Been saying for years: Ultra is for screenshots, high is for gaming. The few settings I can usually tell a (small) difference between high and ultra in games are textures and draw distance, most other settings I can't notice even if you go down to medium sometimes. The thing to remember when your GPU is getting a bit older is that high or even medium settings in the newest games usually looks better than ultra in games 2+ years old, so the newest games won't look any worse than the older games you could play on ultra, they just won't look as good as the could if you had a stronger GPU.
Fun fact: this is why Crytek renamed the settings in Crysis 2 as High (Low) and Extreme (High/Ultra) because PC gamers can't accept running at "Low" so they try to push settings and kill their FPS for very minimal image improvement.
A great example of this is resident evil 2. Even if you got medium or low settings the game still looks good. Also not too much difference in high maybe reflections or blooms is the major changes. If the game really looks good, It will look good even on low settings.
I just bought a megawide? (32x9) monitor. 5160 x1440. Pretty close to 4k. I'm going to have to run it on a 4070. I'll be lucky to get 60fps on most games with the settings lowered. But wide-screen gaming is so immersive that it's worth the trade-offs in resolution and frame rate to me.
The main differences are how materials react too lighting conditions. More intensive and accurate normal maps, reflection/rough maps at a higher resolution, so on. (I don’t know what folks call that collection of maps official so I’ll call it detail maps) Thing about models are that they’re actually multiple textures all merged together and working in different ways. The most obvious is a diffused map, which is also the most easiest too run since it’s just paint on a model essentially. The more intensive ones to run are metallic, normals, roughness (and so on, different game engines call them by different names or use different maps all together). These maps are what are called lit maps in Unity, the engine I usually use, and will only interact with the lighting of a scene. The main difference between your usual Ultra and High settings is usually this; the size of said maps. Usually these maps are set to be about half or 3/4 the size of the diffused map as most people won’t be able too tell the difference (bit of a toss up on the normal since that’s the second more notable texture map on a model, although it’s still a lit map). Ultra settings, however, allows for you too max out these maps texture sizes for more texture accurate, sharp reflections. This is most notable in slow camera movements on close up objects, for example on Lara Croft’s blue vest (of course I had to spot the best example there… not doing good for the male stereotype). In the Ultra edition you’re able too see more define bumps in the threading of her shirt as per light sources, likely dictated by a normal and rough map, while in the high preset it’s a lot less noticeable however a AO (ambient occlusion) map is far more prevalent and allows for the lines on the shirt to be seen from literally any direction. I should say what particular maps are being used is down too guess work for me, but in my experience if you’re looking to squeeze more performance out of your game, shrink the detail maps.
There is WAY more often the opposite case. The difference is impossible to spot or non-existent, but the performance is tanking. Again i'm talking about actual gameplay, not demos, not those squared previews you see in some games in the settings menu, etc. But old school gamers know this, it's the fresh gamers who argue with review results non-stop which are made intentionally as extreme as possible by design to discriminate between cards. And this stands for hardware too, as most reviewers use unrealistic hardware combos, again to make differences as big as possible between what they compare. But no one cares recently (well almsot no one). If you follow comment sections they will call a card trash because it is short 3-4 fps to 60 on average, in the most extreme conditions possible. Or the vram argument, also based on crazy presmises. Well, vram argument is recurrent but the way its argued... People literally forgot how to pc game, they treat it like a console.
2:00 this is not a confident answer but I think the first one was ultra. The shadows cast from the people in the background were slightly sharper and I thought the illumination from the lanterns looked a bit more natural. But then again I would never notice if I was just playing the game. Edit: I was right but I wouldn’t sacrifice the frame rate for such a minor shading upgrade. Edit 2: my guess for red dead is the second one is ultra. Playing the footage back to back there is a noticeable difference in the sharpness of the shadows and the light reflection but it’s such a small difference that I would never use it during gameplay.
The RDR2 advanced graphics settings is a rabbit hole that can threaten to take over your life. Everything on high except for texture quality which looks much better on ultra is my general guide.
I got them all right but it was from deliberately looking at very specific details I normally wouldn't be focused on during a game or even when looking at a still, just to try and see the difference. In the RDR2 ones it was the fur textures on the top of the coat that gave it away but there's absolutely no way anyone would tell if they were just enjoying it and playing the game.
Agreed. I found it very easy to get all 4/4, but unless I'm playing a slow paced game I'm much more likely to notice when the frame rate drops than when the lighting and textures are a little better. For slower single player games, or those with scenic moments, like RDR2, I would notice and value it though. So this video has probably had the opposite impact to the intention.
I think going high vs ultra is a bit meaningless. The fact of the matter is you don't just run presets. It's best to optimize settings for best performance while retaining maximum visual fidelity. Min/Maxing if you will. In the case of RDR2 you can run high settings to get better performance, but you'll get better performance running ultra with 3-4 options turned off or down halfway through. In this case you drop tree tesselation, which seems to chonk you anywhere from 10-30% of FPS, water physics to 50%, grass density to 50%, and reflections quality to high. I get averages of about 35-40 fps in benchmark with quality DLSS on ultra, and I get 60-80fps when I turn down those 4 settings. There is almost no visual difference, the biggest being arguably tree appearance, but how often do you stop to inspect bark thickness. In the next gen the biggest meme is gonna come from ray tracing. I strongly believe that running a game on medium with RTX on makes the game look better than ultra with RTX off. Lighting quality is a huge contributor to a scene's perceptibility of reality. If you manage to narrow them down, like shadows, textures, volumetric lighting, ray tracing, then the rest often doesn't matter as much. It's all about how you can trick your brain. If RTX can make minecraft look stunning and realistic despite being made of cubes, than it can make anything look good.
I read this quite late, but I still have a gripe for RT enabled compared to ingame performance, it's disgusting really. I mean, in some cases (cyberpunk or doom eternal or other AAA games recently), turning RT OFF is somehow worst than traditional rasterisation. It looked like a low lightning effect from a decade old game. So the dev "forced" you to turn on RT, while hurting the performance, that in the end persuade you to buy the latest GPU, even though your old hardware should be capable to run games at 60fps for more than 3 years (looking back at the old hardware). It really shows why the GTX 1060 still survived through 2019, it is capable yo run your game optimally, while the "RTX" 2060 can't run games with the Ray Tracing feature on nowaday games, technically the 20 series died out just after 2 years of release.
