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If you play video games on your PC, even casually, then you’ve probably seen the swath of video settings in the options menu. You may not however, understand what they all mean. We’re here to help.
Some of the options are pretty self-explanatory, while others are just straight up confusing (Bloom? Ambient occlusion?). You may not like the idea of fiddling with settings, and these days, most games will automatically set it to something decent the first time you start them up. But if you really want the best balance of performance and graphics quality, digging into those settings yourself can go a long way. Turning everything up is rarely the best option, since it will make the game run very slowly.
Today we want to briefly explain to you what all these settings do and whether or not you truly need them for maximum gaming fun. We’ll use Rocket League and Borderlands 2 as our example games, since they’re fairly popular and between them do a good job of representing the video settings you’re likely encounter in many other games. Some games may have more, while others have less, but for the most part, you should be able to take this knowledge and use it on just about every other game in your library.
Resolution and Window Settings
First, to access your game’s video options, you’ll have to open the game’s settings menu. This may be labeled as either “Settings” or “Options”. Either way, that’s where you’re likely to be able to make adjustments to your video settings.
Let’s start with the basics. The game’s resolution settings are fairly simple to understand. Setting the resolution will allow you to adjust the size of the viewable area of the game, as well as make the game look sharper.
For example, in the following screenshot, we see how Rocket League looks running at our monitor’s native resolution 1920×1080, and then we’ve inset an example of the game running at 640 x 480. It’s much smaller, and if you were to blow that up to full screen, it would look much lower quality (like comparing a DVD to a Blu-Ray).
Best Rocket League Camera Settings The camera settings for Rocket League are quite important as they can drastically change the way you experience the game. It’s important to find settings here that work for you, as opposed to blindly copying the settings of your favorite professional. Change League of Legends’ Graphic Settings Though this will have a very small effect if your network connection is the culprit behind the LoL lag, however, if it is your PC’s hardware, try reducing the graphics settings.
Ideally, you should try to run your game at the highest resolution possible for your monitor–so, if you have a 1920×1080 monitor, for example, you’d want to run the game at 1920×1080. Playing the game at a substantially lower resolution might help it run more smoothly, but it’s going to look terrible. You can always turn off other features in the options to help increase the game’s performance.
In addition, you’ll notice also that our game screenshots have windowed borders. This is simply because we’ve elected to run the game in windowed mode. Running the game in full-screen mode means that the game will fill the entire screen–which is better for performance and imersiveness. You can usually press the Windows key to access the desktop if you need to, though it depends on the game–some are more temperamental in full screen mode than others.
Many games, including Rocket League and Borderlands 2, also have an option to run the game in “borderless windowed” mode, which means the game will run in a window, but without any of the window chrome (borders, maximize and minimize buttons, etc.). This is useful if your game is temperamental in full screen and you need to access the desktop regularly–it’ll look like full screen, but act like a window.
Vertical Sync
Vertical sync, or “vsync”, syncs your graphics card with your monitor’s framerate. For example, if your monitor only refreshes at 60Mhz–60 times per second–but your graphics card is producing 100 frames per second, then your monitor won’t display those frames evenly, and you’ll see something known as screen tearing.
Vertical sync fixes this by capping the frame rate of your game to your monitor’s refresh rate. The downside to this is, if you have a powerful computer that can give you a really fast, polished gaming experience, but your monitor can’t keep up, you’re not going to be seeing that game’s true potential.
The other thing to keep in mind is that vsync will only produce video at a framerate that is divisible into your monitor’s refresh rate. So if you have a 60Hz monitor, and your graphics card is capable of running your game at 60 frames per second or above, you’ll see great results. However, if your graphics card is trying to display something fairly intense and dips below 60 frames per second at all–even to 55 frames per second–then vsync will drop the refresh rate all the way to 30, which is a much choppier experience. If the framerate drops below 30, then vsync will only display 15, and so on.
