home > Preference > All launch options settings for cs go. Graphics settings in games: what do they affect? What do shadows in games affect?

All launch options settings for cs go. Graphics settings in games: what do they affect? What do shadows in games affect?

These performance tweaks have very little visual impact.

We all like to set our graphics settings to maximum. But not all of them have a positive effect. Even with high-end hardware, there are some graphics settings that make little visual difference but have a significant impact on frame rates. And if you're also playing on an older PC, then these are the settings that you need to disable in order to increase the frame rate without making the graphics terrible.

Graphics options and their respective impact may also vary significantly from game to game, so specific optimization guidelines should be reviewed for best performance. In other words, these parameters “squeeze out the maximum” in the hardware-performance ratio.

Shadows

Surprisingly, the shadow effect enhances graphics performance, but slightly darkened edges don't do much for your overall image quality. Don't turn them off, but if you're struggling with framerate, they're definitely best set to low or medium.

Motion blur

Motion blur is sometimes used to good effect, e.g. racing games, but for the most part this option takes away your performance in exchange for something that most gamers generally don't like. Motion blur is especially something to avoid in fast-paced games, such as first-person shooters.

Depth of field

Depth of field in games generally refers to the effect of blurring things in the background. Just like motion blur, this option distracts our eyes and creates a movie-like quality that doesn't always look great. Additionally, this setting can affect performance, especially if used incorrectly. It needs to be customized based on personal preferences and what game you play.

Dynamic reflection

This setting largely depends on the game you're playing and what's important to you in terms of image quality. Dynamic reflections are settings that affect how players and other moving objects appear in puddles and on shiny surfaces. This greatly enhances graphics performance. However, dynamic reflections are not always noticeable, and turning them off will increase your FPS by 30 to 50%.

Over-sampling anti-aliasing (supersampling, SSAA)

With supersampling enabled, the game takes frames at a higher resolution than the resolution of the screen itself, and then compresses them back to fit the display. It can make games look better, but unless your PC is a special monster (like our favorite Large Pixel Collider), SSAA will ruin your performance. In most cases, it is not worth using, especially when there are so many alternatives to supersampling.

IN modern games ah, more and more graphic effects and technologies are being used to improve the picture. However, developers usually don’t bother explaining what exactly they are doing. When you don't have the most powerful computer, you have to sacrifice some of the capabilities. Let's try to look at what the most common graphics options mean to better understand how to free up PC resources with minimal impact on graphics.

Anisotropic filtering

When any texture is displayed on the monitor not in its original size, it is necessary to insert additional pixels into it or, conversely, remove the extra ones. To do this, a technique called filtering is used.

Trileneynaya

Anisotropic

Bilinear filtering is the simplest algorithm and requires less computing power, but also produces the worst results. Trilinear adds clarity, but still generates artifacts. Anisotropic filtering is considered the most advanced method for eliminating noticeable distortions on objects that are strongly inclined relative to the camera. Unlike the two previous methods, it successfully combats the gradation effect (when some parts of the texture are blurred more than others, and the boundary between them becomes clearly visible). When using bilinear or trilinear filtering, the texture becomes more and more blurry as the distance increases, but anisotropic filtering does not have this drawback.

Given the amount of data being processed (and there may be many high-resolution 32-bit textures in the scene), anisotropic filtering is particularly demanding on memory bandwidth. Traffic can be reduced primarily through texture compression, which is now used everywhere. Previously, when it was not practiced so often, and the throughput of video memory was much lower, anisotropic filtering significantly reduced the number of frames. On modern video cards, it has almost no effect on fps.

Anisotropic filtering has only one setting - filter factor (2x, 4x, 8x, 16x). The higher it is, the clearer and more natural the textures look. Typically, with a high value, small artifacts are visible only on the outermost pixels of tilted textures. Values of 4x and 8x are usually quite enough to get rid of the lion's share of visual distortion. Interestingly, when moving from 8x to 16x, the performance penalty will be quite small even in theory, since additional processing will only be needed for a small number of previously unfiltered pixels.

Shaders

Shaders are small programs that can perform certain manipulations with a 3D scene, for example, changing lighting, applying texture, adding post-processing and other effects.

Shaders are divided into three types: vertex shaders operate with coordinates, geometric shaders can process not only individual vertices, but also entire ones geometric figures, consisting of a maximum of 6 vertices, pixel (Pixel Shader) work with individual pixels and their parameters.

Shaders are mainly used to create new effects. Without them, the set of operations that developers could use in games is very limited. In other words, adding shaders made it possible to obtain new effects that were not included in the video card by default.