So, I got them all right. I really could tell. That said, the difference is so insignificant that Ultra settings seem pointless. You got me...I'm a convert.
Depends on the game and also how optimised it is. I have no problem bumping everything up to Ultra if my fps can stay above 60, and not be a stuttering mess. If there is only a 10 fps difference between high and ultra, I will usually stick to ultra if my frame rate is still good. It's when the fps is 20 + difference compared to high vs ultra that it isn't worth it.
I agree with you.. one thing I dont underdtsnd is some people look out for max fps on story driven games like rdr2 spiderman etc... it doesnt really matter above 60-90fps in these kinda games. FPS really mattters in Competitive games tho.
i just found this video because i was with a huge doubt about playing red dead redepmtion 2 on high or ultra settings, my friends told me that in high settings it looked almost the same than ultra and i didn't wanted to believe that, i was with that doubt because on ultra settings my pc run the game at 63-70 fps and sometimes in very specific scenarios it goes down to 37 fps, now that i'm watching this video i think i'm gonna play on high settings, i tried to decieve myself the whole video but i really can't find any difference, i just tried to guess, i also read a ver accurated commentaroy about how ultra settings are meant for screenshots and high for gaming and i think it is true, thanks for the video dude, i know it's two years old and i really don't comment any video i watch usually but this really opened my eyes, new suscriber
It seems a negligible difference between High and Ultra, yes if you scrutinize the monitor you'll see a small difference noticably mainly in fps, but if immersed in a game such as rdr2 it seems fine to play on a Turing card even if you wish you had an Ampere.
I'm excited to test the DLSS 2.1 that's being added to RDR2. Especially since running the game at my native ultrawide 3440x1440 is a bit tough even at High.
@@danielowentech saving up for a good monitor like yours hopefully get one in a couple of months. Mine was good back in 2014 but noticed a few dead pixels and can be distracting!
I play almost 3 years on High settings with medium shadows, sometimes post processing to medium and game looks almost same like ultra but fps is higher maybe about such 15-25%
ultra been dead for years now sense 2016 games look almost same as the settings below which is high or very high its just a small change I only use high So its still weird to me channels still use max as if they dont know it make no sense to use max
Tomb raider shadows give away which one is ultra and on red dead the texture of the jacket is a good tell. I agree though while playing the game its hardly noticeable.
FPS can also just be a marketing point. Most games do not run any better over 80 to 90 FPS. And ported games like Red Dead 2, do not seem to run any better above a locked 60 FPS. I unlocked the frame rate playing RD2 and only noticed higher temps and power draw.
The problem is we're comparing different images (left/right split). You need the same image side by side for ultra and high. Same with the video. I did think A was ultra on Tomb Raider, as it looked a little better but that was only 50% certainty as it wasn't massively obvious. And to lose 20FPS, high is the choice especially if ultra FPS would drop more and have 1% very low
I got them all right but I feel like that's just my experience in 3D software talking, I know what certain features can be expensive and what to look for. Even then, it was hard to tell!
This is very true. Certain settings apply more depending on the game and what environments you're dealing with majority of the time. For example things like larger draw distances for foliage, shadows, and level of detail will be more important in games like Ghost Recon Wildlands / Breakpoint than a game like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, even though that game has some larger areas. This is because the Ghost Recon environments are always very open and you're always looking out over a huge distance of land. Even then, ultra is sometimes not necessary as very high might provide the right amount of detail anyways.
For myself i think: In a high resolutions something above 1080p especially 4k ultra would be pretty good and on a bigger display. But on 1080p is better to stick to high. And how many people even do that? Its not as if everyone runs games on 4k monitors. 1080p is like 90 % probably of users. I think steam had this survery or whatever basically confirming this. And a good graphics card that can run at high settings could likely run the same game even in low and it would look better than a card that can barely push 60.. i think
Why not buy a 120hz screen and play everything at ultra silky smooth high framerates. I'd think that would be a bigger gain over slightly better visuals.
The difference between Ultra and High that I can tell is like that of better or worse post processesing of an image. There's ever so slightly smoother textures on Ultra that if you are looking for it, you will see it. I think however given such a subtle difference, it's not worth the loss in frame rate. Ultra is the luxury car that cost alot to maintain, High is the luxury car that a majority can afford to own. - P.S. I pixel peep too much, this is why I have an OLED TV lol. I'm a stickler on haze from LCD screens.
Lately ive been doing that and its actually super fine most of the time cant even tell the difference visually but the framerates thats where the changes are now i basically just turn textures to ultra and everything else to high im on a rx 5600 xt so doing this i get 60 or 60+ fps on 1080p for every game
Yup, textures to ultra as long as the card has enough VRAM and everything else to high is generally an almost imperceptible visual downgrade but a very perceptible framerate boost.
Overall I agree that at times the differences between high and ultra aren't that different from one another but the performance takes a hit. It depends on the game too of course but in general I agree. I don't know if it's because of the marketing from gpu manufacturers, the benchmark videos or both but it seems to me that there's a good amount of people out there that feel as though they have to play the game at all settings maxed out in order to enjoy it and that's a costly mentality to have but to each their own I guess. I've actually been playing through Metro Exodus Enhanced and of course it looks amazing, especially when you first start playing it but I can't say that I'm enjoying the game more than I did when I played the standard version without ray tracing. As a matter of fact after playing for a while the novelty wore off and I found my self to notice the differences in some cases where the lighting differences are more noticeable. I guess this pretty much sums up how I feel about ray tracing in general as far as it's current implementation in gaming goes. It's not that different from the rasterized version it's something I must have. Minecraft and Quake 2 are the exception.
Tbh, I watched this video in 4K on a high quality monitor and was able to spot the High Settings vs Ultra Settings in moving video. BUT it was very close and if I wasn't actively looking for it, I probably wouldn't have noticed.