Vsync is a very hotly debated topic among gamers. Some prefer to use it and avoid screen tearing, while others would rather deal with screen tearing than drops in framerate. If you do run vsync, you should set your other graphics settings to aim for a bit higher than 60 frames per second, so it never dips below that.
Basic Graphics Settings
With the technical stuff out of the way, now it’s time to get into the fun stuff–the settings that make your games look all pretty. Almost all games will have basic settings like anti-aliasing and render quality, though they may go by slightly different names. So what do they do?
Anti-Aliasing
Anti-aliasing is fairly easy to understand. Most graphics on a computer, when expanded, will appear jagged. Anti-aliasing fills in these jaggies with extra pixels so they appear smooth. In many games, you can set your AA to a certain multiplier such as 2x, 4x, or 8x.
Each level will increase the load on your computer. Higher end graphics cards will be able compensate for this, while older or less capable cards will see an appreciable slowdown. If this is the case for you, then we recommend setting AA to 2x or even off and seeing if you can live with that (and you just might have to). Higher levels of AA beyond 2x show higher diminishing returns, so unless you have a very beefy card, 2x is probably the best balance of performance-to-resource-usage.
In the following image, the difference is easy to make out. The top shows how things look with anti-aliasing applied (FXAA High) versus how it looks with anti-aliasing completely off.
There are quite a few different types of anti-aliasing, including MSAA, MLAA and FXAA.
Multisample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) is one of the more common types of anti-aliasing. MSAA looks nice, but is computationally inefficient because supersampling is performed for every single pixel, even though you only notice a difference along the edges of an object. Also, this technique can be applied to transparent objects, or objects with textures, meaning you’re unlikely to notice a difference.
Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing, or FXAA, is much lighter on resources, but doesn’t look as nice. It doesn’t so much perform true anti-aliasing as it does blur the edges of in-game objects. Therefore, you’re not as likely to see a huge performance hit, if any, as you would with another more graphics intensive AA technology–but your image will look a little blrury. Here’s a good comparison of the two technologies if you want to learn more.
Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA) is applied after images are processed by your graphics card. This is similar to applying filter such as in Photoshop. Additionally, MLAA is applied to the whole image on the screen, so no matter where the object is, aliasing is reduced. It occupies a space in between MSAA and FXAA–it’s not quite as hard on your graphics card as MSAA is, but looks nicer than FXAA.
There are many other types of anti-aliasing, but these are some of the more common ones you’ll see.
What AA type you use is going to depend almost entirely upon the power of your PC and the options your game gives you. While FXAA will soften edges and make things look smoother, it might make things too blurry for many users. On the other hand, something like MSAA will definitely give you sharper lines but at a considerably higher cost in terms of performance.
The best course is to try out whatever type of AA your game offers and see what works for you, and if the performance hit is too hard, figure out what you can live with.
Rendering
Let’s talk next about rendering. Rendering is how graphics–like the car above–are drawn on your screen. The higher the render quality, the better and more realistic the car will look, but it will also take more effort from the computer to draw it. If you have a new, faster performing computer, then it will obviously be able to render graphics at a much higher rate than a slower one.
Look at the images below. The render quality in the top image to “high quality”, while in the bottom image, it is set to “high performance” (aka “low quality”). The bottom image is jaggy and rough, while the top is considerably cleaner and more polished.
In a game like Rocket League, setting the rendering to its lowest option is going to make objects, such as the car in the above images, look blurry and jaggy, so it won’t matter if you’ve applied AA or not. So you should use this setting as a baseline, and if High Quality isn’t sharp enough for you, you can apply AA afterwards.
In other games, like Borderlands 2, rendering will probably go by another name such as “Game Detail”. Whatever it is called, the higher you set it, the more crisp and clear things will look, but the greater the performance cost will be.
Advanced Quality Settings
Those are the big settings, but there are a lot of smaller graphics settings that add layers of quality and greater nuance to your gaming experience. Most of these settings are going to really tax older machines, and in some instances, the value to the game itself will be negligible. As always, your mileage will vary. If you like having everything turned on, and your machine can handle it, then by all means go for it.