Shaders work very productively in parallel mode, and that is why modern graphics adapters have so many stream processors, which are also called shaders. For example, the GeForce GTX 580 has as many as 512 of them.

Parallax mapping

Parallax mapping is a modified version of the well-known bumpmapping technique, used to add relief to textures. Parallax mapping does not create 3D objects in the usual sense of the word. For example, a floor or wall in a game scene will appear rough while actually being completely flat. The relief effect here is achieved only through manipulation of textures.

The source object does not have to be flat. The method works on different game items, however, its use is desirable only in cases where the height of the surface changes smoothly. Sudden changes are processed incorrectly and artifacts appear on the object.

Parallax mapping significantly saves computer computing resources, since when using analogue objects with an equally detailed 3D structure, the performance of video adapters would not be enough to render scenes in real time.

The effect is most often used on stone pavements, walls, bricks and tiles.

Anti-Aliasing

Before DirectX 8, anti-aliasing in games was done using SuperSampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA), also known as Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing (FSAA). Its use led to a significant decrease in performance, so with the release of DX8 it was immediately abandoned and replaced with Multisample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA). Despite the fact that this method gave worse results, it was much more productive than its predecessor. Since then, more advanced algorithms have appeared, such as CSAA.

AA off

AA included

Considering that over the past few years the performance of video cards has noticeably increased, both AMD and NVIDIA have again returned support for SSAA technology to their accelerators. However, it will not be possible to use it even now in modern games, since the number of frames/s will be very low. SSAA will be effective only in projects from previous years, or in current ones, but with modest settings for other graphic parameters. AMD has implemented SSAA support only for DX9 games, but NVIDIA SSAA also functions in DX10 and DX11 modes.

The principle of smoothing is very simple. Before the frame is displayed on the screen, certain information is calculated not in its native resolution, but in an enlarged one and a multiple of two. Then the result is reduced to the required size, and then the “ladder” along the edges of the object becomes less noticeable. The higher the original image and the smoothing factor (2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x), the less jaggies there will be on the models. MSAA, unlike FSAA, smoothes only the edges of objects, which significantly saves video card resources, however, this technique can leave artifacts inside polygons.

Previously, Anti-Aliasing always significantly reduced fps in games, but now it affects the number of frames only slightly, and sometimes has no effect at all.

Tessellation

Using tessellation in a computer model, the number of polygons increases by an arbitrary number of times. To do this, each polygon is divided into several new ones, which are located approximately the same as the original surface. This method allows you to easily increase the detail of simple 3D objects. At the same time, however, the load on the computer will also increase, and in some cases small artifacts cannot be ruled out.

Off

Enabled

At first glance, tessellation can be confused with Parallax mapping. Although these are completely different effects, since tessellation actually changes the geometric shape of an object, and does not just simulate relief. In addition, it can be used for almost any object, while the use of Parallax mapping is very limited.

Tessellation technology has been known in cinema since the 80s, but it began to be supported in games only recently, or rather after graphics accelerators finally reached the required level of performance at which it can be performed in real time.

For the game to use tessellation, it requires a video card that supports DirectX 11.

Vertical Sync

V-Sync is the synchronization of game frames with the vertical scan frequency of the monitor. Its essence lies in the fact that a fully calculated game frame is displayed on the screen at the moment the image is updated on it. It is important that the next frame (if it is already ready) will also appear no later and no earlier than the output of the previous one ends and the next one begins.

If the monitor refresh rate is 60 Hz, and the video card has time to render the 3D scene with at least the same number of frames, then each monitor refresh will display a new frame. In other words, at an interval of 16.66 ms, the user will see a complete update of the game scene on the screen.

It should be understood that when vertical synchronization is enabled, the fps in the game cannot exceed the vertical scan frequency of the monitor. If the number of frames is lower than this value (in our case, less than 60 Hz), then in order to avoid performance losses it is necessary to activate triple buffering, in which frames are calculated in advance and stored in three separate buffers, which allows them to be sent to the screen more often.

The main task of vertical sync is to eliminate the effect of a shifted frame, which occurs when the lower part of the display is filled with one frame, and the upper part with another, shifted relative to the previous one.

Post-processing

This is the general name for all the effects that are superimposed on a ready-made frame of a fully rendered 3D scene (in other words, on a two-dimensional image) to improve the quality of the final picture. Post-processing uses pixel shaders and is used in cases where additional effects require complete information about the entire scene. Such techniques cannot be applied in isolation to individual 3D objects without causing artifacts to appear in the frame.

