Are Ultra Settings Worth It?

Ultra Settings in PC Gaming

Ultra-settings are the highest possible graphical preset in a game without modding. Within the game these settings can have a different name like “very high, extreme, highest quality”. They feature a finer grade of graphic detail that add an element of realism to the game. 

High vs. Ultra Settings

Ultra settings and high settings are both meant to give you higher fidelity over your standard console experience. It is important to note there are some differences between ultra and high graphic settings. First the lighting and shadow effects, with a wide array from light filtering, ray tracing, global illumination and so on, running on ultra all of these will be enabled and run at maximum settings. Texture resolution settings vary the amount of VRAM that gets used, which benefits greatly from a large video memory on your graphics card.

Resolution

When it comes to resolution, running ultra settings gives you the most eye pleasing graphics. Ultra settings prioritize the highest graphic and resolution size. Most games will allow you to choose your resolution independently of your graphics settings. Utilizing a modern RTX series GPU offers excellent video memory to help run in ultra without any stuttering or buffering.  

Frames Per Second

Choosing Ultra over High graphic settings plays a role in your PC’s frames per second when gaming. With the variety of gaming spanning everywhere from indie games, massive first person shooters, rpgs there are many game experiences you may want to consider. First person shooters and racing games may be games where you can consider playing high settings to get a boost in frames per second to have a competitive advantage. However with modern graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, featuring 6GB+ video memory, which runs today's games at the highest of settings and resolutions.

Advantages of Ultra Settings

Ultra settings have the advantage of providing a more realistic visual experience. Gamers who like to take screenshots or photos of their game have better results in ultra settings. Many people also agree ultra settings allow the developers to showcase their true vision for the game.

Graphics

Graphics are at the core of any gaming experience whether it be on console or PC. Graphics are composed of both the game's geometry and the shaders/textures mapped onto the geometry. A common rule of thumb is the higher your graphics quality, the lower your frames per second average. This happens due to the extra video memory and GPU power to compute the additional graphics resolution. For the best performance it is recommended to game with the RTX series graphics cards from Nvidia which boast great VRAM and processing power. 

Immersion

Immersive experiences all depend on how believable your game looks. When publishers create lifelike games with high quality models and textures and ever better HDR lighting, games are undoubtedly becoming more immersive each year. Being able to run at ultra settings, you will experience the fully immersive experience with all the lighting and visual effects.

Drawbacks of Ultra Settings

Ultra settings are the epitome of quality when it comes to graphic settings but it can take a major toll on the FPS. Ultra settings are great for capturing screenshots of your games but can cause performance issues when running them.

FPS Dips

One major setback with running ultra graphic settings while gaming is the occasional frame dips and drops. Frames per second drops refers to the scenario when your graphic card is not able to maintain the same frame rate consistently resulting in a degraded gaming experience which results in stuttering, lag, and screen tearing. 

Graphics Settings to Improve Performance

While running ultra settings is preferred, it is possible to mix your settings to optimize certain settings to improve performance. The most important part is to first make sure you have a build with a powerful GPU that can handle ultra settings. Adjusting anti-aliasing is a good first step in order to reduce hardware from over working. Disabling anisotropic filtering and running the game at your monitor's native resolution are also likely to offer your best performance. 

Anti Aliasing

Anti-aliasing is a method used in computer graphics and video games in which jagged edges reduce to appear smoothed. Video games and on screen graphics are compiled of millions of square pixels which can make representing smooth curves difficult without seeing “jaggies”. Anti- aliasing has been improved in many ways since its creation, with modern anti-aliasing techniques such as MSAA, FXAA, and now DLSS. While all of these anti-aliasing effects can benefit your viewing experience, it does tax the GPU and can cause a drop in frame rate.  

Shadows

Shadow effects come in a variety of resolutions from low to medium, high, and ultra quality in most games. The higher the shadow resolution the sharper and crisper the shadows appear, and vice versa, the lower the quality of shadow the more soft and blurry they appear. As with most graphical effects, the higher quality that you enable the more you trade off in frame rate and stability. 

Shaders

Gaming engines utilize “shaders” which is a custom set of instructions in which the computer is able to render different kinds of graphics over the game's geometry. Shaders hold the game’s textures for characters, items, environments and virtually everything displayed on screen. Most games allow you the options to choose from Low, Medium, High and Ultra shader settings. As with most ultra settings, they provide the highest fidelity textures available, with the trade off of additional video memory needed. 

Special/Particle Effects

Many triple A titles and even indie games nowadays have access to better game engines that offer many excellent effects to make the games more immersive and eye-catching. Particle effects, camera effects such as motion blur and depth of field, and even water effects are some of these offerings included in many games. While these effects add a great amount of immersion, they do come with a trade off of increased hardware power required. Camera effects and particle effects particularly put great strain on your GPU, which causes frame dips and stuttering. 

Are Ultra Settings Worth it?

Are Ultra settings worth enabling for your gameplay experience?

It is important to think about what you are looking for out of your gaming experience. For those who want the highest possible frames per second whether playing casually or competitively, you may want to consider running high settings as not to sacrifice any frames and hold your competitive advantage. If you prefer the eye popping immersive graphics, ultra settings are definitely worth trying out, but do keep in mind, depending on your PC specs, you may see a noticeable drop in frame rate. 

Final Thoughts on Ultra Settings

Ultra settings demonstrate how far video game technology has come along in the past decade. By going a step further than high settings, developers showcase their true vision for their games. The additional details in textures, lighting, and shadows within a game add an extra layer of immersion for the end user. Ultra settings are visually stunning but can cause drops in frame rates and hinder game performance.