Certainly the case for power efficiency. Which loads of people seem to dismiss for desktop but idk if a game is good enough at 60 with a gamepad and looks fine then what do I need to be driving my power bill up for? Let-alone heating my office & revving up my case fans for negligible difference in what I'm seeing.

@@InnuendoXPcan’t relate to this at all. give me graphics so good my eyes bleed power be damned.

Call it high frame rate mode and people would use it exclusively.

RE Engine games often have a "prioritize performance" mode these days. I think that kinda fits this

don't sugar coat "low settings" by calling it "efficient", because efficiency is just a by-product of turning settings off. because if you play like WoW Classic with a gt1030 on 1080p high settings, it is still going to look better and be more efficient than a lets say gtx780ti on 720p low settings

This. They don't let you go full potato mode in many modern games.

I agree. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 looks beautiful in low settings (that sunsets!!), but that would be the normal settings of, let"s say, 14 years ago. You have to do some .ini tweaks and get some mods to achieve the real low.

⁠@@wiegraf9009if you need to go full potato, you’re definitely compromising your experience with a game

@@Bestgameplayer10 Better a compromised experience of a game I bought than no experience at all or an even worse one. Think Remnant 2, it was very hard to play at launch because the low settings weren't law enough and playing at 20fps for such a game is much more of an issue than not having some eye candy.

@@Vaasref I disagree.

For some people on the high end this is already the case. I'm playing through Avatar (a game with RTGI) on unobtanium settings, and thanks to upscaling and FG this game is pretty much running at 100+ fps at 4K. Same with Alan Wake 2. It wont take THAT long before mid end cards will have a good time dealing with ray tracing. Maybe even 5000 series already.

Yeah, even without frame gen I set Avatar to have a 100FPS cap just to keep the GPU quiet. That's only at 1440p in-game max, not unobtanium settings, but also it's on a 5 year old CPU and a 4070 super, which isn't that expensive (as GPUs go nowadays) Likewise, Alam Wake 2 and Cyberpunk can be maxed out at playable frame rates even without frame gen.

If your using FG and up scaling to get a good frame rate, the yes it’s still heavy on your system. It’s just faking it and your loosing picture quality(resolution )and responsiveness (frame time). You maybe happy with the results but the statement still true, it’s costly to performance.

@@mmremugamesmm it's still heavy, but it's not "so heavy", with a current card. Remember, these are maxed out settings

Paying 1000$ to nvidia for fake frames and water ponds

Games like rdr2 dont they nuke the textures

I do appreciate that low shadows does not = "no shadows" these days. "Some shadows" as a baseline minimum is acceptable under the circumstances.

Some games on low look better the high is clear to see what going on. 😂

@@xtr.7662 rdr 2 textures look bad even on high only ultra textures are useable in that game

Due to texture streaming, games can already have textures with effectively unlimited resolution. With "low textures" the streaming is just more aggressive probably. Arguably, there shouldn't even be a texture quality setting, the game should just use the optimal quality for the available amount of VRAM.

Yea it's a shame he changed his whole channel direction and for some reason deleted all his old videos

@@bnbnism They're actually still on his channel, just unlisted and in playlists. I rather like the new stuff and I totally understand why he stopped

​@@dinokaiser Why did he stop?

@@zaandam0172It became harder to make potato settings work due to obfuscation devs make/anti cheat and games becoming really demanding.

It's called 720p with FSA on Ultra Performance. Actually some games have custom resolution scaling and give you a slider to use, I've played around with 10% (so 1080p image upscaled from a 108p internal rendered image, I guess). Can't really tell what's going on, but it DOES run a lot faster!

versus Very High which looked godlike and still somehow looks REALLY nice even today.

GTA 4 looks like absolute ass on low settings also.

@@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish I think its because Crysis was basically the 1st bigbudget game designed with future high end pcs in mind and not held back at all by consoles. I vaguely recall an interview where they stated the highest settings were actually designed to take advantage of future PC hardware that hadn't been released at the time. And this makes sense, I had a flagship 8800GTX GPU back in 2007 and it could only run the highest settings at 1024x768 at around 25fps (sometimes dipping below 20fps in the most demanding moments). It ran rendering techniques not seen on consoles until PS4/X1 arrived (like parallax occlusion maps).