High dynamic range (HDR)

An effect often used in game scenes with contrasting lighting. If one area of the screen is very bright and another is very dark, a lot of the detail in each area is lost and they look monotonous. HDR adds more gradation to the frame and allows for more detail in the scene. To use it, you usually have to work with a wider range of colors than standard 24-bit precision can provide. Preliminary calculations occur in high precision (64 or 96 bits), and only at the final stage the image is adjusted to 24 bits.

HDR is often used to realize the effect of vision adaptation when a hero in games emerges from a dark tunnel onto a well-lit surface.

Bloom

Bloom is often used in conjunction with HDR, and it also has a fairly close relative - Glow, which is why these three techniques are often confused

Bloom simulates the effect that can be seen when shooting very bright scenes with conventional cameras. In the resulting image, the intense light appears to take up more volume than it should and to “climb” onto objects even though it is behind them. When using Bloom, additional artifacts in the form of colored lines may appear on the borders of objects.

Film Grain

Grain is an artifact that occurs in analog TV with a poor signal, on old magnetic videotapes or photographs (in particular, digital images taken in low light). Players often disable this effect because it somewhat spoils the picture rather than improves it. To understand this, you can run Mass Effect in each mode. In some horror films, for example Silent Hill, noise on the screen, on the contrary, adds atmosphere.

Motion Blur

Motion Blur - the effect of blurring the image when fast movement cameras. It can be successfully used when the scene needs to be given more dynamics and speed, therefore it is especially in demand in racing games. In shooters, the use of blur is not always perceived unambiguously. Proper use of Motion Blur can add a cinematic feel to what's happening on screen.

Switched off

Included

The effect will also help to veil if necessary low frequency frame changes and add smoothness to the gameplay.

SSAO

Ambient occlusion is a technique used to make a scene photorealistic by creating more believable lighting of the objects in it, which takes into account the presence of other objects nearby with their own characteristics of light absorption and reflection.

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion is a modified version of Ambient Occlusion and also simulates indirect lighting and shading. The appearance of SSAO was due to the fact that, at the current level of GPU performance, Ambient Occlusion could not be used to render scenes in real time. The increased performance in SSAO comes at the cost of lower quality, but even this is enough to improve the realism of the picture.

SSAO works according to a simplified scheme, but it has many advantages: the method does not depend on the complexity of the scene, does not use RAM, can function in dynamic scenes, does not require frame pre-processing and loads only the graphics adapter without consuming CPU resources.

Cel shading

Games with the Cel shading effect began to be made in 2000, and first of all they appeared on consoles. On PCs, this technique became truly popular only a couple of years later, after the release of the acclaimed shooter XIII. With the help of Cel shading, each frame practically turns into a hand-drawn drawing or a fragment from a children's cartoon.

Comics are created in a similar style, so the technique is often used in games related to them. Among the latest well-known releases is the shooter Borderlands, where Cel shading is visible to the naked eye.

Features of the technology are the use of a limited set of colors, as well as the absence of smooth gradients. The name of the effect comes from the word Cel (Celluloid), i.e. the transparent material (film) on which animated films are drawn.

Depth of field

Depth of field is the distance between the near and far edges of space within which all objects will be in focus, while the rest of the scene will be blurred.

To a certain extent, depth of field can be observed simply by focusing on an object close in front of your eyes. Anything behind it will be blurred. The opposite is also true: if you focus on distant objects, everything in front of them will turn out blurry.

You can see the effect of depth of field in an exaggerated form in some photographs. This is the degree of blur that is often attempted to be simulated in 3D scenes.

In games using Depth of field, the gamer usually feels a stronger sense of presence. For example, when looking somewhere through the grass or bushes, he sees only small fragments of the scene in focus, which creates the illusion of presence.

Performance Impact

To find out how enabling certain options affects performance, we used the gaming benchmark Heaven DX11 Benchmark 2.5. All tests were carried out on an Intel Core2 Duo e6300, GeForce GTX460 system at a resolution of 1280x800 pixels (with the exception of vertical sync, where the resolution was 1680x1050).

As already mentioned, anisotropic filtering has virtually no effect on the number of frames. The difference between anisotropy disabled and 16x is only 2 frames, so we always recommend setting it to maximum.

Anti-aliasing in Heaven Benchmark reduced fps more significantly than we expected, especially in the heaviest 8x mode. However, since 2x is enough to noticeably improve the picture, we recommend choosing this option if playing at higher levels is uncomfortable.