The first item is Texture Detail. Textures are the actual colors and details on the items in a game, rather than the shape of the items themselves. In game such as Borderlands 2, texture quality shows a marked improvement in the detail on the surface of the gun from low (top) to high (bottom). Obviously, higher detail will require more from your graphics card.
However, unlike most of the other graphics settings, Texture Detail has more to do with your graphics card’s VRAM, rather than its processing power. Even if your graphics card is pushing pretty hard, you should be able to turn up Texture Detail if you have VRAM free. If you have an older card with less VRAM, however, you’ll have to turn this setting down.
Similarly, Rocket League has a setting for World Detail, which affects the surrounding scenery. You can see the difference between “high performance” and “high quality” below: on the lower setting, grass doesn’t show individual blades, edges are more jagged, and so forth.
Below, we see the difference between having High Quality Shaders enabled in the top image, and disabling them in the bottom image. As you can see, the beams holding up the roof of the stadium don’t reflect light as realistically with the shaders off as with them on.
Ambient Occlusion is another setting that you can probably disable and not notice too much of a difference. Ambient occlusion basically allows the game to draw more realistic, softer shadows.
The effect is very subtle and likely to escape notice of most users. It’s just another effect that is going to add a little overhead to your graphics card so you probably don’t need it.
The next item, Depth of Field, is a bit more difficult to illustrate, but it’s fairly easy to explain. Turning this on causes items that are close to appear sharp and in focus, while things in the distance appear blurry and out of focus.
Some swear by depth of field, and think it makes games look more realistic, while others hate it. In reality, it’s unlikely depth of field is going to make or break your video gaming experience, because you’re usually looking at the thing closest to you at all times. It’s all about your own personal preference, and it probably serves more of a purpose in games that display more distance, such as a horizon or landmarks (trees, mountain, etc.).
When you enable Bloom, light emitting from its source is distorted and bleeds beyond its boundaries, creating a bloom effect. In some video games, bloom is far more pronounced, particularly if you’re playing a game in darkened area and you come upon a bright light source. Bloom is another item that you can probably live without, though when employed well, it can considerably enrich a game.
Dynamic Shadows cause shadows to change as an object moves. For example, looking at our trusty little car below, when dynamic shadows are enabled in the bottom shot, the shadow of the car will change as the car moves around the field. Dynamic shadows tend to consume a lot of graphics resources, so they’re a good thing to disable if you have a slower computer.
Motion Blur isn’t something we can easily show you in simple screenshots, but it’s pretty self-explanatory: to add more realism to games, objects will appear blurry when they’re moving quickly. For example, when you hit the soccer ball in Rocket League, it might appear as it is moving so fast that it is a blur. Turning this off isn’t likely to impact your gaming experience, and if you tend to get a little queasy when playing fast-moving games, turning it off might make you more comfortable.
Other games might employ different types of blur. Borderlands 2 has a setting for Ansiotropic Filtering, which aims to reduce motion blur and increase detail. It comes with a small performance hit, but not nearly as much as something like anti-aliasing, so set it to whatever your computer can handle.
It’s important to note that some items in a game’s settings may be unique to that game. For example, in the case of Rocket League, weather effects do play a role, but in a game such as Borderlands 2, you’ll see effects unique to that game such as “Bullet Decals” and “Foliage Distance”. Often, these will be a bit more self-explanatory.
Still, as you can see there are still items that you’re likely to see in all games, including anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, and so on.
In the end, what you want to see when you play and what you can actually do, will depend almost entirely upon your computer’s capabilities. If you use a laptop for the majority of your gaming, then it’s likely to be far more underpowered than a desktop computer with a dedicated graphics card. Moreover, in most desktops you can replace the graphics card while on a laptop you’re stuck with what you have.
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You may not immediately think 'gaming' when you think 'Mac,' but there are tons of games for the Mac these days, and some of the most popular PC games are also available for OS X. Let's take a look at a few ways to make those games run as smoothly as possible.
