The most important graphics settings you should change in games on the computer
The PC is the preferred platform for many to enjoy video games , as the ability to develop the device and upgrade the hardware is not found in consoles such as PlayStation and Xbox, in addition to the complete freedom it gives its users regarding everything related to games, from the presence of many different stores to buy games at competitive prices to downloading mods and changing the experience significantly , and even the ability to modify everything related to the settings of the game itself, which includes the graphics settings, of course.
The graphics settings menu is probably the first thing we go to when trying a new game—after checking translation , of course! Adjusting graphics to get the best performance with the least possible sacrifice in image and graphics quality is something that worries many of us, especially those who own medium-sized devices and struggle to run the latest games they love.
Therefore, we have collected for you 5 important graphics settings in computer games , which we recommend changing and modifying before playing to get the best graphics performance, as some of these settings seem influential despite their lack of importance, and some of them can be dispensed with without greatly sacrificing graphics quality.
One of the settings that seems like it would dramatically improve your experience, and yet many people don't get it right, is the VSync setting. The misconception is very common.
VSync, or vertical sync, is a technology that synchronizes the frames generated by the graphics card with the frequency of your screen. If the screen has a frequency of 60 Hz, the device will try to adjust the game to give 60 frames per second in order to avoid the problem of screen tearing, which appears as a result of the screen frequency not keeping up with the frames sent by the graphics card during the game.
It certainly sounds great, but the problem appears in devices that are not able to run the game at a frequency equal to the screen frequency.
If your device has relatively limited capabilities and your screen has a frequency of 165 Hz, for example, activating this technology will try to reach the game frame rate to that number, and it certainly will not succeed in doing so, which will continue to consume the device's resources almost to no avail, which in turn will affect performance and result in other problems.
Another thing is that if VSync fails to get the game's frame rate to the same screen frequency, half the screen frequency will be targeted, meaning if your screen is 60Hz but your graphics card is unable to generate 60 frames per second, with VSync enabled in the game, it will process no more than 30 frames per second to maintain synchronization, but at the same time you will feel less smooth movement; even though your device may be able to run the same game at a higher frame rate than that, for example, 40 or 50, and this is what happens when VSync is disabled.
In short, if your device is capable of running the game at a high frame rate that matches the screen frequency, you can enable VSync, but if your device is lower than that, disabling the feature would be a good idea in this case.
You can try enabling it and playing a little and then disabling it to notice the difference, then settle on the best mode for your experience. If you find another option in the settings called "Adaptive VSync" or "Triple Buffering," you can enable it to overcome VSync problems, as it represents a compromise between the problem of tearing and response delay, at the expense of consuming a small part of the graphics card's capacity.
Many graphics settings aim to improve the display quality in more than one way, from the quality of details in the environment and surrounding elements to those elements that make the experience look more cinematic. Motion Blur is the most influential of these settings on the experience and the most controversial among users as well, as it adds an easily noticeable effect, making the movement on the screen have a somewhat blurry effect, and it cannot be denied that it makes the scenes look more beautiful and even closer to simulating scenes in movies, but!
Most old games that included motion blur look worse when this setting is enabled, due to the modest technical capabilities in the past compared to our present time, so motion blur should be disabled in those games, as it also represents a burden on the device's performance, like other graphic features. On the other hand, modern games have begun to present motion blur in a much better way, as it really makes the game look more cinematic and beautiful. But there are still some games in which the Motion Blur feature does not add any addition to the graphic quality, so it is better to turn off Motion Blur in those games.
However, motion blur is not an essential graphics feature but rather one of the features that can be dispensed with without sacrificing much image quality, so if your device has average capabilities, it would be better to always turn off motion blur to get better performance.
The human eye has a wide field of view; you can see things on either side of you as you look forward. But in games, especially first-person games, that's not possible. It's a game that simulates the player's perspective, but it certainly doesn't allow the same field of view as the human eye. After all, the game is displayed on a screen that takes up a limited area of your field of view.