I feel quite proud of being able to make the difference on a 1080p phone despite UA-cam compression but I will still play medium settings 90% of the time. There's no way ultra is worth it unless the game is like 10 years old
in the past i've seen things where they show different quality levels and i never see a difference, but it seems like people think it's obvious, so i just chalked it up to my taste in wine (that i have basically no taste and can't tell what's good or not) :-) i think it's more important to me that things look "nice" and that i'm not outright missing things in the distance that might show up in a higher setting (i always worry that's a feature of low quality..but maybe games don't do that and worried about a thing that doesn't happen)
Some games have a "draw distance" type setting which can make things only show up at closer distances. Which is sort of like what you are saying at the end.
My strategy is to use medium preset at 1080p with DLSS and Frame Gen enabled. Everything else is off. If you compare ultra and medium video side by side, you'll notice little difference in quality. They all look the same. The benefits are massive for playing on medium. The #1 reason is high fps. I however want to cap it to 60 so it won't overwork my gpu. The second reason is less chance the GPU ever overheating and less fan noise.
3:14 look at the fan on the left, it have no shadow on high, but it does on Ultra. This immediately caught my eye in one of the cutscenes in the game where little objects were looking out of place due to lack of shadows. So no, gaming on ultra is not stupid. There are some graphics settings which if reduced, can remove some of the visual effects, and then there are some which only affect the detail of certain visuals. Settings like draw distance, resolution, level of detail, physics quality, population density etc are settings that don't have to be maxed out, increasing them will only make the game look more detailed. On the other hand, settings that can turn off certain visuals in the game should be kept at ultra.
RDR2 isn't a good example to determine whether you can actually tell the difference between ultra and high because RDR2 is one of those games that almost any setting that ain't on ultra kind of makes the game look bad.
on 4k every thing is a lot more sharp and see way more details between ultra and high. and comparing graphics on 1080p youtube converter is one of the worst ways of doing this test.
For RDR2 there were noticable differences, lighting & material quality stood out to me. But without scrolling back on the video I couldn't tell the difference. For Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I couldn't tell whatsoever.
It's all about efficiency and prioritization of visuals. Does adding that higher option deserve the frame cost for the person playing it? Would they trade this option with that option to make the cut to a playable state? I find everyone needs to customize to their own taste. I could sacrifice from shadows and reflections for better LoD, resolution or textures for example. I'll drop motion blur, depth of field and the like as well. There's a lot to fine tune and get adequate performance and quality.
2:04 i liked how be looked .. i honestly use mixed settings, character detail and textures are on ultra and everything else on high. that's how I play most games. props for the 4k 60fps video ..whats the bitrate do you use to record? i been thinking if FSR is a good implementation , now can we play on ULTRA and get more FPS ??
Gameplay was captured at 50mbs 60fps @1440p. But I rendered into 4K at extremely high bitrate in Davinci Resolve to uploaded to UA-cam because it seems like you get better bitrates from the UA-cam compression @4K. So the images are actually 1440p but getting pretty good quality despite the youtube compression because of my trick lol
@@danielowentech i use the amd software re:live . But i put the video bitrate at 100mbs. In the videos uploaded to UA-cam the compression isn't as bad. But the video size is giantnourmous 😂, after upload video gets deleted. The other day for a 10mins the size was 24gb lol I just realized i put be instead of b 😂 Damm you auto correct 😂
Thnax for ur great video Best way to find the ultra or lower one is paying attention to details like beards or textures etc. Overall there is no point to play all games on ultra .
Great video. What about comparing 4K vs 1440P? How big of a difference is there? As we all know that high demanding games in 4K can't be played above 40-60 FPS depending on the game but how big of a difference there is? Would be great to see that the same way you did this video.
I've heard and seen not much of a difference graphically. The 4K looks better, but you're not missing much. I'd much rather have high fps at a cheaper price. The 4k monitors that can give you high frames, but it's not worth the price IMO. 1440p is the way to go personally. But I'm just getting into PC gaming. There are others who've been in the community for years that can give you a better perspective.
It's the same with Native vs DLSS Quality. I'm trying really hard to spot a difference and I can't. Playing Cyberpunk on High with DLSS Quality and i can't tell a difference between that and Ultra at Native, but the frames are through the roof on a 3070. So yeah sometimes Ultra settings are kinda dumb. In Cyberpunk it lowers only 3 or 4 unimportant settings like clouds and fog.
some stuff like texture quality or maybe shadow distance, can have noticeable difference during the gameplay, but other settings dont really matter a lot if u dont specifically pay attention to details and compare
The only time you should choose ultra is if you're getting steady 80+fps (unless its a competitive shooter then 80 is on the low end of what you'll be aiming for). Otherwise going for high will always be your best option.
RDR2 I play it on almost the highest graphics settings at 1080p x 5/4 resolution when it dips below 60 it's not really noticeable. The biggest FPS draw was the water physics, so i go just under full on that. I turn down to high the far away effects. The most beautiful stuff that impresses is close up anyway. I'm rockin a RX 6750 XT and a Ryzen 7 5800x. It's great for 1080p gaming and even allows for decent raytracing in most titles.
You can see the difference mostly in nature imo and when looking at distant objects. I specifically know that rdr2 has a problem where shadows pop in as youre getting closer and if you're looking over a meadow or something you can clearly see the unshaded part but if you're on ultra you cant. For me that seriously brakes the immersion but if i had to choose 90fps on high or 60 on ultra, I'd go for high.
I could tell the difference soon as you showed it without me really having to look for it. I don't know if it's because I have a 4K HDR monitor and use to playing on ultra and max out everything in games or what but I notice it alot even me going back to consoles everything seems off.
the easiest way to check is, high settings usually more blurry than ultra, tho it depends if DoF, TAA, and anisotropic filtering value, but for shadow, texture and LoD it's pretty noticeable tho the fps tank is much more noticable lol
I was able to tell the difference on RDR2 due to the lighting- it diffused more evenly On SotTR all I could tell was that raytracing was off (no coloured shadows, shadow pop-in, no ambient occlusion on the popsicle stand)
Question should have been "is gaming at 4k stupid?", since it is, unless you are gaming on a massive size tv like screen. On a regular sized monitor, all you need is 1080p and it doesnt matter much wether you use high or ultra then.