Thanks to Steam, Humble Bundles, and developers who are just more open to releasing their games on multiple platforms, owning a Mac doesn't mean you're resigned to watching your Windows friends get their game on. Plus, if you're like me and use a Windows PC as your primary gaming machine but travel with a Macbook Pro, you don't necessarily want to leave your video games at home just because you're headed out of town. Here's how to tweak your Mac to make the most of your games.
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Free Up some Disk Space and Clean Up System Clutter
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One of the best ways to keep your Mac in speedy shape is to clean up your app clutter, disable resource-hogging startup apps, and uninstall unwanted apps (especially menubar utilities that run in the background all the time). We covered some of these tricks in our guide to speeding up and reviving your Mac, but it's even more important when it comes to games. Some of those games may grab some disk space for scratch while you're playing, and if you're short on it, you'll feel it. As a byproduct, the last thing you want, especially if you're playing Steam games, is to cut Steam off from valuable disk space while you're playing.
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Beyond that, you can always use some of our favorite tools to clean up and spruce up your Mac, like Onyx, our favorite system tweaker for the Mac, or iBoostUp, another fast and free Mac tweaking tool. Windows users will be familiar with CCleaner, which also works a treat on OS X.
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Disable OS X Features You Never Use
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Additionally, you can kill off some of OS X's features that you know you never use, like Dashboard or Notification Center, if you never use them. They're generally always running in the background, and when it comes to gaming, every bit of added horsepower you can get it useful. This tutorial from MacTuts+ is a great how-to for both if you'd like to turn them off entirely, but here's how to turn off Dashboard:
- Open a Terminal Window (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
- Enter this command to disable Dashboard:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
- Enter this command to restart the Finder:
killall Dock
- The Finder will automatically restart, with Dashboard disabled.
To disable Notification Center, follow these steps:
- Open a Terminal Window (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
- Enter this command to stop Notification Center from re-launching:
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist
- Enter this command to stop Notification Center:
killall NotificationCenter
- Notification Center should immediately go away. If you get a 'process not found' error while running one of the above commands, that's okay—it should work regardless.
- If you ever need Notification Center back again, open a terminal window and enter this command:
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist
- Then press Command+Shift+G in Finder (Go To Folder) and type in /System/Library/CoreServices/. Find “Notification Center” and launch it.
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![League League](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126433409/486233560.png)
Since both processes run all the time in the background, you may be able to free up some system resources for your games to run a bit more smoothly, especially if you have integrated graphics.
Let Steam Finish Its Work Before You Play
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If the bulk of the games you play on the Mac are Steam games, your best bet before you fire up your favorite games—or before you hit the road with your Mac—is to let Steam do everything it needs to do long before you feel like playing anything. Patches, updates, new game installs, do it all before you play, and don't trust Steam or your Mac to manage that stuff in the background while you're trying to game.
In Windows, if you have a powerful enough gaming PC, you can freely let Steam work while you do other things. In OS X, it just doesn't seem to work quite as well. (Edit: Someone pointed out to me that Steam suspends downloads and patches while you're playing - that's true, and that's a good point. It should settle down when you launch a game.) Personal experience here, but if you're planning a trip and you want to game on your Mac, even if you know you'll have reliable internet access where you're going, let Steam update itself and all of your games before you even leave the house. Then you won't have to worry about any of them when you get where you're going.
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Learn Your Graphics Settings Inside and Out
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You may not think about it because OS X assumes most of the duties when it comes to managing your system's graphics, drivers, and other settings, but there are some things you can do to get familiar with how your Mac handles video and how you can improve it. While you can't just go and install your own drivers (usually), previously mentionedgfxCardStatus
gives you some insight as to when your Mac is using integrated graphics, and when it's switched over to a dedicated card. You can even force OS X to use one card or another using the app (although you probably won't want to).
gives you some insight as to when your Mac is using integrated graphics, and when it's switched over to a dedicated card. You can even force OS X to use one card or another using the app (although you probably won't want to).