Crysis actually turns off physics effects on low, too.

Introducing Crysis, the PS3 version. Haha. Terryfying experience.

lmao

Same here also in my experience, frame generation also helps reducing temps.

that and capping framerate at 60 helps very much.

I use them and a fan to keep me from getting to hot, my computer is brutal.

Y'all gotta get air conditioners especially people in EU with how climate change is making every year hotter and hotter

I just don't use it xD

You should increase your shadow resolution

Low shadows aren't always more blurry though, often they're horribly blocky which does not reflect real life at all.

But there is a reason say soft shadow settings are often more demanding then regular shadows. Because yes, real shadows are blurry but on low settings they don't realistically cast shadows. I'm not saying that low setting shadows looks bad but they do not look how real shadows behaves .

Yeah except shadows on low a lot of the times don't have their render distance seperated. That's the problem.

In the case of Pacific Drive... Low shadows turn them off basically and Medium has them... so what you mean by Low it's actually Medium here lol

Yup, it makes no sense. Even as far back to the late 2000's 16x AF had very little to no performance cost.

Every effect does something and use some resources of hardware, but the significance of course depends on how each game is made and optimized. When performance is already good enough, there's generally no reason to leave it out as said, I agree it has less impact than most other effects. But that some impact still exists. When I play a game where my system barely meets the recommended specs for, I am looking for different ways to ease the GPU and/or CPU load, to get from an almost 60 FPS to mostly 60 FPS. That includes reducing or disabling AF to shave off those valuable extra microseconds, if I'm not happy with other alternatives like removing all shadows completely or lowering refresh rate to 50 or 30 FPS.

@@RadioactiveBlueberry ​ While your second paragraph is technically true, in practice, I have never seen so much as a 2 or 3% difference in framerate going from x16 to off. That would be one singular frame at 50 Hz.

That last paragraph should be on a sticker on every PC sold, the large majority of gamers simply don't grasp that concept. Sorry about your PC dude.

So basically getting to photorealism is the same as approaching the speed of light: impossible as you get closer to speed of light you need exponentially more energy.

I've also once had my PC wrecked due to lightning, i think i lost my psu and i definitely lost my mobo because of that. CPU, gpu and storage was fine though.

Thankfully my power outlet protection thing (idk the name) tanked a lightning strike once and I only had to replace that but it's scary seeing your PC freak out like that lol

Whats this power outlet protector thing? Would love to get one. Building a pricey rig rn, thanks! ​@SaintGGod

On a Riva TNT 2 for me. My mind was blown that it could even run.

Same bro. MGD setting in hard these days.

Fr

So it goes smoother? Happy for you!

Don't worry, we're all living in the matrix, once you unplug its the same res for most folk except for us short sighted.

Same. But hey at least GTA VI is on its way.

Yeah, ratchet and clank runs great as long as you have an SSD and keep ray tracing off. Ray tracing still has occasional drops below 60 with my 4070super.

@@JordanJ01 finished the game on a hdd strangely fsr3 doesn' t work but lossless scaling does. so the game was 60fps all the way through on my gtx980.

@@TailslolYou need to upgrade. You might as well be playing on a PS4. DF themselves explains the issues that specifically Ratchet and Clank will have on a HDD. You enjoy lag and audio desync, etc ? They were even using high end processors and GPUs for the tests and it was STILL junk…and that would be because an HDD just doesn’t cut it anymore. And I’m sure your “10 year old PC” doesn’t have anywhere near as good of other components, as their test rigs. So I’m sure the experience was absolutely terrible. You need to at least get yourself a SATA SSD.

@@Master_Nate I agree that they should get an SSD, but there is no need to tell someone else that their experience was actually terrible.