Tessellation, unlike the previous parameters, can take on an arbitrary value in each individual game. In Heaven Benchmark, the picture without it deteriorates significantly, and on maximum level On the contrary, it becomes a little unrealistic. Therefore, you should set intermediate values - moderate or normal.

For vertical sync, more than a high resolution so that fps is not limited by the vertical refresh rate of the screen. As expected, the number of frames throughout almost the entire test with synchronization turned on remained firmly at around 20 or 30 fps. This is due to the fact that they are displayed simultaneously with the screen refresh, and at a scanning frequency of 60 Hz this can be done not with every pulse, but only with every second (60/2 = 30 frames/s) or third (60/3 = 20 frames/s). When V-Sync was turned off, the number of frames increased, but characteristic artifacts appeared on the screen. Triple buffering had no effect positive effect for the smoothness of the scene. This may be due to the fact that there is no option in the video card driver settings to force buffering to be disabled, and normal deactivation is ignored by the benchmark, and it still uses this function.

If Heaven Benchmark were a game, then maximum settings(1280x800; AA – 8x; AF – 16x; Tessellation Extreme) it would be uncomfortable to play, since 24 frames is clearly not enough for this. With minimal quality loss (1280×800; AA – 2x; AF – 16x, Tessellation Normal) you can achieve a more acceptable figure of 45 fps.

I hope this article will not only allow you to better optimize the game for your computer, but also expand your horizons. An article about the real impact will appear very soon number of FPS on the perception of the game.

Our life, our thinking and our daily actions are influenced by many small factors that are not so difficult to notice at first glance. And now it’s not about what food you eat, how you get to work and how often you read. It's about even smaller details that sometimes mean how you use something.

They make up our life, which means they influence it and control it. However, you have the right to find these parts and replace them, thereby replacing your lifestyle. This is why you need to change the default settings.

There are interesting examples of how design can little by little change your life, the way you behave, and the way you perceive the world around you. It's not about trends or fashion. It's a matter of default settings.

Default settings

The default settings are those that are also called factory settings. You get these settings if you click “Next” several times during the installation of the program. These are the options that were chosen without you, on the basis that this is how you will be most comfortable.

It seems silly to think about how default settings affect us. But think about the fact that most people have never changed the settings of their computer, the default ringtone on their phone, or the preset temperature of their refrigerator. Someone has already decided exactly how you will use this or that device. And this someone is clearly not you.

Actually, why?

Here's an example: in the USA, when registering your driver's license, you can mark on the card whether you want to be an organ donor. By default, you do not want to be an organ donor: there is a mark about this in a special box. And to agree to donation, you need to change the default settings. As a result, only 40% of the US population agrees to organ donation.

The situation is completely different in Spain, Portugal and Austria. Here, under the same circumstances, you agree to be a donor by default. If you don't like it, you just need to select another option when filling out the form. As a result, more than 99% of the population are potential donors. Statistics show that countries with presumed consent policies not only have more people agreeing to donate, but also have a more developed organ transplant system.

Of course, many other factors also influence the success of a country's donation system. But presumed consent also has significant effect on collective behavior.

It turns out that default settings affect what we eat, what temperature we consider optimal, and even our desire to try something new.

Let's look at some more interesting examples of such influence.

How to make your child love vegetables

One eloquent case showed that in order to get a child to eat vegetables, long lectures and exhortations are not needed.

An experiment was conducted in a New York school to encourage children to eat more vegetables. We all imagine the default arrangement of food stands: usually they stand against the walls, and anyone comes up and selects the desired dish.

In the New York school cafeteria there were several counters: hot dishes, food for quick snacks (like sandwiches and cookies) and vegetable salads. The solution was simple and ingenious: move the stand with vegetables to the center of the hall, and also install it opposite the cash register. Sales of salads among schoolchildren have more than tripled.

How to save for retirement

Saving for retirement is a complex issue for many reasons. If we put aside external problems, we will have to overcome psychological difficulties every time. Teaching yourself to save money is difficult, especially if the goal is a very distant retirement.

And if the default settings are changed and deductions occur automatically (for example, a monthly bank payment), then there is no need to fight with yourself: the amount will grow little by little, but constantly.

What to do about it

There are also default settings that affect us every day. Let's take fonts, for example. For many Microsoft Word users, the font called Times New Roman remained the first choice, because it was set as the default. It was used in the publication of books, magazines and newspapers; schoolchildren were required to type abstracts in Times New Roman font. This headset can be confidently called the default for everything. And in Adobe Illustrator, the Myriad Pro font is installed by default, which also became a reason for numerous jokes.