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Similarly, you'll be able to make smarter tweaks to your games' graphics settings if you learn what all of those toggles and options mean. Check out our guide to graphics settings to get familiar with everything from anti-aliasing to v-Sync. Once you understand what each option does, you'll be more comfortable tweaking and making changes in your games in a way that actually improves performance without sacrificing quality, instead of doing the big things that may even compromise both.
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Try Windowed Mode versus Full-Screen and See Which Works Better
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Obviously, adjusting the graphics settings for your game is one of the best ways to make sure it runs a little more smoothly, but another thing you can try is switching between full-screen and windowed mode. Even windowed mode taking up the entire screen can sometimes smooth things out for you, and which one will work better depends heavily on the games you play. I've had some titles strain in windowed mode but really pick up when set to full-screen, and other titles choke in full-screen but suddenly become playable in windowed mode. Your mileage may vary.
Keep Your Other Apps Closed and Uninstall System-Sucking Plugins
Mac Settings For Outlook
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Even if your Mac is packed with a massive SSD and plenty of RAM, keeping a bunch of apps running in the background while you fire up a full-screen game isn't going to do you any favors. If you game on Windows, you're probably used to the performance tradeoff of keeping other apps open while you game, so you should be ready for it in OS X as well. This is especially true for heavier apps and web browsers, which consume more system resources the longer they've been open. If you can, close Firefox or Chrome on your Mac while you game, or at least close them before you game and start a fresh session if you like to surf the web or research while you play.
In some cases, it's not a big difference, but in others—namely when it comes to web browsing—it can be pretty nightmarish. Flash, Java, and other heavy plugins for web content are especially to blame for sucking down system resources while you're trying to play full-screen games, and fighting those games for valuable processor time even though the game clearly has priority. You could just remove Flash and Java entirely, or you could install ClickToFlash for Safari or Flashblock for Firefox or Chrome to stop it from loading until you actually want it.
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Keep an Eye On Performance with Activity Monitor
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Activity Monitor is built in to OS X and gives you a complete picture of which processes and applications are using the most memory, CPU, and disk resources. It's great, and it's a great way to see if there's some application open behind your games that's slowing everything down so you can close it (even if that app is Steam—I've seen that happen before). However, Activity Monitor can be a pain to keep an eye on behind a full-screen game, so consider iStat Menus, which essentially puts those tools in your Mac's menubar.
I know we suggested keeping menubar utilities to a minimum, but the beauty of iStat Menus is that they're really light on system resources, and can tell you more than just RAM, CPU, and disk activity. One click shows you CPU temperature, battery temperature, fan speed, and more. You can get a feel for whether or not there's a hardware issue at play as well as a software one (like a broken or dying fan, for example), even while your favorite game is up and running.
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Yes, You Can Always Install Windows
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Just to get the inevitable out of the way, yes—you can always install Windows on your Mac. Whether you give up on OS X entirely or you use Boot Camp to dual-boot, you can run Windows and your favorite Windows apps and games on your Mac hardware. It's one way to get your game on in a way you're probably familiar, and use all of the tweaks and tools you're familiar with. Plus, if you're running Windows, you have a broader array of games available for you to play, and many of them will actually run better in Windo, you have more options. A Mac actually makes a remarkably solid Windows computer, and while it's not designed specifically for gaming, most models' discrete graphics make them pretty good for the task.
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Once you've gone through these suggestions, ideally your games should play a bit more smoothly. As with any system, you'll have to tweak the graphics settings to make sure everything is just right, but just because you're gaming on a Mac doesn't mean you have to settle for the performance you get. Keep in mind however just like in a Windows PC, hardware plays a significant role, and there's only so much you can do to accommodate it and boost performance before you hit its natural ceiling. You can't control everything, but there are definitely a few things you can do to boost your gaming experience, especially if you're on the go.
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Best Rocket League Settings For Mac
Photos by Paul Hudson, bochalla, Evan-Amos, and Dan Taylor.