Ultra sometimes is pretty useless in rdr2 ultra texture vs high is a massive difference but things like water physics are going suck performance for something you probably won’t notice. I could tell on rdr2 but not tomb raider. 4k makes it a lot more noticeable.
2:00 I think B is ultra because the light scattering and reflection looks better. Otherwise the textures, meshes edges are all crisp as hell already. Personally I prefer B even if it was the lower. Usually if I game I usually prefer some good lighting setting and lower some useless slider that eats fps
I got them all right. Not going ruin the results for everyone else going take it. For most people, you wont see the difference but for people that have played on max/ultra settings all the time its pretty obvious. Shadow of the tomb raider is easier to tell but Red Dead is definitely harder.
heh this video is nice. i was planning on doing a video about "how high end hardware won't make you happy" to counter all the stuff I see online about reviews filled with comments of sad people who can't afford the product in the comments. I have been meaning to make that video for well over a year i'm tempted to try to make it tomorrow but i'll forget. but my dad used to be slightly wealthy before trump came and then his financial situation got bad. and it was with this whole thing that I realized while money DEFINANTLY makes you happier high end gaming hardware won't xD I have 2 expectations tho: Monitors/headphones . spent 600$ on a monitor 7 years ago and I still appreciate it everyday. and I have an hd 518 from Sennheiser from 7 years ago. kinda off topic but related to your video :D
@@danielowentech yeah! I am really curious about wether a nicer headphones will be something I can tell apart from my current ones. My cheap headphones that used to die every year sounded SO MUCH worse than these. So I'm wondering if it'll be the same lol
i always cap my games at a certain fps while gaming and i play destiny 2! I had fun playing games at 70fps on max or ultra settings it was nice but it always leads to disappointment like i always end up not being happy about my fps. I noticed the picture doesn't look any different between the two just ultra higher up post effects like lighting and stuff when they look good on high anyways. destiny 2 i went from 80fps to 100fps with better frame times going to high! ultra is mainly used for advertisement to show off the graphics so its mainly used for videos but a true 4k experience in gaming for fun go high. Also I did notice Ultra or Max turns sharpness related settings to the max which also lead me seeing artifacts from a certain distance on high everything feels smooth and medium softens it even more.
I could tell on the first one involving motion because the frames weren't as smooth on one. Other than that, I can't tell. My hardware is capable of running these games at ultra but I'm going to turn stuff down to high anyway. It lowers temps and power consumption as well as fan noise.
They're not obvious but i actually got them right every time. But you have to really see one or the other to know. Once your eyes adjust to high you get used to it, God forbid you see ultra again if you can actually tell the difference
The problem is I instantly knew the left side was ultra. Must be from gaming since I was a child. The face and eyes look ever so clearer on the left side.
Been saying for years: Ultra is for screenshots, high is for gaming.
The few settings I can usually tell a (small) difference between high and ultra in games are textures and draw distance, most other settings I can't notice even if you go down to medium sometimes.
The thing to remember when your GPU is getting a bit older is that high or even medium settings in the newest games usually looks better than ultra in games 2+ years old, so the newest games won't look any worse than the older games you could play on ultra, they just won't look as good as the could if you had a stronger GPU.
Nice pov
Fun fact: this is why Crytek renamed the settings in Crysis 2 as High (Low) and Extreme (High/Ultra) because PC gamers can't accept running at "Low" so they try to push settings and kill their FPS for very minimal image improvement.
A great example of this is resident evil 2. Even if you got medium or low settings the game still looks good. Also not too much difference in high maybe reflections or blooms is the major changes. If the game really looks good, It will look good even on low settings.
ultra textures and other settings high
I just bought a megawide? (32x9) monitor. 5160 x1440. Pretty close to 4k. I'm going to have to run it on a 4070. I'll be lucky to get 60fps on most games with the settings lowered. But wide-screen gaming is so immersive that it's worth the trade-offs in resolution and frame rate to me.
Ultra is extra marketing for gpus
Are u sure dude? Is its a marketing thing. I have also noticed this thing in wd legion ultra gives 35fps Very High 48 fps.
@@suiojj3643 the video speaks for itself i think
@@janchan2258 me also think so.
@@suiojj3643 Watch dogs legion is poorly optimised for PC. My series S has better FPS than my RTX2080 on that game.
@@KillingSpree193 ur series s plays in 1440p where rtx 2080 plays in 4k
High for gameplay, ultra for screenshot
-Tech Deals
I got it right on Red Dead motion shot but fully agree that the difference is really only noticeable at all because we're looking for it.
The Virgin Ultra settings Vs. The CHAD High settings.
The main differences are how materials react too lighting conditions. More intensive and accurate normal maps, reflection/rough maps at a higher resolution, so on.
(I don’t know what folks call that collection of maps official so I’ll call it detail maps)
Thing about models are that they’re actually multiple textures all merged together and working in different ways. The most obvious is a diffused map, which is also the most easiest too run since it’s just paint on a model essentially. The more intensive ones to run are metallic, normals, roughness (and so on, different game engines call them by different names or use different maps all together). These maps are what are called lit maps in Unity, the engine I usually use, and will only interact with the lighting of a scene. The main difference between your usual Ultra and High settings is usually this; the size of said maps. Usually these maps are set to be about half or 3/4 the size of the diffused map as most people won’t be able too tell the difference (bit of a toss up on the normal since that’s the second more notable texture map on a model, although it’s still a lit map). Ultra settings, however, allows for you too max out these maps texture sizes for more texture accurate, sharp reflections. This is most notable in slow camera movements on close up objects, for example on Lara Croft’s blue vest (of course I had to spot the best example there… not doing good for the male stereotype). In the Ultra edition you’re able too see more define bumps in the threading of her shirt as per light sources, likely dictated by a normal and rough map, while in the high preset it’s a lot less noticeable however a AO (ambient occlusion) map is far more prevalent and allows for the lines on the shirt to be seen from literally any direction.
