Auto-detect video settings in PC games

[viranimus]

Hrm... given my current primary tri monitor rig honestly I cannot even recall the last time auto detect was allowed to do its thing as I have just became conditioned to go immediately to system settings.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Is this a common problem, or do I need to fix some things? I'm using an AMD Radeon 6770 HD (not exactly great, but not as bad as all that)

Anti Aliasing is probably your enemy, a 6670 isn't the fastest, but most games at 1080p and medium (or low for max fps) should be just fine. Turn AA off completely.

If it's still too slow, turn Anisotropic Filtering down to Bilinear, then off if needed.

After that, try turning texture quality down, also any dynamic lighting options.

After that, keep turning everything down until you hit min settings, if it's still running badly, something's probably broken or needs updating.

Alternatively, start by setting every graphics option to it's middle setting and see where that leaves you.

 

[barbzilla]

I seem to have the opposite problem from time to time. Auto-detect sets everything to laughably low settings when the game runs perfectly on my rig at max settings.

This is my problem much more often. Those auto detect settings detect your hardware and set a profile based on that, what it doesn't do is access how optimized your rig is. For example it doesn't take into account the 20+ pages of chrome you have open, nor does it take into account the various background programs you have running. It also assumes average registry errors and/or overloaded caches. So if you notice that it trends one way or the other, just tweak it a bit. For me (much like chrono) it ends up laughable lower than my rig can handle. So I usually start on max and make adjustments as necessary. After a while you get a feel for what needs to be lowered.