Default settings can cause discord and conflict. For example, what we call flesh color is perceived by default as a light peach shade.

But this does not at all reflect the variety of shades of human skin. The same problem arose when creating emoji. The people on the default icons have yellow “cartoon” skin, some have beige skin. But other shades were added much later, and still not all smartphones support multi-colored emoji.

Ways to change settings

What is all this for? Think about how much your life is determined by someone else, someone who has set the default settings. In most cases, you can change them, which means you can change something in your life. What exactly?

Designer David Kadavy believes that even the arrangement of icons on the desktop of his smartphone changes his life. He abandoned the default composition and rearranged the application shortcuts to suit his needs and aspirations. He prioritized meditation, note-taking, and drawing apps to help him access them more often and develop healthy habits.
You can rearrange the food in the refrigerator so that healthy foods are easier to reach.
Instead of comfy slippers by the bed, leave your sneakers and force yourself to put them on first thing in the morning. These shoes are harder to take off, which means you are less likely to fall into bed and go back to sleep. It also motivates you to start jogging or doing exercises. You're already wearing sneakers anyway.
Set up automatic deductions to your bank account. This will help you start saving money, even if you have never been able to save.

Man is a slave to his habits. Now we have found out that he is also a slave to his original settings. But how can a person

Modern graphics processors contain many functional blocks, the number and characteristics of which determine the final rendering speed, which affects the comfort of the game. Based on the comparative number of these blocks in different video chips, you can roughly estimate how fast a particular GPU is. Video chips have quite a lot of characteristics; in this section we will consider only the most important of them.

Video chip clock speed

The operating frequency of a GPU is usually measured in megahertz, i.e., millions of cycles per second. This characteristic directly affects the performance of the video chip - the higher it is, the more work the GPU can perform per unit of time, process a greater number of vertices and pixels. Example from real life: the frequency of the video chip installed on the Radeon HD 6670 board is 840 MHz, and the exact same chip in the Radeon HD 6570 model operates at a frequency of 650 MHz. Accordingly, all the main performance characteristics will differ. But it’s not only the operating frequency of the chip that determines performance; its speed is also greatly influenced by the graphics architecture itself: the design and number of execution units, their characteristics, etc.

In some cases, the clock speed of individual GPU blocks differs from the operating frequency of the rest of the chip. That is, different parts of the GPU operate at different frequencies, and this is done to increase efficiency, because some blocks are capable of operating at higher frequencies, while others are not. Most GeForce video cards from NVIDIA are equipped with these GPUs. A recent example is the video chip in the GTX 580 model, most of which operates at a frequency of 772 MHz, and the universal computing units of the chip have a frequency doubled - 1544 MHz.

Fill rate (fill rate)

The fill rate shows how fast the video chip is capable of drawing pixels. There are two types of fillrate: pixel fill rate and texture fill rate. Pixel fill rate shows the speed of drawing pixels on the screen and depends on the operating frequency and the number of ROP units (rasterization and blending operation units), and texture fill rate is the speed of sampling texture data, which depends on the operating frequency and the number of texture units.

For example, the peak pixel fillrate of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is 822 (chip frequency) × 32 (number of ROP units) = 26304 megapixels per second, and the texture fillrate is 822 × 64 (number of texturing units) = 52608 megatexels/s. In a simplified way, the situation is like this - the larger the first number, the faster the video card can draw finished pixels, and the larger the second, the faster the texture data is sampled.

Although the importance of "pure" fill rate has recently decreased markedly, giving way to computational speed, these parameters are still very important, especially for games with simple geometry and relatively simple pixel and vertex calculations. So both parameters remain important for modern games, but they must be balanced. Therefore, the number of ROP units in modern video chips is usually less than the number of texture units.

Number of computing (shader) units or processors

Perhaps, now these blocks are the main parts of the video chip. They run special programs known as shaders. Moreover, if earlier pixel shaders performed pixel shader blocks, and vertex shaders performed vertex blocks, then for some time graphic architectures were unified, and these universal computing units began to deal with various calculations: vertex, pixel, geometric and even universal calculations.

For the first time, the unified architecture was used in a gaming video chip. Microsoft consoles Xbox 360, this GPU was developed by ATI (later purchased by AMD). And in video chips for personal computers, unified shader units appeared in the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 board. And since then, all new video chips are based on a unified architecture, which has a universal code for different shader programs (vertex, pixel, geometric, etc.), and the corresponding Unified processors can execute any program.

