Do you lower your performance to get better graphics?

When playing games, do you overclock and lower your fps for pretty graphics?

Translation: Are you a graphics whore?

 

Lol. Dude I'm not man enough to call myself that. But then with my laptop I haven't had to make that choice very often. Oblivion is the only game where I let the fps slide...ah um I mean, no, I'm a manly gamer.

 

Oh, I've been playing the old UFO on ye old trash series recently. Smooth gameplay is to me so much more important than fancy effects.

 

I think on the second one you might mean FPS?

 

You are my new favorite forumite

Them ethereals are a pain, no?

 

Nope. I like to have the best graphics my system can manage, but only if it means at least 40fps when idle and no less then 25-30fps in intense situations.

 

I try to keep the graphics as high as possible without going below about 30fps. I do let it slide on some games though.

 

Yea, same with me.

 

Kinda. I hate them wobbly blue things that eat your lads' brains and hop in more though. They just don't cause a hassle, but they wipe out your men at ease. Always huge amounts of people with action points to fubar any of them over should they appear.



Oh yes, and I had something real too. While I don't really care that much (I just am happy when things run smooth), how does one measure frame rates? Is there some easy-to-use program?

 

Most games have a console command to display fps but by far the easiest way to measure and take screenshots is fraps, it displays the FPS in the corner of your screen. www.fraps.com

 

FPS = always above 40.
RPG (Oblivion) = 20 is ok.

Charlie

 

As long as the graphics smoothly operate at around 30-35 FPS, I'll increase the graphical quality. Oh and of course you can do the dirty deed of overclocking your GPU to help as wellXD

 

Hum... one crazy person...

I hope you realize that doesn't mean you have bad hardware, it means you are actually crazy and run things at low fps just for the sake of it >_<

Should I modify this? I don't want to insult anybody, just thought that people might think that one was for people with bad hardware, which maybe why they voted... Just letting them know it's for really wierd people who do it for no explainable reason...

No, I just add poll things for the sake of it

Hum, after thinking over this, I probably made this one a bit too narrow, and only for today's gamers. Anyone with an older pc (I mean ancient, 1998), please don't vote, you'll only be known as crazy when you aren't...

 

graphics as long as I remain above 30 fps and card doesnt lock up.


Oblivion 15-20 fps is good for me. THat game is all about the visual effects.

 

I think oblivion should be played at least with 25fps.

For myself i'd rather use at least 30fps with oblivion.

with first person shooters i use most time vertical synchronisation so 30fps could be enough. For example i play fear with vs on and i play 50% of the game at 30fps and 50% of the game at 60fps. I'm never below 30fps in fear.

 

I never, ever, use vsync. I don't like loosing 25fps just because I'm 5 away from 60. I find that incredibly silly. So there might be some tearing, so what?

I also try to put it up as high as possible, but I'll only go down to at least 30fps.

 

Enable vsync and triple buffering. Your pc will run as fast as if it wasn't running vsync. Almost...

 

anyting other than shooters: maxed graphics.
single play shooters: graphics set so I don't drop below 30FPS
multipalyer shooter: min graphics except shadows and FSAA.

I will force FSAA in the nvidia control if the game dosent support it. its just too difficult to tell the diffrence between a sniper in the prone and the rock the sniper is beside without FSAA.

 

i need the thrill of 100 fps a day. Especially in css, there is a big difference from 40 fps to 90ish.

 

For oblivion i need about 30 fps average, shootergames 40-50, shooter games online online atleast 50 fps.

 

Depends on the game and game type.

BF2 = Overclocked + High Settings = 45fps avg.
Americas Army = Stock + High Settings = 65fps avg.
CS:S,HL2 = Overclocked + High Settings to ensure smoothest possible game play in a game where cheaters run rampant.
FSX = Overclocked + Medium-Low Settings = and I still get crap FPS.

 

Wat is fsx?

 

In fast-paced online/competitive games, I'd much rather lower graphics quality to maintain steady med-high frame rates. Only in like offline/rpg kind of games would I ever up the graphics quality

@saleen_mustang - Flight Simulator 10

 

Um, I don't run all my games at 640x480, so I guess I do lower performance to get better graphics. Are you telling me that there are people who run everything at the lowest resolution, with *all* options at minimum?