@@jemandetwas1 I’m willing to bet it was though 🤷‍♂️ The majority of people are completely oblivious to performance issues and things like stutter. This is something I’m starting to realize more and more. And I think developers/ publishers (more so the publishers / head honchos / suits) realize it as well…and it’s why we continue to see releases that are actually absolutely broken and shouldn’t even be being sold. Like Jedi Survivor. There’s no fixing the game / it STILL isn’t fixed like over a year later. Yet people will still shill for that game / say it was good / say it deserved GOTY / call it “fixed”….when it absolutely is not. It’s complete junk. A product that doesn’t work as intended / advertised, or as expected by players. I’m going to say the experience was likely terrible, because it most likely was. I personally cannot tolerate / excuse things like stutter, and I certainly couldn’t tolerate the major issues like audio desync that DF brought up about using an HDD on Ratchet. Because that’s not how the developers intended you to experience the game. It’s quite literally ruining the experience. The game not being meant to be played on a HDD, is also quite literally why it didn’t release on PS4 / PS4 Pro…which ran on HDDs. The game is meant to be seamless when using the rifts (the namesake of the game), and I believe even a SATA SSD caused little hitches in the loading. Buddy with the 10yr old system wasn’t even using one of those (1TB SATA SSD is like $70-$100 CDN these days, 500GB would likely cost this person less than the cost of a single game). Instead of getting Ratchet, they could’ve got an SSD that is going to help EVERY gaming experience in the long run. Again, most people just don’t understand what a “good” experience is. No game developer actually wants their game to lag / have audio desync. You think movie directors would like random frames to freeze in their films ? Enjoying a big cinematic battle in the new Avengers movie, but suddenly the fight pauses for a few seconds…and when it unpauses, the audio doesn’t match up ? 👌 And to have that supposedly built right into the movie ? No, that’s not how they meant for you to experience it. Well it’s the same for video games. If THEY had fun, fine. But it was still most likely an objectively bad experience.

Does it run much better than Medium or High settings?

@@Moshugaani yes

@@Moshugaani Not worth playing, in my opinion. Wait until you upgrade your system and play other games instead.

​@@eduardobenassi3072 how do you even know what system he has ?

@@DragonOfTheMortalKombat That was just a logical assumption, mister dragon guy. I don't need to explain it do I?

I had that and played nfs most wanted on it a 2 minute race would take hours to complete the frame rate was so low 😂

Don't forget the pores and tiny hair on faces.

The biggest resource hog is NOT resolution

😂 what games r u playing? Compare gta 5 to red dead 2 and they look miles apart even tho red dead 2 came out 5 years after gta 5. 10 years ago graphics comapred to now are massively different.

@@slaphappy6362 Very much depends on the engine. Some games DO NOT scale well with resolution.

​@@Sideways_Singhbiased example because not every developer put that much effort into their games as rdr2 and gtav which look ahead of their time

If pc gamers want higher settings, they would pay more for a pc that can do it. Some do, some don't have the money, and some don't care.

Especially now that we have DLSS/FSR/XeSS and arguably FrameGen.

90% of new games released nowadays, don't look that much better than their predecessors 10 years ago, but developers have gotten too lazy to optimize their games, and too reliant on their powerful developer hardware, that if a game happens to run literally 3x slower than it should, they don't care, as long as the hardware can still dish out 60 fps.

yup, something that shouldn't be overlooked for sure. A great tip for people struggling financially and/or in poorer regions.

Bahahaha worrying about the literal cost of energy for playing a game, never heard of this one, but seeing as you're in the UK I figured not only yeah ot makes sense but you also deserve it lol it made my day, and I live in a "third world country" and that though has never crossed my head lmao you made my day, get foked lol

@@kylewhite2985 you have some serious problems

@@kylewhite2985 you ok?

@@scorpiom8053 clearly not.

This is literally crazy talk. There is something wrong with your computer or your room or you or all of the above.

@@kylewhite2985 What? You think computers don't make heat? That the laws of thermodynamics don't apply to gaming? Who is the crazy one here??

@@wiegraf9009 Of course buddy but not enough to make a difference in the room, at least not any room I ever lived or anyone ever to the point you're lowering graphics settings and resolution? No and I game a lot, are you living in a small metal box? lol

@@kylewhite2985 Small office, no AC, running the graphics card and CPU on low power settings not just changing the settings in game.

The good part is that any pc can now play F.E.A.R. on max, and eveyone should experience it at least once.