Based on the number of computational units and their frequency, you can compare the mathematical performance of different video cards. Most games are now limited by the performance of pixel shaders, so the number of these blocks is very important. For example, if one video card model is based on a GPU with 384 computational processors in its composition, and another from the same line has a GPU with 192 computational units, then at the same frequency the second will be twice as slow to process any type of shaders, and in general will be the same more productive.

Although it is impossible to draw unambiguous conclusions about performance solely on the basis of the number of computing units alone, it is necessary to take into account the clock frequency and the different architecture of units of different generations and chip manufacturers. Only based on these numbers, you can compare chips only within the same line of one manufacturer: AMD or NVIDIA. In other cases, you need to pay attention to performance tests in the games or applications you are interested in.

Texturing Units (TMU)

These GPU units work in conjunction with computing processors; they select and filter texture and other data necessary for scene construction and general-purpose calculations. The number of texture units in a video chip determines texture performance—that is, the speed of fetching texels from textures.

Although recently more emphasis has been placed on mathematical calculations, and some textures are being replaced by procedural ones, the load on TMU blocks is still quite high, since in addition to the main textures, selections must also be made from normal and displacement maps, as well as off-screen render target rendering buffers.

Taking into account the emphasis of many games, including the performance of texturing units, we can say that the number of TMU units and the corresponding high texture performance are also one of the most important parameters for video chips. This parameter has a particular impact on the speed of image rendering when using anisotropic filtering, which requires additional texture samples, as well as with complex soft shadow algorithms and newfangled algorithms like Screen Space Ambient Occlusion.

Rasterization Operation Units (ROPs)

Rasterization units carry out the operations of writing pixels calculated by the video card into buffers and the operations of mixing them (blending). As we noted above, the performance of ROP blocks affects the fill rate and this is one of the main characteristics of video cards of all times. And although its importance has also decreased somewhat recently, there are still cases where application performance depends on the speed and number of ROP blocks. Most often this is due to the active use of post-processing filters and anti-aliasing enabled at high game settings.

Let us note once again that modern video chips cannot be assessed only by the number of different blocks and their frequency. Each GPU series uses a new architecture, in which the execution units are very different from the old ones, and the ratio of the number of different units may differ. Thus, AMD ROP units in some solutions can perform more work per clock cycle than units in NVIDIA solutions, and vice versa. The same applies to the capabilities of TMU texture units - they are different in different generations of GPUs from different manufacturers, and this must be taken into account when comparing.

Geometric blocks

Until recently, the number of geometry processing units was not particularly important. One block on the GPU was enough for most tasks, since the geometry in games was quite simple and the main focus of performance was mathematical calculations. The importance of parallel geometry processing and the number of corresponding blocks increased dramatically with the advent of geometry tessellation support in DirectX 11. NVIDIA was the first to parallelize the processing of geometric data when several corresponding blocks appeared in its GF1xx family chips. Then, AMD released a similar solution (only in the top solutions of the Radeon HD 6700 line based on Cayman chips).

In this material, we will not go into details; they can be read in the basic materials on our website dedicated to DirectX 11-compatible graphics processors. What's important to us here is that the number of geometry processing units has a huge impact on overall performance in the newest games that use tessellation, like Metro 2033, HAWX 2 and Crysis 2 (with the latest patches). And when choosing a modern gaming video card, it is very important to pay attention to geometric performance.

Video memory size

Own memory is used by video chips to store the necessary data: textures, vertices, buffer data, etc. It would seem that the more there is, the better. But it’s not so simple; estimating the power of a video card based on the amount of video memory is the most common mistake! Inexperienced users most often overestimate the value of video memory, and still use it to compare different models of video cards. This is understandable - this parameter is one of the first to be indicated in the lists of characteristics of finished systems, and it is written in large font on video card boxes. Therefore, it seems to an inexperienced buyer that since there is twice as much memory, then the speed of such a solution should be twice as high. The reality differs from this myth in that memory comes in different types and characteristics, and productivity growth grows only up to a certain volume, and after reaching it simply stops.

So, in each game and with certain settings and game scenes there is a certain amount of video memory that is enough for all the data. And even if you put 4 GB of video memory there, there will be no reason for it to speed up rendering, the speed will be limited by the execution units discussed above, and there will simply be enough memory. This is why, in many cases, a video card with 1.5 GB of video memory runs at the same speed as a card with 3 GB (all other things being equal).

There are situations where more memory leads to a visible increase in performance - these are very demanding games, especially at ultra-high resolutions and at maximum quality settings. But such cases do not always occur and the amount of memory must be taken into account, not forgetting that performance simply will not increase above a certain amount. Memory chips also have more important parameters, such as the width of the memory bus and its operating frequency. This topic is so vast that we will go into more detail about choosing the amount of video memory in the sixth part of our material.