So in an attempt to increase realism and simulation in games, there is the field of view feature, or FOV for short. It can be said that it is a feature that gives an advantage in games as well, especially first-person shooters, as the more you see, the more aware you are of your surroundings and the greater your chances of defeating your enemies.
Therefore, the field of view should be increased in shooting games in particular, as it makes an important difference in the gaming experience, but be careful because it naturally puts a burden on the device's performance since the game will display more objects in each frame, so if activating it affects performance, then disabling it would be better.
This feature aims to improve the image quality by making objects in the game sharper and clearer, such as leaves, grass, windows, etc. You have certainly encountered jagged or blurry edges of objects in the game, which makes you think that its developers did not pay enough attention to the graphics, but it is necessary to know that this jaggedness is eliminated using the anti-aliasing technology, and it is perhaps the most burdensome and performance-intensive graphics setting on the device. It really makes a noticeable difference in image quality, but this comes at the expense of performance if your device is less than required.
The need for anti-aliasing increases when using larger screens, because then the large screen size is often not proportional to the display resolution. A 40-inch screen is not recommended for playing at 1080p resolution, but then the aliasing problem we are talking about will appear, and objects will appear with blurry and jagged edges, and then the use of anti-aliasing technology is a must.
Of course, like the rest of the technologies on this list, anti-aliasing requires a lot of technical power from the device, and this depends on the type of technology, as there are different types of anti-aliasing technologies, which differ in the quality of the resulting image, which results in a difference in performance accordingly. There are MSAA, SSAA, FXAA, and others, and you have certainly come across these symbols in the graphics settings of games.
MSSA, or Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing, is definitely the best type because it offers an acceptable balance between performance and quality; it does not put a heavy load on the device's capabilities, nor does it reduce the quality much and make it acceptable. As for SSAA, or Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing, it is the most high-quality type in the displayed image, and of course it is the heaviest on the device and requires higher capabilities, so avoid using it if your device is less than required; it is a useful technology for those who have a device with strong performance.
Furthermore, many of the anti-aliasing settings also come in different levels like 2X, 4X, or 8X, which offer a greater improvement at the expense of performance. You can try each of these options and give yourself some playing time to notice the difference and adjust them again if necessary.
Unlike anti-aliasing, adaptive resolution, or resolution scaling, is useful for those who have less than recommended devices or those that are not powerful enough to run at the highest graphic settings. As you know, reducing the screen resolution is a common way to improve performance in the game.
When running a game at 4K resolution on a 4K monitor or TV, you will notice a noticeable drop in the frame rate compared to if you lowered the resolution to 2560 x 1440. To balance things out, Adaptive Resolution appeared, which continuously adjusts the display resolution and adapts to the device's performance in each scene.
When displaying a scene full of graphics that requires high performance, the resolution will automatically decrease slightly so that the performance is not affected and the frames do not drop suddenly. Conversely, in less graphically intensive scenes with less detail, the original screen resolution is used to keep them sharp.
If you find this option in the game, you can enable it, and then a slider may appear where you can set a target frame rate for the adaptive resolution, in which case I recommend setting it to the highest resolution your monitor supports to take full advantage of the device's performance.
There's also a technology from Nvidia called "DLSS" that takes the idea of "adaptive resolution" even further, using artificial intelligence to enhance the accuracy of details in games even when the settings are set to a lower resolution than the native resolution of the display. There are several generations of this technology, such as DLSS 2.0 and DLSS 3.0, both of which offer significant improvements in this area.
However, while Nvidia considers DLSS to be part of another technology called "ray tracing" in RTX graphics cards, some games allow it to be used even if "ray tracing" is disabled. In any case, if you find this option (DLSS) in the game settings, it is definitely worth trying.
This technology usually offers different options regarding quality and performance or the balance between them, which is an important feature for those who do not want to sacrifice graphic quality too much and want to get suitable quality, which is the case for many of us.