first.
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I know a lot of people hate Motion Blur but in the right sort of game, with the right implementation it can really pull you in!
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Motion blur ugh
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Anti-Aliasing for me right off!
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Why so? I can understand something like TAA being blurry at 1080p for people, but you seem to be at 1440p to begin with.
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Motion Blur OFF always!
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I'll probably sound like a heretic, but I played both DOOM reboots with motion blur on xD
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Nah man, its fine. I guess its down to personal preference but I can't stand it because it gives me headaches. Also Chromatic Aberration is an abomination of an effect. I hate it and actually turned it off by editing INI files in The Outer Worlds.
PC Specs
The Outer Worlds has a setting for CA in the menu. Are you using an old pirated version or something? xD
CA in general I don't understand. As photographers and videographers we understand this optical flaw and companies pour billions into all sorts of R&D for coatings, materials and optical mitigation techniques to minimize CA to the point where modern lenses pretty much don't have it anymore whatsoever. It's undesirable. And yet game devs wipe their a$$ with it all and add it into their games to the level where even the ****tiest soviet lenses didn't!
PC Specs
Not pirated version, the EGS version. I played it shortly after release. The setting did come later but it didn't fully remove it from all aspects. For a totally CA -free experience, I turned to PC Gaming Wiki I think.
Effects like CA is what happens when either innovations stops in a certain field or someone high up is just too full of themselves. They took an undesirable flaw from the past and forcefully put that sh!t in our games as a feature.
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I usually just start the game. Force close it after launch and then go into Nvidia optimization to use recommended settings.
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idk whats with ppl and vsync but...
i really dont mind having some of that
even if it means lower the res all the way to 720 :p
i guess im more into quality than performance : D
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especially if it goes up to 60fps and down to 30
. . . nice
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you don't need vsync with a high refresh monitor
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DoF
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Anything with the word "Volumetric" in my experience decrease performance greatly. Anti-aliasing also might affect performance a lot in some games that use the classic MSAA.
Then I lower Shadows from Max/Highest because I really don't care about how beautiful they look. Depth of field I change to Medium if available since blur is blur to me, no need to have it on Highest.
Any settings with the word "Quality" on it I typically change depends on game.
And finally turn off the usuals: Motion blur, Bloom, Chromatic Aberration, Film grain.
PC Specs
First launch. Everything to the max as much as it goes at native (1440p). If chrom aberration is present - it's set to off. Then I see how it runs and looks. From there, if the DOF is garbage - it gets turned off. If performance allows (the GPU is asleep) - I'll push the game right up to 4K, 5K or 8K. I'll also often look up or test whether there are settings that tank performance for no visual impact - this becomes important in games that I could run at a high resolution (4K and above) and would like to gain more fps in for extra responsiveness.
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Shadows and AA. I've gotten used to turning those off for most modern games.
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Shadows, reflections, motion blur, bloom, depth of field, film grain and similar. Oh and anti-aliasing.
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Hate film grain, sometimes keep motion blur turned on if I can choose a very low intensity.
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Motion Blur, Depth of Field and Film Grain. Chromatic Aberration as well when it's done really badly and doesn't really add to the game
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Motion blur the first here like most of us :) And sometimes other settings as well, like anti aliasing is sometimes not needed.
For the rest indeed film grain and chromatic abberation :)
Just like everyone it seems lol, according to the poll :)