Memory bus width

The memory bus width is the most important characteristic affecting memory bandwidth (MBB). A larger width allows more information to be transferred from video memory to the GPU and back per unit time, which has a positive effect on performance in most cases. Theoretically, a 256-bit bus can transfer twice as much data per clock cycle as a 128-bit bus. In practice, the difference in rendering speed, although it does not reach two times, is very close to this in many cases with an emphasis on video memory bandwidth.

Modern gaming video cards use different bus widths: from 64 to 384 bits (previously there were chips with a 512-bit bus), depending on the price range and release time of a particular GPU model. For the cheapest low-end video cards, 64 and less often 128 bits are most often used, for the middle level from 128 to 256 bits, and video cards from the upper price range use buses from 256 to 384 bits wide. The bus width can no longer grow purely due to physical limitations - the GPU die size is insufficient to accommodate more than a 512-bit bus, and this is too expensive. Therefore, memory bandwidth is now being increased by using new types of memory (see below).

Video memory frequency

Another parameter that affects memory bandwidth is its clock frequency. And increasing the bandwidth often directly affects the performance of the video card in 3D applications. The memory bus frequency on modern video cards ranges from 533 (1066, taking into account doubling) MHz to 1375 (5500, taking into account quadrupling) MHz, that is, it can differ by more than five times! And since bandwidth depends on both the memory frequency and the width of its bus, memory with a 256-bit bus operating at a frequency of 800 (3200) MHz will have greater bandwidth compared to memory operating at 1000 (4000) MHz with a 128-bit bus.

Particular attention to the parameters of the memory bus width, its type and operating frequency should be paid when purchasing relatively inexpensive video cards, many of which only have 128-bit or even 64-bit interfaces, which has an extremely negative impact on their performance. In general, we do not recommend purchasing a video card using a 64-bit video memory bus for a gaming PC. It is advisable to give preference to at least a medium level with at least a 128- or 192-bit bus.

Memory types

Modern video cards are equipped with several different types of memory. You won't find old single-speed SDR memory anywhere anymore, but modern types of DDR and GDDR memory have significantly different characteristics. Various types of DDR and GDDR allow you to transfer two or four times more data at the same clock frequency per unit time, and therefore the operating frequency figure is often doubled or quadrupled, multiplied by 2 or 4. So, if the frequency is specified for DDR memory 1400 MHz, then this memory operates at a physical frequency of 700 MHz, but they indicate the so-called “effective” frequency, that is, the one at which the SDR memory must operate in order to provide the same bandwidth. The same thing with GDDR5, but the frequency is even quadrupled.

The main advantage of new types of memory is the ability to operate at higher clock speeds, and therefore increase bandwidth compared to previous technologies. This is achieved at the expense of increased latencies, which, however, are not so important for video cards. The first board to use DDR2 memory was the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. Since then, graphics memory technology has advanced significantly, and the GDDR3 standard was developed, which is close to the DDR2 specifications, with some changes specifically for video cards.

GDDR3 is a memory specifically designed for video cards, with the same technologies as DDR2, but with improved consumption and heat dissipation characteristics, which made it possible to create chips that operate at higher clock speeds. Despite the fact that the standard was developed by ATI, the first video card to use it was the second modification of the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, and the next one was the GeForce 6800 Ultra.

GDDR4 is further development"graphics" memory, running almost twice as fast as GDDR3. The main differences between GDDR4 and GDDR3, which are significant for users, are once again increased operating frequencies and reduced power consumption. Technically, GDDR4 memory is not very different from GDDR3; it is a further development of the same ideas. The first video cards with GDDR4 chips on board were the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, and NVIDIA did not release products based on this type of memory at all. The advantages of new memory chips over GDDR3 are that the power consumption of the modules can be about a third lower. This is achieved through a lower voltage rating for GDDR4.

However, GDDR4 is not widely used even in AMD solutions. Starting with the RV7x0 family of GPUs, video card memory controllers support a new type of GDDR5 memory operating at an effective quadruple frequency of up to 5.5 GHz and higher (theoretically, frequencies up to 7 GHz are possible), which gives a throughput of up to 176 GB/s using 256-bit interface. If to increase memory bandwidth in GDDR3/GDDR4 memory it was necessary to use a 512-bit bus, then switching to GDDR5 made it possible to double the performance with smaller crystal sizes and lower power consumption.

