By Tobias Hanraths Jan 29, 2012, 3:06 GMT
Berlin - Anyone looking for an escape from everyday drudgery only needs to go to their computer to find a fantasy world, a lush jungle or the adventures of outer space.
Gaming is a welcome escape for many computer owners, but if your PC is not top of the line, these trips can become a little more cumbersome. However, they are not impossible. Indeed, where upgrades were once key - faster versions of graphics cards once seemed to come out the moment you'd bought the newest, top-of-the-line card - they aren't quite as urgent as before.
'Especially with graphics cards, development has slowed down,' says gaming expert Tobias Arns of Bitkom, a German technology industry association. 'Current PC titles can be played pretty well with hardware that's two-years-old.'
But contemporary titles like Battlefield 3 or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will not run at the highest resolution or with the best graphic detail on older computers. To make sure the game looks good and still runs fluidly, users have to pick the right settings.
A lot of titles have options menus, where details like shadow and transparency effects or the field of view can be set separately. You can get a lot done here, though it can be tedious work to find the right settings. Better to know, in advance, which settings provide the most benefit.
Daniel Hoehne, who chairs the computer graphics and visualization department at Dresden's Technical University, says settings like motion blur or lighting tricks like Bloom or HDR Rendering should be shut off. 'They look very nice, but take up a lot of graphics memory,' he explains. And that is a major bottleneck with gaming PCs. 'The working memory of the card often has a lot more influence than the gaming capacities of the graphics processor.'
Next on the chopping block are shadow rendering and anti-aliasing effects, which smooth edges. The latter is important in making sure figures appear smooth, and not blocky. 'The impact on the picture quality is pretty slim, when compared to the resources it uses up,' says Daniel Moellendorf of the German computer magazine PC Games Hardware.
The performance improvement in following such a step is especially big when the graphics card is the weakest link to a gaming computer. And there are other options: shadow rendering often has multiple settings. But choosing the medium setting gives you a picture almost as good as the high setting and allows a lot more spare computing capacity.
But keep the texture quality settings - which control the way surfaces and objects appear - as high as possible. 'If I turn that down, I don't just make individual objects, but the whole field of play, ugly,' warns Moellendorf.
However, not every game has such a wide array of settings. Still, there are alternatives to activating functions like anti-aliasing, and these might work on all games run on the computer.
Owners of faster PCs who want to spruce up some older games can especially benefit from this tip. Right-click on the Nvidia system controls of a Nvidia card or the Catalyst Control Center of an AVI card. The graphics card can also be configured with shareware or freeware programmes like RivaTuner or PowerStrip.
Another way to up your game is to regularly update your graphics card's software. 'If you just set up a new driver once a year, you've given yourself a lot of playing performance,' notes German computer magazine Gamestar Hardware. And the two big manufacturers of graphics cards, Nvidia and AMD, provide new updates monthly, and sometimes even weekly. The cards might even look for updates on their own.
Hoehne also recommends updates. 'How much additional gaming power it really brings is hard to measure. But at least this way you're certain that there aren't any compatibility problems with new games.'
There's also the issue of setting the graphics card to run at a higher frequency than intended by the manufacturer. Although it provides a boost in performance, there are also risks, warns Moellendorf. 'Parts that run at higher than the intended frequency get hotter faster, can crash and cause defects.'
Many manufacturers will void warranties if they find proof of frequencies being boosted. But others boost the frequency themselves, offering Overclock Editions with extra cooling.
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