NVIDIA Control Panel settings ?

[Zorachus]

I just picked up a GTX-680 4GB, my first nVidia card since my 8800GTX years ago, been with ATI in between. Anyways, I am not sure what are the best settings for me in the NVIDIA Control Panel ? Any advice or help, would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

I am more into eye candy and the games looking their best, but also don't want it setup so demanding my games run at 10 fps I always thought it best to have AA + AF controlled in-game ? How should I have this setup ?

I game on a 30" Dell U3011, with one GTX-680 4GB, system spec's in sig below.

Global Settings
Ambient Occlusion ? = Performance ?
Anisotropic filtering ? = App controlled ?
Antialiasing - FXAA ? = On ?
Antialiasing - Gamma correction ? = On ?
Antialiasing - Mode ? = App controlled ?
Antialiasing - Transparency ? = No idea which setting looks best, but not kill frames ?
CUDA - GPUs ? = ?
Maximum pre-rendered frames ? = ?
Multi-display acceleration ? = Single ?
Power management mode ? = Prefer maximum performance ?
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias ? = Clamp ?
Texture filtering - Quality ? = High Quality ?
Threaded optimization ? = Auto ?
Triple Buffering ? = Off ?
Vertical sync ? = Off or try that new Adaptive ?

 

[xnikx]

most these settings are your personal preference. like ambient occlusion, aa transparency, and texture filtering will make your games look better, but will impact performance.

anisotropic filtering and antialiasing mode i would leave on app controlled
leave fxaa off, use a nice aa/msaa in ur games

i have occlusion and transparency off, gamma correction on

cuda gpu - all
power managment mode - prefer max performance!

max pre rendered frames, from my experience if you set it to 1, you'll get higher fps. if you set it to 3 you'll get lower fps, but a more steady fps. just an example.

i would set lod vias to auto, texture filtering to quality
leave thread optimization on auto

triple buffering is only if you use v sync, which i recommend turning vsync off if not leave it app controlled.

the best way to find what works for you is to actually play with the settings.

when you hover over them, their is a description at the bottom.

 

[Mordecai Walfish]

Hello. Been a Geforce user for many years.. here are some basic helpful hints.

Do not change "Ambient Occlusion", "Anisotropic filtering", "force Antialiasing", etc. from the GLOBAL SETTINGS. Make sure you are setting up individual PROGRAM SETTINGS in the tab just to the right of global, for each game you want to force a specific effect in. If you force Ambient Occlusion on top of a game that already has it included in, then you will likely have a massive performance hit if it even runs at all. Same with forcing antialiasing or anisotropic filtering when the game already includes it. These can potentially cause issues and break games.


Here are the GLOBAL SETTINGS you *can* change that would be good with your single GTX680:

Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames: set to 1 for slightly less input lag in games, 2 if you want a happy medium between the default (3) and 1. The default (3) provides a higher framerate generally as well as delivering a smoother overall experience. I use 1 and notice no issues with smoothness, though. YMMV

Multi-Display/Mixed-GPU Acceleration: if you are only using one monitor, set this to "Single Display Performance Mode". If you are using more than one, leave it at it's default.

Power Management Mode: set this to "Prefer Maximum Performance". You have a top of the line card, no reason to settle for anything less.

Preferred Refresh Rate: set this to "Highest Available" (note that this option is only visible on connected displays capable of greater than 60HZ)

Texture Filtering - Quality: set this to "High Quality" to get the best image from your top of the line card. I'd actually recommend anyone with a gtx 460+ to set this to "High Quality".


Thats it for the Global Settings. All of these changes will not conflict with a single program on your computer, but will improve performance and quality.


For the individual PROGRAM SETTINGS, I would recommend sticking to the in-game options and just cranking everything there. If you know a certain feature in the control panel can enhance a game quite a bit (Like forcing Ambient Occlusion in a game like Mirror's Edge, for example, or forcing Transparency Anti-Aliasing in Skyrim) then go ahead and play around with the control panel options for *that individual game*. There are plenty of posts and guides showing how to get the most out of the graphics on your high-end nVidia card in specific games, google is your friend. Older games in particular that dont have high antialiasing modes or weak texture filtering can benefit from the forcing of things like Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering in the nvidia control panel, but make sure before you attempt to do this that you completely disable any in-game Antialiasing or Anisotropic Filtering, in the game's graphic menus. Forcing AF, AO or AA on top of the exact same effect already being provided by the game can lead to poor performance, graphical anomalies and instability.

Good Luck =)

 

[cannondale06]

I would not force hardly any graphical settings from the global settings as that will impact every 3d app and can cause issues. the only thing I force from global settings is I have texture filtering on "high quality" and "clamp". everything else is at default in global settings and I use the program settings to force things for individual games if need be.

 

[Nexillus]

I would not force hardly any graphical settings from the global settings as that will impact every 3d app and can cause issues. the only thing I force from global settings is I have texture filtering on "high quality" and "clamp". everything else is at default in global settings and I use the program settings to force things for individual games if need be.

Quote FTW! Unless you are doing major 3D rendering today's applications do a pretty good job controlling them indivdually.

 

[Ryoohki360]

The only thing i change is, force AF to 16x and turn off nvidia VSYCN.. and i use program profile for individual settings..

 

[Zorachus]

So what's the final consensus on;
Power management mode ? = Prefer maximum performance or Adaptive ?

 

[cannondale06]

So what's the final consensus on;
Power management mode ? = Prefer maximum performance or Adaptive ?

globally, I personally use adaptive as there is no sense in using full gpu speed for every gpu accelerated thing I run.