Do you accept medium settings?

[heynow85]

I'm fine with it. 60fps mark is most important to me. And I won't upgrade my hardware to maintain all games at high and 60fps.

 

[Schadenfreude]

Mos games that I've seen have diminishing returns as far as cost of upgrades vs moving up from med-to-high settings.

Low-to-med, I can see a clear distinct difference; med to high, meh.

And I'm gaming on my laptop w/ a GT 525M anyways, so not much of a choice at this time.

 

[Pandora's Box]

Pretty much has to be high settings for me

 

[heynow85]

Low-to-med, I can see a clear distinct difference; med to high, meh.

Yes, that's very true. I've noticed that the difference going from med to high isn't 50% quality to 100% quality, but subjectively it's more like 75%/80% to 100%.

 

[I Saw OJ]

I have no other option most of the time.

 

[Powermoloch]

has to be high no matter what

 

[Karstein]

Depends on the game. In FPS I usually turn everything down to minimum - or at least close to (r_picmip 7 in QL, for instance). I absolutely have to get as high a framerate as possible on a constant basis or it annoys me - one of the reasons why I bought a 120hz monitor also.

In games where I don't really need a constantly ceiling-level FPS then I'll whack the settings up as high as they will go without degrading quality of gameplay.

 

[TecHNooB]

I like to prolong upgrading as long as possible so there is actually a significant difference in quality when I do decide to upgrade. Keeps my wallet happy.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

I love maxing out games but I will accept low settings if I must.

It bugs me when a game doesn't look as good as it could.

 

[KaOTiK]

Depends on the game and what setting(s). Though I usually upgrade my video card every few years anyways so it isn't much of an issue.

 

[zerocool84]

I didn't spend this much money on my hardware to run games on low or medium. Only game I've run into that I couldn't turn everything up and run at acceptable fps is Metro 2033. I might turn down AA to something like 2x but everything else max.

 

[Jumpem]

No. I would give up frame rate first.

 

[WraithETC]

Depends on the game usually, but I won't give up frame rate.

 

[RockinZ28]

Once I have to start turning things off in more than a handful of games to get acceptable fps, it's time to upgrade. Turning some settings off or down really takes away the immersion in some games imo. That's for SP only. MP I don't give a shit, turn off everything possible to get the most fps and best visibility.

I didn't spend this much money on my hardware to run games on low or medium. Only game I've run into that I couldn't turn everything up and run at acceptable fps is Metro 2033. I might turn down AA to something like 2x but everything else max.

Yea this game is tough. Played my first go through at 25x16 with a 5870 with DX9 to make it playable. Still looked amazing though. Just installed it again last night, playing on my 58" 1080p plasma with a gtx580, but with dx11 and physx this time, and better fps.

 

[Shape_of_Grey]

Depends on the game. In CS it was all about the smoothness, FPS. But if a game is about eye-candy, then I would go for the eye candy (MS flightsim X).

 

[Fenixgoon]

i much prefer smoothness over graphics, unless it's so horrible that i couldn't stand to look at it.

but my 5770 has been holding up just fine, so it'll be a decent while before i upgrade, i imagine.

 

[sash1]

Low-to-med, I can see a clear distinct difference; med to high, meh.

this. i've never been one to care about graphics, as long as the game runs at an optimal frame-rate. but low settings on some games just looks horrific. if i can have max settings, cool, otherwise not a big deal

 

[brencat]

I don't need the max settings, but I need to have 'high' settings which include a minimum of 2x AA and 4x AF at 40+ framerates because I can notice the difference otherwise.

There are people that turn off smoke and other things in BFBC2 (not particularly graphics intensive by today's modern cards) just to get a fast framerate and more kills. Seriously, that takes away from the game big time. Can't imagine playing that game on anything but max.

 

[jacion]

In the past if I couldn't get a decent fps at medium settings at least, I'd just put off playing the game until my next upgrade. Doom3 comes to mind, I put off buying the game cause I really didn't want to play the game on low to make it playable.

Too bad shareware/demos are hard to come by now to see how the game plays on your rig.

 

[coloumb]

What would "medium settings" be defined as?

I like playing games at 1680 x 1050 these days on a 22" widescreen LCD. Any lower resolution and it's very noticeable.

 

[Rifter]

No, spent to much cash on system to run at less than high settings. So far there has not been many that my system cant handle at highest settings and still get good framerates. Will upgrade next year to a 28nm high end GPU and that should keep me playing at high settings till 2015 at least.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

I don't care at all about if something is on low/medium/high/mega epeen. If it runs smooth and looks good then I'm happy.

 

[Maximilian]

NO! If my computer cant run everything on mega ultra max settings at 2560x2048 across 9 screens at 100+ FPS i smash it then build a new one that can!

 

[Dankk]

It bugs me when a game doesn't look as good as it could.

I voted "I'm fine with medium settings", but I'm actually with TakeNoPrisoners on this one. When I play a game, I want it to look the way the developers intended. It bugs me when I know my game could look prettier, but isn't.

 

[Elcs]

Resolution, AA and Framerate are most important to me.

Stable framerate which is acceptable for the game. 1920x1080 resolution to match my screens native res. AA to smooth out the noticable jaggies.

Textures also hold an importance but as mentioned they can look pretty good with a minor performance hit in most instances. Shadows are possibly one of the least important settings for me in a game and will always be disabled if I'm struggling to run decent frames with the right balance of looks.