How to pick the best graphics settings in games?

W

Wouter

Big Geek
I upgraded my computer over the past year and just got a new video card. Playing games is real fun now. You can find my specs in the 'my computer' area.

Now in a lot of games you can pick lots of settings, but I am not sure which to pick, and which settings would affect what hardware most...

For example I downloaded the demo of "Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory" and there are lots of settings but I'm unsure of what settings to pick, how they might affect my game, and what hardware they would tax.

In SC-CT there is:

Standard
-----------
(Resolution -> my screen's maximum is 1600*1200, but 1280*1024 is what I think most of the games I tried play and look best at)

Shader Model: Shader Model 1.1 / Shader Model 3.0
Antialiasing: none / 1X / 2X / 4X
Anisotropic filtering: none / 2X / 4X / 8X / 16X
Shadow Resolution: Low / Medium / High
Trilinear Filtering: On / Off
Specular Lighting: On / Off
High Quality Textures: On / Off
Vertical Sync: On / Off
Hardware Shadow Mapping On / Off

Advanced (Shader Options)
--------------------------

HDR Rendering: On / Off
Parallax Mapping: On / Off
High Quality Soft Shadows: On / Off



Could anyone give me a rundown of this graphics stuff?? Especially what the implications are for playing the games?



Wouter
 
The resolution is up to you. Over graphics quality I choose resolution. E.g. I'd rather have a game at 1280x1024 w/o anisotropic filtering than 800x600 anisotropic. Your resolution is a good balance.

The way I do things, I choose my favourite res, and then if I have any power left I'll allocate it to graphics options. The first option to enable would be high texture quality (or bump mapping) as I like to have detailed textures. After that is any miscellaneous eye candy like specular lighting, dynamic shadows (not really bothered about shadows) or realistic particles e.g. snow/weather. I'll enable these to taste (not always set to full), and try and leave some processing power for trilinear/anisotropic filtering (makes the edges between textures smoothed, rounded and realistic and about 2x or 4x anti-aliasing (smoothes rough edges).

Of course this all depends on how well your system can cope.
 
Personally all disable all of the shadows. The game will run alot faster and I dont notice any eye candy dissapear.
 
Its a type of texture filtering method which increases quality of surfaces far away. Its better than trilinear and bilinear filtering but is quite resource heavy. And yes I also agree that shadows can be disabled without a big impact on game experience.
 
though isn't splinter cell all about staying in the shadows? Yeah in fps and rpgs i wouldn't see a problem disabling shadows alltogether, but when shadows are part of the gameplay "hook" i say keep 'em and make it really look like you're sneaking around!
 
Hah yes, good point. I guess it even makes sense to enable these "soft shadows" for that game.

Other question: what's the difference between Shader Model 1.1 and 3.0? I'm guessing it has to do with transparency, like those waterfalls in Tomb Raider Legend and how Lara looks wet after swimming? Or is that also possible with SM1.0?

beretta9m2f said:
though isn't splinter cell all about staying in the shadows? Yeah in fps and rpgs i wouldn't see a problem disabling shadows alltogether, but when shadows are part of the gameplay "hook" i say keep 'em and make it really look like you're sneaking around!
Click to expand...
 
Wouter said:
Other question: what's the difference between Shader Model 1.1 and 3.0? I'm guessing it has to do with transparency, like those waterfalls in Tomb Raider Legend and how Lara looks wet after swimming? Or is that also possible with SM1.0?
Click to expand...
The difference between the two is fairly large until you compare SM 3.0 to SM 2.0. The SM 3.0 code path is able to render a game with fewer passes, although the difference lessens as the fill rate demands increase with higher resolutions. Everything else except Displacement Mapping, parallax mapping and soft shadows could be done in Shader Model 1.1.
All that being said, Chaos Theory is a sweet game and looks damn good with SM 3.0 and soft shadows enabled. You should be able to run it at Max settings without HDR and High Quality Soft Shadows.
This is Chaos Theory with SM 3.0, Soft Shadows and HDR (215KB)
And This is SM 1.1 with 2X AA and no HDR or Soft Shadows (176KB). Both are at 1280x1024.
 
What causes these rough edges, and how to get rid of them?

This occurs if I'm looking at the sceen from a certain perspective... if I look left and up or down and right a bit, it's okay again.

Edit: uploading failed, going to upload again in a sec
Edit 2: this should be okay: http://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chaostheoryedges7js.jpg

pelvis_3 said:
The difference between the two is fairly large until you compare SM 3.0 to SM 2.0. The SM 3.0 code path is able to render a game with fewer passes, although the difference lessens as the fill rate demands increase with higher resolutions. Everything else except Displacement Mapping, parallax mapping and soft shadows could be done in Shader Model 1.1.
All that being said, Chaos Theory is a sweet game and looks damn good with SM 3.0 and soft shadows enabled. You should be able to run it at Max settings without HDR and High Quality Soft Shadows.
This is Chaos Theory with SM 3.0, Soft Shadows and HDR (215KB)
And This is SM 1.1 with 2X AA and no HDR or Soft Shadows (176KB). Both are at 1280x1024.
Click to expand...
 
I read somewhere on the net that "Chaos Theory doesn't come with anti-aliasing on its own", is this what the above is about? I also now that you can "force" anti-aliasing with RivaTuner, would that be able to solve this effect (see screenshot in previous post)? Or am I totally barking up the wrong tree here?
 
Yes, Anti-Aliasing will remove the jaggies. If you compare my screenshots, look closely at sam's right arm. You'll notice everything that has an edge is now sort of 'Blurred'. The higher up you go with the Aliasing, the crisper the edge looks.
You'll also notice, that when SM 3.0 is selcted as the renderer, AA is now greyed out. If you swith back to SM 1.1, you can now select what AA you eant. But yes, you can either force AA at the driver level or in Rivatuner.
For a game like Chaos Theory and a system like yours, i would'nt turn AA on unless you lower the resolution below 1024x768.
 
pelvis_3 said:
For a game like Chaos Theory and a system like yours, i would'nt turn AA on unless you lower the resolution below 1024x768.
Click to expand...

What about if I pick Shader Model 1.1 instead of 3.0? Can I then turn on AA comfortably, or will it still remain a drag on resources?
 
Having AA on will always be a resource hog, no matter what settings are used.
My recommendation is to just experiment with different setting and resolution combinations to see what performs best.
 
Yes, of course I do that, but I also like to understand, more or less, what is going on. E.g. I think I clearly saw a difference between SM1.1 and SM3.0 in CT at the start: the lighting of the lamppost is different, looks much brighter and 'fuller' with SM3.0, more bland with SM1.1

pelvis_3 said:
Having AA on will always be a resource hog, no matter what settings are used.
My recommendation is to just experiment with different setting and resolution combinations to see what performs best.
Click to expand...
 
Hi,

I tried to play SC CT (on highest-est settings) at 1280*1024 and with anti-aliasing forced "on" by Rivatuner. I picked 2x2 AA and 4x4 AA and I did not notice any slowdowns. Did not try anything higher though, for fear of blowing up my computer (well, at least, breaking something, like overheating or so).

This made the ugly edge go away. I still notice the edge if I'm really paying attention to it (doubt I would notice if I didn't already know it was there), but I don't see much difference between 2x2 and 4x4, except that 4x4 is a little smoother but still noticeable.

I can more than live with 4x4, but I was wondering what setting it would take to make those lines smooth like mirror's surface?
 
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