Info: Difference between nVidia's Quality/Performance settings? - Overclock.net

JacKz5o · 08-02-06

Ok, im sure all of you nVidia owners have seen nVidia's Image quality/performance settings, but is there a real difference between them? For those of you that do not own an nVidia card, there are 4 image settings: High Performance, Performance, Quality (default), and High Quality. In this guide I will test to see if there is any difference between High Quality and High Performance in both benchmarks and in games.

Test #1 - 3DMark05 (each test was done twice for a more accurate score on 3DMark's default graphics settings)

High Quality 3DMark05 Score 1 = 5742
High Quality 3DMark05 Score 2 = 5739
Average = 5740.5

High Performance 3DMark05 Score 1 = 5968
High Performance 3Dmark05 Score 2 = 5975
Average = 5971.5

As you can see, there is a 231 point difference between the 2 image settings in 3DMark05, but is there a visible difference in-game?

Test #2 - CounterStrike: Source

In this test, I took 2 screenshots of CS:S (maxed out settings) and merged them together into... this

On the left is the High Performance SS and ont he right is the High Quality SS.

There was a 13 FPS different between High Performance/Quality in-game but in the picture shown there is not much of a visible different if not, at all.

In conclusion, there was an FPS difference in both benchmark applications and in games, however, there was no visible difference. So for those of you that has some lag in any games or anything its best for you to set it on High Performance for an FPS boost.

Thanks for reading this guide and I hope all of you now know the difference between the 2 settings :D.

-JacKz5o

(Attached are the 2 SS that was merged together, the one with the gun on the left is the high performance SS and the one with the gun on the left is the high quality SS).