I should say what particular maps are being used is down too guess work for me, but in my experience if you’re looking to squeeze more performance out of your game, shrink the detail maps.
yep lighting on some looked slightly more realistic and was the tell for me.
fucking yapping
I use a mixture of high and ultra. Some graphical settings can be 1-2% difference and sometimes 0% difference but better in visuals
There is WAY more often the opposite case. The difference is impossible to spot or non-existent, but the performance is tanking. Again i'm talking about actual gameplay, not demos, not those squared previews you see in some games in the settings menu, etc.
But old school gamers know this, it's the fresh gamers who argue with review results non-stop which are made intentionally as extreme as possible by design to discriminate between cards. And this stands for hardware too, as most reviewers use unrealistic hardware combos, again to make differences as big as possible between what they compare.
But no one cares recently (well almsot no one). If you follow comment sections they will call a card trash because it is short 3-4 fps to 60 on average, in the most extreme conditions possible. Or the vram argument, also based on crazy presmises. Well, vram argument is recurrent but the way its argued... People literally forgot how to pc game, they treat it like a console.
Keep it up man i really enjoy watching your content.
Thanks!
There may be differences, but it's definitely not worth losing so much FPS
2:00 this is not a confident answer but I think the first one was ultra. The shadows cast from the people in the background were slightly sharper and I thought the illumination from the lanterns looked a bit more natural. But then again I would never notice if I was just playing the game.
Edit: I was right but I wouldn’t sacrifice the frame rate for such a minor shading upgrade.
Edit 2: my guess for red dead is the second one is ultra. Playing the footage back to back there is a noticeable difference in the sharpness of the shadows and the light reflection but it’s such a small difference that I would never use it during gameplay.
The RDR2 advanced graphics settings is a rabbit hole that can threaten to take over your life. Everything on high except for texture quality which looks much better on ultra is my general guide.
I think there are some specific settings that look especially nice in Ultra. I used to test GR Breakpoint and I’d inevitably end up with a mixture.
I got them all right but it was from deliberately looking at very specific details I normally wouldn't be focused on during a game or even when looking at a still, just to try and see the difference. In the RDR2 ones it was the fur textures on the top of the coat that gave it away but there's absolutely no way anyone would tell if they were just enjoying it and playing the game.
Agreed. I found it very easy to get all 4/4, but unless I'm playing a slow paced game I'm much more likely to notice when the frame rate drops than when the lighting and textures are a little better.
For slower single player games, or those with scenic moments, like RDR2, I would notice and value it though. So this video has probably had the opposite impact to the intention.
I think going high vs ultra is a bit meaningless. The fact of the matter is you don't just run presets. It's best to optimize settings for best performance while retaining maximum visual fidelity. Min/Maxing if you will. In the case of RDR2 you can run high settings to get better performance, but you'll get better performance running ultra with 3-4 options turned off or down halfway through. In this case you drop tree tesselation, which seems to chonk you anywhere from 10-30% of FPS, water physics to 50%, grass density to 50%, and reflections quality to high. I get averages of about 35-40 fps in benchmark with quality DLSS on ultra, and I get 60-80fps when I turn down those 4 settings. There is almost no visual difference, the biggest being arguably tree appearance, but how often do you stop to inspect bark thickness.
In the next gen the biggest meme is gonna come from ray tracing. I strongly believe that running a game on medium with RTX on makes the game look better than ultra with RTX off. Lighting quality is a huge contributor to a scene's perceptibility of reality. If you manage to narrow them down, like shadows, textures, volumetric lighting, ray tracing, then the rest often doesn't matter as much. It's all about how you can trick your brain. If RTX can make minecraft look stunning and realistic despite being made of cubes, than it can make anything look good.
I read this quite late, but I still have a gripe for RT enabled compared to ingame performance, it's disgusting really.
I mean, in some cases (cyberpunk or doom eternal or other AAA games recently), turning RT OFF is somehow worst than traditional rasterisation. It looked like a low lightning effect from a decade old game. So the dev "forced" you to turn on RT, while hurting the performance, that in the end persuade you to buy the latest GPU, even though your old hardware should be capable to run games at 60fps for more than 3 years (looking back at the old hardware).
It really shows why the GTX 1060 still survived through 2019, it is capable yo run your game optimally, while the "RTX" 2060 can't run games with the Ray Tracing feature on nowaday games, technically the 20 series died out just after 2 years of release.
It is actually quite noticeable in Rdr2. The high textures look flat out bad for high settings
So, I got them all right. I really could tell. That said, the difference is so insignificant that Ultra settings seem pointless. You got me...I'm a convert.
I’ve never been able to tell ultra from high/very high. But I can tell all the frames that I have by not choosing ultra.
Depends on the game and also how optimised it is. I have no problem bumping everything up to Ultra if my fps can stay above 60, and not be a stuttering mess. If there is only a 10 fps difference between high and ultra, I will usually stick to ultra if my frame rate is still good. It's when the fps is 20 + difference compared to high vs ultra that it isn't worth it.
I agree with you.. one thing I dont underdtsnd is some people look out for max fps on story driven games like rdr2 spiderman etc... it doesnt really matter above 60-90fps in these kinda games. FPS really mattters in Competitive games tho.
i just found this video because i was with a huge doubt about playing red dead redepmtion 2 on high or ultra settings, my friends told me that in high settings it looked almost the same than ultra and i didn't wanted to believe that, i was with that doubt because on ultra settings my pc run the game at 63-70 fps and sometimes in very specific scenarios it goes down to 37 fps, now that i'm watching this video i think i'm gonna play on high settings, i tried to decieve myself the whole video but i really can't find any difference, i just tried to guess, i also read a ver accurated commentaroy about how ultra settings are meant for screenshots and high for gaming and i think it is true, thanks for the video dude, i know it's two years old and i really don't comment any video i watch usually but this really opened my eyes, new suscriber
yeah agree on this. I would say ultra for texture only and the rest can go to high
It seems a negligible difference between High and Ultra, yes if you scrutinize the monitor you'll see a small difference noticably mainly in fps, but if immersed in a game such as rdr2 it seems fine to play on a Turing card even if you wish you had an Ampere.