 

It's not only important to me that i get high fps, but i have 2 important rules for myself about fps i try to use with older games and if possible with new games too:

1) Get at least 40fps in shooter games and at least 30fps in rpg games
2) Longer story to explain:
My screen is 60hertz which i prefer more than 75fps because i need a less uber gpu for this reason:

60hertz means that my screen can take 60fps every second, nothing more. So if i get more than 60fps the screen is tearing the frames more over the screen. When a game is constantly above 60fps i love that game because i use VSync in such games.

With VSync i will have constantly 60fps this gives me two advantages:

I have a constant framerate and i don't have any tearing at all!

If you use VSync when a game is constantly above you max screen hertz than you'll get the best gaming experience that's possible!!! No doubt about that for me

 

I use the laptopvideo2go.com drivers set for performance.

I set the textures on high and the resolution to max

I dont use aa or anisotropy.

I dont use high shadows because thats a waste of computer.

I want to see 40 fps or I will lower other settings.

 

I will lower the shados, because I never notice shadows. I will also lower the resolution sometims, but I always want AF on, I don't care about AA.

 

I run games on my desktop. My Radeon 9550 is one of those 640x480 20fps I NEED TO LOWER THE DETAILS BELOW LOWEST TO ACHIEVE 30FPS, NO CONSISTENCY!!!! AHHHHH

 

If its a racing game or something else fast pace yes, otherwise i'll settle for a few lower fps.

 

I try not to go anything lower than 50FPS average. Which for games like Oblivion it can really seem slow! Not bad on my desktop, but tests my OC on my I9300!

 

performance is more important to me than graphics. if my computer is struggling, i turn down the graphics to keep a high framerate (even if its playable i still like high frames). i suppose that can show how much i care about graphics.

 

I play games on 15fps MAX And thats with the graphics turned down. Case in point: Don't try to play games on a GMA 950 with 512mb of ram!

 

Yeah, me too, I would rather have better gameplay. Graphics aren't really that important to me.

 

I always aim for top graphics, even if it means only 15fps. Of course you still need ur 50-60ish fps for CS.

 

What's the point of playing a game when you can't enjoy the immersion and visual quality it should bring? All hail the dedicated graphic cards!

 

Exactly. I always try to optimize a games performance so that I get the maximum visual experience even if it means my fps drops into the early twenties at times. But then again I almost only play single player games and not competitive multi player.

 

Hardly ever really. I'd rather get performance/FPS over graphics any day. Then again, it might be different because I haven't done it. All the games I play on my laptop and desktop run smooth at high settings.

 

It depends on what game it is. If it's a game I play competitively (UT2003/2004 for example) I can't have any frame rate dips below 50-60FPS. Your eye may not be able to perceive past 40FPS or whatever that number is, but you can definitely feel the difference when you're twitch-moving your FOV.

On the other hand, I don't mind slightly less performance in games like Oblivion or CoH. I can deal with a lower frame rate and prefer a more immersion.

 

I can't stand lag, whether it's internet or local computer based...

 

Considering that I have an X200M, I don't have too much overhead to work with.

I installed Once Upon A Knight on my lappy the other day, and spent the better part of an hour trying to configure the graphics so I would get more than 12FPS in 1024x768. This game is over 4 years old, so I figured it would run smooth at max. Boy, was I wrong!

I had to turn off nearly everything just to get 27FPS, and there was nearly no improvement going back to 800x600 at the same settings.

I guess I should be happy it even runs at all.

 

I would prefer +30fps (15-30 in Stalker...) but that's rarely the case with newer games so shadow detail (as long as there are shadows at all) and resolution are usually the first to go. I like to keep lighting and texture effects as high as possible so that despite the low resolution, it still looks like it has the visual immersion that was intended. Because really, playing something like F.E.A.R. without shadows and lighting ruins the game. Anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering are often expendable. It it's still crap then its tweaking time.

 

I always max out the graphical settings of any game I am playing (recently it was C&C: 3) and then work my way backwards until I reach a smooth framerate. Sadly, I had to go down to Mid-Low to get my Alienware 7700 (3.6 ghz P4 and x800m) to play without stuttering or running like a slideshow.