@@mrlightwriter yes. Once I managed to afford a proper gaming pc, I played it and it was amazing

Really depends on the game.

Pretty much this, yes. Shadows, textures and harsh LOD transitions/pop-in are the most noticeable.

i always prefer to use ultra textures even if rest of my settings are on medium or high

@@KhizarKhan2001 Same.

Yet more people own a 4090 than the most popular amd gpu.

Around 25% of Steam users own a better PC than current consoles.

Sounds like you missed the point of this conversation. They're talking about low specs relative to a time back before Steam even existed, when using the "Low" preset had a very different impact on the visuals of the game - often times breaking the image entirely. It was *not* always the case that it's okay to use low specs. That, and why exactly things are different now, was the whole topic of the question asked in this clip.

@@rahulpandey9472 My 2018 laptop PC can't run Sonic Forces even on low settings. My Switch can.

@@dudujencarelli A gtx 1050 ti can run that game over 100 fps, 1080p, maxed out. If your laptop can't then it's your fault for buying a poor product. By the way, what are the specs of your laptop?

That’s why you use the NVIDIA optimizer.

Agreed. And I think it's because "low" doesn't mean much these days. It exists because particle effects and lighting often gets dramatically reduced (and these are pretty expensive effects with sometimes margincal effects on gameplay in the grande scheme of things). But also, you just don't see lower poly assets anymore. You don't see much lower geometric detail, or if you do, it's only mildly reduced on low. It's usually textures going lower or just reducing resolutions, or basically things that the renderer can do with absolutely no input from the artists or anyone else. Mostly automated in the engine the game runs in. We used to have low settings be actually made by tools and artists and put into the game, hence the PS1 looking visuals you could achieve on older games.

You clearly don't remember how 2009 was.

Yep GPU demands and diminishing returns from high and ultra settings too. Maybe its my eyes but Ultra really doesn't look too much better than medium to my eyes in most games now. If you go back to games in olden days, going from medium to ultra or even high made such a BIG difference in most games.

What kind of monster turns off controller rumble?

And even raytracing & pathtracing are scalable. Number of bounces, how strongly should it rely on temporal reconstruction (causes more ghosting), resolution of the reflections. At the moment devs are happy that it runs at all, but we're likely going to see more quality levels for RT in the future.

It really depends on the game. Alan wake 2 sees large performance improvements when going down to low, while still looking amazing.

Marketing has to market. That including KZfaqrs there’s a reason they’re always throwing 4090/4080 in everyone’s faces. Despite the fact that less than 10% has those premium cards

According to steam data most people are still using the 1650 or 3050 So... Yeah not everyone Is playing on max settings, its stupid to asume all pc players have a monster pc

I’m running a 2019 MacBook Pro with a 256gb Bootcamp partition. It’s hit or miss with current gen games but works on low usually. I’m hopping onto a PS5 as soon as GTA drops 🤘

8GB of Vram sucks because people allowed Nvidia to get away with it and continued buying their products.

8GB of vram is not a dev issue, it's an NVIDIA issue. The first 8GB cards were released in 2015, it's not dev's fault that they though VRAM would increase in a decade.

The last big leap was ps2 to ps3 everything else is iterative

@@xtr.7662 no. Let’s not forget that the ps3 generation was viewed through a sub 600p soup at times at around 20-30fps. While yes what was being rendered became less startling in relation to the leaps, well, we weren’t allow to see it through the blur and low frame rates! I’d say the step up to higher frame rates and higher resolution/resolution quality for non-pc gaming was one of the final “big leaps”.

​@@xtr.7662Lol no, ps3 gen was awful, ps4 era graphics is the leap.

Or AI to Artificial Insemination?

As with all games....quality depends on the skill of the dev.

Wasn't Half-Life ported to the PS1? I mean, if the game can run on the PS1, it could've certainly run on the Dreamcast.

Something tells me, you weren't here when the performance doubled every two years. These days I'm running legit 10 year old hardware, and I can still play modern games. Imagine running 2004 hardware in 2014 or 1994 hardware in 2004. In the other hand, low settings do not look okay in the slightest, they've stopped looking okay since it has become the norm to use resolution scaling on medium and lower.