I'm excited to test the DLSS 2.1 that's being added to RDR2. Especially since running the game at my native ultrawide 3440x1440 is a bit tough even at High.
@@danielowentech saving up for a good monitor like yours hopefully get one in a couple of months. Mine was good back in 2014 but noticed a few dead pixels and can be distracting!
I play almost 3 years on High settings with medium shadows, sometimes post processing to medium and game looks almost same like ultra but fps is higher maybe about such 15-25%
ultra been dead for years now sense 2016 games look almost same as the settings below which is high or very high its just a small change I only use high
So its still weird to me channels still use max as if they dont know it make no sense to use max
I think a lot of times developers will make ultra for future gpus, so that they can incentivize people to buy their game later on
Tomb raider shadows give away which one is ultra and on red dead the texture of the jacket is a good tell. I agree though while playing the game its hardly noticeable.
Yeah, there are differences if you know what to look for, but pretty minimal for the FPS difference
FPS can also just be a marketing point. Most games do not run any better over 80 to 90 FPS. And ported games like Red Dead 2, do not seem to run any better above a locked 60 FPS. I unlocked the frame rate playing RD2 and only noticed higher temps and power draw.
The problem is we're comparing different images (left/right split). You need the same image side by side for ultra and high. Same with the video.
I did think A was ultra on Tomb Raider, as it looked a little better but that was only 50% certainty as it wasn't massively obvious. And to lose 20FPS, high is the choice especially if ultra FPS would drop more and have 1% very low
I got them all right but I feel like that's just my experience in 3D software talking, I know what certain features can be expensive and what to look for. Even then, it was hard to tell!
RDR2 look at the shadows on the counter to the left of the register, thats what led me to see the difference.
This is very true. Certain settings apply more depending on the game and what environments you're dealing with majority of the time. For example things like larger draw distances for foliage, shadows, and level of detail will be more important in games like Ghost Recon Wildlands / Breakpoint than a game like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, even though that game has some larger areas. This is because the Ghost Recon environments are always very open and you're always looking out over a huge distance of land. Even then, ultra is sometimes not necessary as very high might provide the right amount of detail anyways.
For myself i think: In a high resolutions something above 1080p especially 4k ultra would be pretty good and on a bigger display. But on 1080p is better to stick to high. And how many people even do that? Its not as if everyone runs games on 4k monitors. 1080p is like 90 % probably of users. I think steam had this survery or whatever basically confirming this. And a good graphics card that can run at high settings could likely run the same game even in low and it would look better than a card that can barely push 60.. i think
RDR 2 is maybe the only game which needs to set textures quality at ultra because below it is too blurry sadly but you're right
Well I'm a crazy person that bought a 3090 so bring on the ultra!
Why not buy a 120hz screen and play everything at ultra silky smooth high framerates. I'd think that would be a bigger gain over slightly better visuals.
@@2drealms196 Because I prefer my projector and its 4k 60hz
@@accordgolfer Once you go over 60fps, you don't want to go back
@@ZenTunE- that's probably accurate. But I'm very happy with my large projector image
@@ZenTunE- for those who play competitive games. 60fps is perfect to me...
I was able to tell on all of them but it's so miniscule of a difference while playing the game I would never notice.
Ultra is designed for resolutions higher than 1080p so the assets have more detail and data at those higher resolutions. High is industry standard.
ironic that most people play ultra at 1080p and high-medium at higher resolutions
@@friedrichii.aliasdergroe9233 It is. I see so many streamers and content creators do it.
thats not true cause it's still a small jump
The difference between Ultra and High that I can tell is like that of better or worse post processesing of an image. There's ever so slightly smoother textures on Ultra that if you are looking for it, you will see it. I think however given such a subtle difference, it's not worth the loss in frame rate.
Ultra is the luxury car that cost alot to maintain, High is the luxury car that a majority can afford to own.
- P.S. I pixel peep too much, this is why I have an OLED TV lol. I'm a stickler on haze from LCD screens.
Lately ive been doing that and its actually super fine most of the time cant even tell the difference visually but the framerates thats where the changes are now i basically just turn textures to ultra and everything else to high im on a rx 5600 xt so doing this i get 60 or 60+ fps on 1080p for every game
Yup, textures to ultra as long as the card has enough VRAM and everything else to high is generally an almost imperceptible visual downgrade but a very perceptible framerate boost.
Overall I agree that at times the differences between high and ultra aren't that different from one another but the performance takes a hit. It depends on the game too of course but in general I agree. I don't know if it's because of the marketing from gpu manufacturers, the benchmark videos or both but it seems to me that there's a good amount of people out there that feel as though they have to play the game at all settings maxed out in order to enjoy it and that's a costly mentality to have but to each their own I guess.
I've actually been playing through Metro Exodus Enhanced and of course it looks amazing, especially when you first start playing it but I can't say that I'm enjoying the game more than I did when I played the standard version without ray tracing. As a matter of fact after playing for a while the novelty wore off and I found my self to notice the differences in some cases where the lighting differences are more noticeable. I guess this pretty much sums up how I feel about ray tracing in general as far as it's current implementation in gaming goes. It's not that different from the rasterized version it's something I must have. Minecraft and Quake 2 are the exception.
Tbh, I watched this video in 4K on a high quality monitor and was able to spot the High Settings vs Ultra Settings in moving video. BUT it was very close and if I wasn't actively looking for it, I probably wouldn't have noticed.
I feel quite proud of being able to make the difference on a 1080p phone despite UA-cam compression but I will still play medium settings 90% of the time. There's no way ultra is worth it unless the game is like 10 years old
in the past i've seen things where they show different quality levels and i never see a difference, but it seems like people think it's obvious, so i just chalked it up to my taste in wine (that i have basically no taste and can't tell what's good or not) :-) i think it's more important to me that things look "nice" and that i'm not outright missing things in the distance that might show up in a higher setting (i always worry that's a feature of low quality..but maybe games don't do that and worried about a thing that doesn't happen)
Some games have a "draw distance" type setting which can make things only show up at closer distances. Which is sort of like what you are saying at the end.