The most modern types of video memory are GDDR3 and GDDR5; they differ from DDR in some details and also work with double/quadruple data transfer. These types of memory use some special technologies to increase the operating frequency. Thus, GDDR2 memory usually operates at higher frequencies compared to DDR, GDDR3 at even higher frequencies, and GDDR5 provides maximum frequency and bandwidth at this moment. But inexpensive models are still equipped with “non-graphic” DDR3 memory with a significantly lower frequency, so you need to choose a video card more carefully.

Many of you have probably heard about launch options in cs go, but not everyone knows what they are for and which of them can really benefit your PC. What are launch options? These are commands that tell the game to perform some action when loading or to launch the game with certain settings. Good launch settings will not only ensure a smooth roller, but will also make your life easier. For example, you can change the screen resolution when opening cs go or skip the introductory video (to save time).

CS GO launch settings - useful commands

-novid – disables the introductory video when entering the game
-w 640 -h 480 – you can set the screen resolution at startup. Instead of 640 and 480, put your values
-console – turns on the console in the game
-freq 120 – sets the monitor to the required screen refresh rate. It only makes sense to use it if you have a 120 or 144 Hz monitor.
-high – starts the game in high priority mode. This may help players with weak computers. It makes no sense to use it if you have a powerful PC.
-threads 4 – tell the game how many cores you have. If you have two cores, then instead of four we put two; with six cores we set it to six. Look in the game to see if this team has any impact. If not, you don’t have to register
-fullscreen – launch cs go in full screen mode
-language English – sets the language. At the same time, you may have steam in Russian, and cs go in English
+rate 124000 - maximum amount data received by the host (bit/sec.)
+cl_cmdrate 128 – maximum number of packets sent to the server
+cl_updaterate 128 – maximum requested package updates from the server
-noaafonts – disables antialiasing. Helps increase FPS in cs go
+exec autoexec.cfg – launch a pre-configured config
-window - to launch the game in windowed mode
-noborder – launches cs go in windowed mode without a border
-low – you can set not only high priority, but also low
-dxlevel 81 – setting DirectX to version 8.1
-dxlevel 90 - setting DirectX to version 9
-heapsize 262144 – this parameter allocates 512MB of RAM
-heapsize 524288 - allocates 1GB of RAM
-heapsize 1048576 - allocates 2GB of RAM
-noaafonts – this command disables screen font smoothing
-refresh 100 is a special parameter for changing Hertz for HL2 Engine monitors.
-soft – enables CS in graphical mode Software
-d3d – enables CS in Direct3D mode
-gl – enables CS in Open GL graphics mode
-nojoy - disables the joystick
-noipx – disables the LAN protocol
-noip - removes the IP address without the ability to connect to servers
-nosound - turns off the sound in cs go
-nosync - disables vertical sync
-console – provides access to the developer console
-dev - enables the developer mod
-zone # - allows you to allocate more memory to files such as autoexec.cfg, etc.
-safe – allows you to run cs go in safe mode plus disables audio
-autoconfig – resets video settings to standard
-condebug – saves logs to console.log file
-nocrashdialog - to cancel the display of some errors (memory could not be read)
-toconsole - to launch the game engine in the console if the map is not defined with +map
+a +r_mmx 1 - to launch the game using a cvar command on the command line (instead of cfg)
-tickrate 128 – server update rate
-m_rawinput – whether the Windows settings will affect the mouse sensor
-noforcemaccel - disable mouse acceleration
-noforcemparms - use mouse button settings as in Windows

Of course, 80% of the teams described above are for some cybernerds. I listed them just in case. And I recommend borrowing the optimal launch parameters for cs go from the Navi team.

Launch options for professional players

Pro players certainly know what needs to be written down there. It's unlikely they're missing out on anything. Let's see what Natus Vincere players have there. Launch options for top Natus Vincere CS:GO players

Launch parameters for Arseny "ceh9" Trinozhenko:

W 1280 -h 720 -novid -freq 144 +rate 128000 +cl_interp 0.01 +cpu_frequency_monitoring 2 +engine_no_focus_sleep convar 1 cl_obs_interp_enable 0 +cl_hideserverip -console

Yes, my roster is old, but essentially all eSports players have similar teams + they change them periodically. So there’s no need to worry too much. Take the one you like best.

How to set launch parameters in cs go - step-by-step instructions (in pictures)

Yes, I forgot the most important thing - to tell you how to install them (or rather, where to register them). To register launch parameters in cs go you need to click on steam right click mouse, select the properties tab and switch to the tab called "set startup options" as shown in the image below: