{"id":87995,"date":"2026-08-22T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T14:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87995"},"modified":"2026-08-22T14:36:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T18:36:49","slug":"ultra-graphics-settings-are-a-scam-why-high-is-good-enough-if-not-better-for-most-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87995","title":{"rendered":"Ultra Graphics Settings Are a Scam: Why High Is Good Enough, if Not Better, for Most Players"},"content":{"rendered":"<section data-transform=\"mobile-ad-break\">\n<p>I\u2019m a privileged gamer. As a hardware reviewer, over the years I\u2019ve been sent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/the-best-cpus-for-gaming\">top-tier CPUs<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/best-graphics-card\">graphics cards<\/a>, letting me bounce from one flagship to the next. That\u2019s made me lazy at game settings. I often just set the game at whatever the maximum \u201cUltra\u201d setting is and get on with playing. But by doing so, I\u2019ve just been playing into the marketing hype \u2013 and leaving a lot of performance on the table, it turns out.<\/p>\n<p>Most games don\u2019t actually need to be played at Ultra settings to look good. They don\u2019t 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\u2019t something I even really notice if pushed to look. <\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The system<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been able to ignore graphics settings for so long due to a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m a privileged gamer. As a hardware reviewer, over the years I\u2019ve been sent top-tier CPUs and graphics cards, letting me bounce from one flagship to the next. That\u2019s made me lazy at game settings. I often just set the game at whatever the maximum \u201cUltra\u201d setting is and get on with playing. But by&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":87997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87995"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87999,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87995\/revisions\/87999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}