It was easy to spot all the ultra if you game everyday. Stuff like hair, shadows and ambient occlusion is way different
Ultra = Not worth It
High = PC
Medium = Playstation and Xbox
Low = Switch
rdr 2 has a solid diffrence between high and ultra all the visible changes ive seen is like wood and the ground
ultra on most games are just for bragging rights
That depends on the game, and your setup. Most of the time I noticed a clear difference between Ultra and High, and that's at 1080p.
@@vh9network ye but for 1080p i just preffer high refresh rate
high/60 since several years. Best configuration without a doubt
My strategy is to use medium preset at 1080p with DLSS and Frame Gen enabled. Everything else is off.
If you compare ultra and medium video side by side, you'll notice little difference in quality. They all look the same.
The benefits are massive for playing on medium. The #1 reason is high fps. I however want to cap it to 60 so it won't overwork my gpu. The second reason is less chance the GPU ever overheating and less fan noise.
resolution is more important than high vs ultra
Yeah, I would never play below native resolution unless I couldn't even get it to run at low.
3:14 look at the fan on the left, it have no shadow on high, but it does on Ultra. This immediately caught my eye in one of the cutscenes in the game where little objects were looking out of place due to lack of shadows. So no, gaming on ultra is not stupid. There are some graphics settings which if reduced, can remove some of the visual effects, and then there are some which only affect the detail of certain visuals. Settings like draw distance, resolution, level of detail, physics quality, population density etc are settings that don't have to be maxed out, increasing them will only make the game look more detailed. On the other hand, settings that can turn off certain visuals in the game should be kept at ultra.
RDR2 isn't a good example to determine whether you can actually tell the difference between ultra and high because RDR2 is one of those games that almost any setting that ain't on ultra kind of makes the game look bad.
on 4k every thing is a lot more sharp and see way more details between ultra and high. and comparing graphics on 1080p youtube converter is one of the worst ways of doing this test.
What gave away the RDR2 to me was the gold pot/urn/whatever that is, reflections on the shelf
For RDR2 there were noticable differences, lighting & material quality stood out to me. But without scrolling back on the video I couldn't tell the difference.
For Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I couldn't tell whatsoever.
This video taught me that, each time, whether moving or not, I preferred the high setting over the ultra........
It's all about efficiency and prioritization of visuals. Does adding that higher option deserve the frame cost for the person playing it? Would they trade this option with that option to make the cut to a playable state? I find everyone needs to customize to their own taste. I could sacrifice from shadows and reflections for better LoD, resolution or textures for example. I'll drop motion blur, depth of field and the like as well. There's a lot to fine tune and get adequate performance and quality.
2:04
i liked how be looked ..
i honestly use mixed settings, character detail and textures are on ultra and everything else on high. that's how I play most games.
props for the 4k 60fps video ..whats the bitrate do you use to record?
i been thinking if FSR is a good implementation , now can we play on ULTRA and get more FPS ??
Gameplay was captured at 50mbs 60fps @1440p. But I rendered into 4K at extremely high bitrate in Davinci Resolve to uploaded to UA-cam because it seems like you get better bitrates from the UA-cam compression @4K. So the images are actually 1440p but getting pretty good quality despite the youtube compression because of my trick lol
@@danielowentech i use the amd software re:live . But i put the video bitrate at 100mbs.
In the videos uploaded to UA-cam the compression isn't as bad.
But the video size is giantnourmous 😂, after upload video gets deleted. The other day for a 10mins the size was 24gb lol
I just realized i put be instead of b
😂
Damm you auto correct 😂
I'm capturing with Nvidia encoder. Nvenc does a pretty good job.
Thnax for ur great video
Best way to find the ultra or lower one is paying attention to details like beards or textures etc.
Overall there is no point to play all games on ultra .
Great video. What about comparing 4K vs 1440P? How big of a difference is there? As we all know that high demanding games in 4K can't be played above 40-60 FPS depending on the game but how big of a difference there is? Would be great to see that the same way you did this video.
I've heard and seen not much of a difference graphically. The 4K looks better, but you're not missing much. I'd much rather have high fps at a cheaper price. The 4k monitors that can give you high frames, but it's not worth the price IMO. 1440p is the way to go personally. But I'm just getting into PC gaming. There are others who've been in the community for years that can give you a better perspective.
@@PlusUltraAdrian yeahh, 1440p with high fps is enough bro. That's a " sweet spot "
1080p is still perfectly playable and fine too
Ultra is for when the game is old otherwise dont use it
High looks more fluid. I think from now on, I'm gonna choose framerate over image quality, in the end, High looks amazing too.
It's the same with Native vs DLSS Quality. I'm trying really hard to spot a difference and I can't. Playing Cyberpunk on High with DLSS Quality and i can't tell a difference between that and Ultra at Native, but the frames are through the roof on a 3070. So yeah sometimes Ultra settings are kinda dumb. In Cyberpunk it lowers only 3 or 4 unimportant settings like clouds and fog.
Id say its more noticeable in game, youtube compression makes it much harder to make out detail
very helpful comparison sir
Super video! Thanks bro
But it's completely necessary that I can make out the weathering on the advertising hoarding I shoot past at 200mph whilst looking at something else!
some stuff like texture quality or maybe shadow distance, can have noticeable difference during the gameplay, but other settings dont really matter a lot if u dont specifically pay attention to details and compare
The only time you should choose ultra is if you're getting steady 80+fps (unless its a competitive shooter then 80 is on the low end of what you'll be aiming for). Otherwise going for high will always be your best option.
RDR2 I play it on almost the highest graphics settings at 1080p x 5/4 resolution when it dips below 60 it's not really noticeable. The biggest FPS draw was the water physics, so i go just under full on that. I turn down to high the far away effects. The most beautiful stuff that impresses is close up anyway. I'm rockin a RX 6750 XT and a Ryzen 7 5800x. It's great for 1080p gaming and even allows for decent raytracing in most titles.
