I’m a privileged gamer. As a hardware reviewer, over the years I’ve been sent top-tier CPUs and graphics cards, letting me bounce from one flagship to the next. That’s made me lazy at game settings. I often just set the game at whatever the maximum “Ultra” setting is and get on with playing. But by doing so, I’ve just been playing into the marketing hype – and leaving a lot of performance on the table, it turns out.
Most games don’t actually need to be played at Ultra settings to look good. They don’t even need it to look great. The latest upscaling technologies are fantastically good at emulating higher resolutions, and often the difference between Ultra and High settings isn’t something I even really notice if pushed to look.
As an experiment, I turned down the settings in a bunch of great-looking games to see how much difference it really makes. Not only did I find it hard to spot any obvious visual difference in most of the games I tested, but performance went up dramatically and the smoother framerates were well worth the minimal sacrifice.
The system
I’ve been able to ignore graphics settings for so long due to a mix of low-demand game selection and high-end hardware. As I said, my current system is powerful, but I also mostly play older sim games and lighter indies.
With an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D and PowerColor Red Devil RX 7900 XTX, I have one of the fastest gaming CPUs on the market and the fastest graphics card AMD has ever made. It’s not quite an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090, so it’s not really designed with Ultra Path Tracing in mind, but it’s not a million miles away either. It’s more than capable of running almost any game at Ultra settings, at 4K, and sometimes even with ray tracing enabled.
That’s especially true once you throw in FSR upscaling and a little frame generation to smooth things out.
My plan for this test is to run a bunch of games at their very highest settings that are functionally playable – at least 30 FPS – with upscaling at Quality or native, without frame generation, and grab a few example screenshots of it in action. Then do so again at maxed out settings but with Balanced upscaling, and then a final test with everything turned down just one notch. So High, if Ultra is the top option, Medium if High is the best, etc.
Now for the games
Cyberpunk 2077
Let’s jump in with what is arguably still one of the best looking games ever made, Cyberpunk 2077. If there’s one game that is guaranteed to bring my 7900XTX to its knees, it’s this one.
And yeah, Raytracing Overdrive Settings, 4K resolution, Path Tracing enabled, FSR set to Quality mode, it was a clunky slideshow mess. 20 FPS at best. But of course it looks incredible:
But you know what also looks incredible? Cyberpunk 2077 at those same settings with Balanced Upscaling. I just took these screenshots, and besides a few background details looking a little more lifelike and of-the-environment in the Quality screenshot, it’s very difficult to tell any difference.
Meanwhile, the performance difference meant it was actually playable.
Although Cyberpunk with ray tracing does look stunning, and its path tracing even more so in the right settings, I’d even argue switching it down to a mere Ultra settings without ray tracing looks almost as good.
It’s definitely more stylized than the real-time lighting effects of ray tracing, but CD Projekt Red did a fantastic job making Night City look real and alive, even with baked in lighting. I’d very happily play the whole game like this.
Alane Wake 2
Alan Wake 2 is far from the glitz and ray-traced glamour of Night City, but it’s just as good looking in its own, dark, dirty way. It also eviscerated my system’s performance with everything absolutely turned up the nines. We’re talking 1-3 FPS. Unplayable. But gorgeous:
But it can very easily be both. Switching over to FSR Balanced, where it’s basically cutting the 4K resolution in half, the performance jumped up to perfectly playable for this type of more sedate game play. I genuinely can’t tell the difference, even when running around. It’s really impressive how far upscaling has come over the years.
I’d be tempted to leave it there, but there is additional performance to be had and not much in the way of a visual downgrade from trimming the fat even more. Switching everything to one notch down (High or Medium, depending on what the setting peaks at) and no ray tracing, gets you an almost-as-good-looking Alan Wake 2 experience.
Performance jumped enormously here, and this is where you want to play if you value smoother animation over pristine visuals. Especially since I still had to look close to spot the real differences. During actual game play, though? With a darker game like this where concealment and shadow is the game’s vibe, I don’t think many would notice.
Hogwarts Legacy
How about a getting-older but a goodie? Hogwarts Legacy isn’t photo-realistic, but it is incredibly immersive. Making sure the game looks good is a huge part of the experience. Fortunately, you can get away with steering clear of ray tracing with this one. If you enable it, the experience is beautiful:
But I’d argue it’s just as beautiful with Balanced upscaling – notching an extra 15% fps for my trouble, and nudging over a more-comfortable 40 FPS.
Switching to more modest settings and dropping the RT entirely looks amazing too. This game doesn’t make enough use of the fancy-lighting technique to be worth it, I’d argue. Despite its prevalence in the graphics menu, this game looks phenomenal on more modest settings. Don’t fear dropping them down a notch or two.
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is not as pretty as the other games, but it’s one that uses an outsized quantity of VRAM. Fortunately, the 24GB on the 7900XTX had no trouble with it even pushed to the limit. But then, why would you bother?
Dropping to Balanced and cutting the rendering resolution by 40% didn’t appear to make much of a difference to how the game looked. There isn’t any more obvious aliasing on background elements, even the thinner pipes. Texture details remain.
Dropping everything to Medium/High setting depending does make more of an impact, but even then it’s something I had to actively look for, and when in motion it’s even less apparent.
It’s not nothing, but I don’t think it’s worth it
If your hardware supports it, playing games at their prettiest is lovely. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it looks great. Especially in static screenshots, or in the ideal circumstances. But so do games with heavier-handed upscaling, and even lowering the settings a little doesn’t strip them of their charm, or immersion. That also gives you extra performance and a smoother game, which I think is way more impactful than getting a few extra pixels, or slightly nicer lighting.
The point I’m trying to make with these comparisons isn’t that there’s no benefit to turning all the settings up to their maximum, but that the performance loss really isn’t worth it. Ultimately, it feels like those settings are a way to get better looking screenshots for the marketing campaign, and to give gamers something to aspire to. A dragon that we’ll forever be chasing, until the next game comes along.
Ultimately, if all you can game on is something lower than the maximum – which is almost all of us – then you really aren’t missing out on much.
Don’t look on in envy at the people spending $5,000 on a graphics card in 2026. They’re getting a very-slightly-better looking gaming experience for the money. As prices continue to be ridiculous, I think lower settings are perfectly fine.
