Is Render Scale Slider In Games Just Reducing Resolution?

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Is render scale slider in games just reducing resolution?

Is render scale slider in games just reducing resolution?

By Edgar R. Zakarian May 8, 2021 in PC Gaming Share https://linustechtips.com/topic/1335846-is-render-scale-slider-in-games-just-reducing-resolution/ More sharing options... Followers 1

Edgar R. Zakarian
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The interested newbie ;D

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Hi,

I'm wondering if I set the resolution and slider down the render quality to like 70% or so, which would match 720p, would the picture look exactly the same, if I instead just changed the resolution to 720p @ 100%?

Or does the slider work in a different way?

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Levent
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Yeah it pretty much reduces render resolution while (usually) keeping the UI elements in your display resolution.

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porina
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porina
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Yes and no. It does scale much of the content, but not necessarily all of it. For example, the UI is generally less demanding so that might be rendered at native resolution and superimposed on the game graphics.

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Edgar R. Zakarian
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Thanks for the answers! Thought I could see a difference, this explains it. I'll definitely prefer render slider over native resolution change then.

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jaslion
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What render scale does is take the 3D layer of the game and render it at a different resolution than the resolution you are playing at. Then scales it up to your resolution. Since it's only the 3D layer often a lot of post processing effects and UI are left untouched thus staying nice and sharp whilst your game ends up looking a bit fuzzier but performing better.

This also gets around the scaling issues of playing at a lower resolution than your native resolution of the monitor.

So in the end 70% res scale will pretty much always look better than putting a 1080p monitor to 720p.

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LogicalDrm
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-> Moved to PC Gaming

^^^^ That's my post ^^^^ <-- This is me --- That's your scrollbar --> vvvv Who's there? vvvv

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SolarNova
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There are 2 points about render scaling that affect gameplay the most imo.

1 good 1 bad.

The good, it allows you to render above your native resolution without the need for custom resolutions and downsampling. This is less of an issue nowadays with DSR doing what used to require some faffing to achieve, but a games internal render scaling can be used in conjunction with DSR if you want to go super crazy with rendering resolution, perhaps instead of using post processed AA which suck.

The bad. Some games will use render scaling and/or adaptive render scaling, in default graphics profiles. This can be used to 'fake' performance. Example being MonsterHunter World. It has adaptive render resolution active on most of its graphics profiles. While it can help keep FPS above a set target, it heavily impacts fidelity. Basically it can be used as a crutch in place of proper optimization.

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Edgar R. Zakarian
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On 5/8/2021 at 8:02 PM, LogicalDrm said:
-> Moved to PC Gaming

Thank you!

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QuantumSingularity
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The ingame frame scaling is basically the reverse of DSR. It crunches down the total amount of pixels to the set percentage and then blows it up to set resolution.I'm guessing you meant 720p being 70% of 1080p, but it isn't so (1344x756 is if we are talking vertical to horizontal lines). 1080p is 2 073 600 pixels, when you set the slider to 70% it will render 0.7 * 2 073 600 or 1 451 520 pixels and 720p is way below that at 921 600 so is 756p at 1 016 064 pixels. What i would do is set the resolution to 720p in game and from nVidia Control Panel use the DSR factor of 4x. In pretty much all games it results in much better result than trying to go higher resolution with fram scalling.

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