You can see the difference mostly in nature imo and when looking at distant objects. I specifically know that rdr2 has a problem where shadows pop in as youre getting closer and if you're looking over a meadow or something you can clearly see the unshaded part but if you're on ultra you cant. For me that seriously brakes the immersion but if i had to choose 90fps on high or 60 on ultra, I'd go for high.
I could tell the difference soon as you showed it without me really having to look for it. I don't know if it's because I have a 4K HDR monitor and use to playing on ultra and max out everything in games or what but I notice it alot even me going back to consoles everything seems off.
Is it just me, or was 2006-2010ish timeframe the era where there was just Low, Medium, and High and there was a potent tell in those 3 settings?
the easiest way to check is, high settings usually more blurry than ultra, tho it depends if DoF, TAA, and anisotropic filtering value, but for shadow, texture and LoD it's pretty noticeable tho the fps tank is much more noticable lol
I was able to tell the difference on RDR2 due to the lighting- it diffused more evenly
On SotTR all I could tell was that raytracing was off (no coloured shadows, shadow pop-in, no ambient occlusion on the popsicle stand)
On a related note, I'll probably make some videos like this in the future for RT, DLSS, maybe FSR if it runs on my RTX card.
@@danielowentech Yes, a DLSS vs FSR comparison would be super interesting! Hopefully it'll work.
Didn't even notice A and B on screen, let alone the difference in visual fidelity.
What's up with lighting? 0:40
How are we supposed to distinguish stuff with major light difference?
resolution matters way more than settings. if your playing 1080p of course it will look bad. ill take 2k or 4k on medium vs 1080p ultra anyday
"You may not be able to conscious notice difference, but subconsciously you can" - Jensen Huang
I can see the difference in the realism of the lighting where the ultra looks better every time to me
Nice content, seem like our teacher back to the PC contents with 1000% effort :))))
Summer is approaching so my schedule is freeing up a lot!
Question should have been "is gaming at 4k stupid?", since it is, unless you are gaming on a massive size tv like screen. On a regular sized monitor, all you need is 1080p and it doesnt matter much wether you use high or ultra then.
Ultra sometimes is pretty useless in rdr2 ultra texture vs high is a massive difference but things like water physics are going suck performance for something you probably won’t notice.
I could tell on rdr2 but not tomb raider. 4k makes it a lot more noticeable.
Guessing 2:04 A:High B: Ultra .
Edit: Guess what, I was wrong! 😅. Am happy that difference is not perceivable
On ultra the game looks softer and the reflections look sharper, also you can see jagged edges between the 2.
The big difference appears between the high and ultra in (texture)
2:00 I think B is ultra because the light scattering and reflection looks better. Otherwise the textures, meshes edges are all crisp as hell already.
Personally I prefer B even if it was the lower. Usually if I game I usually prefer some good lighting setting and lower some useless slider that eats fps
Ultra is nice but high is top tier I need as much fps while the game still looks good
Did anyone else think this guy was in a black turtle shell costume
I got them all right. Not going ruin the results for everyone else going take it. For most people, you wont see the difference but for people that have played on max/ultra settings all the time its pretty obvious. Shadow of the tomb raider is easier to tell but Red Dead is definitely harder.
heh this video is nice. i was planning on doing a video about "how high end hardware won't make you happy" to counter all the stuff I see online about reviews filled with comments of sad people who can't afford the product in the comments.
I have been meaning to make that video for well over a year i'm tempted to try to make it tomorrow but i'll forget. but my dad used to be slightly wealthy before trump came and then his financial situation got bad. and it was with this whole thing that I realized while money DEFINANTLY makes you happier high end gaming hardware won't xD
I have 2 expectations tho: Monitors/headphones . spent 600$ on a monitor 7 years ago and I still appreciate it everyday. and I have an hd 518 from Sennheiser from 7 years ago.
kinda off topic but related to your video :D
I agree on monitors and headphones! They don't go out of date nearly as quick as a GPU but the audio/visual difference can be huge.
@@danielowentech yeah! I am really curious about wether a nicer headphones will be something I can tell apart from my current ones. My cheap headphones that used to die every year sounded SO MUCH worse than these. So I'm wondering if it'll be the same lol
Excellent video, give us more.
I thought the high was ultra on the right of my screen with more light lol
i always cap my games at a certain fps while gaming and i play destiny 2! I had fun playing games at 70fps on max or ultra settings it was nice but it always leads to disappointment like i always end up not being happy about my fps. I noticed the picture doesn't look any different between the two just ultra higher up post effects like lighting and stuff when they look good on high anyways. destiny 2 i went from 80fps to 100fps with better frame times going to high! ultra is mainly used for advertisement to show off the graphics so its mainly used for videos but a true 4k experience in gaming for fun go high. Also I did notice Ultra or Max turns sharpness related settings to the max which also lead me seeing artifacts from a certain distance on high everything feels smooth and medium softens it even more.
I could tell on the first one involving motion because the frames weren't as smooth on one. Other than that, I can't tell. My hardware is capable of running these games at ultra but I'm going to turn stuff down to high anyway. It lowers temps and power consumption as well as fan noise.
I could tell which was which only because of Lara's eyes.
They're not obvious but i actually got them right every time. But you have to really see one or the other to know. Once your eyes adjust to high you get used to it, God forbid you see ultra again if you can actually tell the difference
I could tell, but I feel like I’m missing a part of my soul because of it. In any event great video idea! edit: got the first red dead incorrect
great video. thanks, mate
red dead was more apparent than shadow of the tomb raider, but still very subtle
The problem is I instantly knew the left side was ultra. Must be from gaming since I was a child. The face and eyes look ever so clearer on the left side.
but only if look close have to take pauses when gaming most dont do that
I can say WITH CONFIDENCE that I got literally every example wrong... This guy might be on to something. Lmao
1440p ultra vs 4k medium settings? Which one looks better?
Ok, the one in motion was impossible to guess for me.
Yes, I could tell, not even at full screen, viewing at 1080p res.