Fallout 4 Texture Comparison: A Closer Look at the Settings

As we explore the world of modern gaming, it's essential to understand how settings impact performance and visual quality. Fallout 4, like many other modern games, offers a setting drop-down menu to change texture quality when entering the options menu. This feature has three options: medium, high, and Ultra. While using Ultra will consume more VRAM on the video card, we'll dive into the details of this setting and its impact on performance.

In our testing, we found that the game consumes approximately 2.6 to 2.9 GB of VRAM at 1080p Ultra. In theory, textures would contribute a significant portion to this consumption. Therefore, we decided to conduct a texture comparison using screenshots taken at 4K resolution and zooming in on specific parts to highlight different textures. The game like signs and other objects were not scaled; instead, they were cropped, ensuring that no scaling was involved during our analysis.

Upon examining the screenshots, it becomes apparent that there is essentially zero difference between the textures used for medium and Ultra settings. If we remove the text indicating which setting was used for each screenshot, it would be challenging to identify them, as the visual differences are negligible. However, upon closer inspection, we discovered two instances where differences were observed.

The first instance occurred in a screenshot featuring a plant in the bottom left corner of the image. The focus of the screenshot centered around the brick wall, but the plant was slightly different in Ultra versus medium or high settings. To our surprise, this difference was not related to texture quality; instead, it pertained to Fallout 4's procedural generation of plant life and foliage, as well as ground coverage. This indicates that even when switching between texture settings, there may be other factors at play that affect the visual appearance.

The second instance of a difference was observed in a screenshot of a trash can. The focus remained on the trash can itself; however, we expected to see some degree of blur or downsampling in lower texture resolutions. Conversely, the letters 's' and 'a' appeared slightly different between the two screenshots. Upon closer inspection, it became apparent that there was less clarity around the borders of these letters in one of the screenshots compared to the other.

While our analysis revealed a total of two instances where differences were observed, it is essential to note that these variations are minimal and do not significantly impact performance. When using Ultra settings, the game consumes more VRAM; however, there is no corresponding decrease in frame rate or other performance metrics. In fact, this difference has negligible effects on gameplay.

In light of our findings, we cannot help but wonder why textures behave in such a manner within Fallout 4. This phenomenon appears to be unique and may not be representative of other games. Nevertheless, our study offers valuable insights into the intricacies of game settings and their impact on performance.

To provide further context, we mentioned that we have conducted a similar analysis for our Black Ops Graphics optimization guide. While the differences observed in Fallout 4 are minimal compared to other titles, it serves as a reminder that even seemingly minor changes can have a significant impact on overall visual quality.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone I'm Steve from Gamers nexus.net and this is a Fallout 4 texture comparison which is kind of a loose word as you'll find throughout this video so Fallout 4 like most modern games has a settings drop down to change the texture quality when you go into the options menu this has three options medium high and Ultra and using Ultra will consume more vram on the video card so do keep that in mind be tesda actually recommends a 3 GB minimum vram for the gpus allocation for texturing at Ultra now in our testing we found that the game consumes about 2.6 to 2.9 GB of vram at 1080 Ultra and in theory textur would contribute a large part to this so then what you're about to look at is a couple of screenshots these were taken at 4K and then we have dialed in on certain parts of the screenshots to try and really highlight different textures the game like Signs and things like that these are not scaled they are cropped so there's no scaling going on here the screenshots as you can see show basically no difference if we took away the word telling you which setting was used for the screenshot you would probably not be able to identify them and that's because there is actually no difference between the textures on medium or Ultra or high and we have found exactly two differences the two differences are in one screenshot there's a plant in the bottom left the the the focus of the screenshot was the wall the brick wall but there's no difference there so we look in the bottom left and you see a plant that plant is slightly different in Ultra versus low or medium and the difference is actually not anything to do with textures at all it has to do with Fallout 4's procedural generation of plant life and foliage and ground coverage so that's not even related to textures basically the next slight difference we saw was in this screenshot of a trash can so again the focus was the trash can I was hoping based on a lot of past experience with texture comparisons that the word on the can and that some of the finer details would be more blurry or down sampled on the lower texture resolutions but in this screenshot it's the same thing you look in the back right corner we can zoom in over there and you'll see that the letters s and a looks slightly different in the in one of the screenshots than the other one so looking at this Fallen sign in the background you can see some difference in the texture in the rust for example and in the S and the A on the sort of tapestry hanging down you can see there's less Clarity around the borders of the letters and this is the only real example in Diamond City that we could find of a texture quality change and even that took quite a bit of digging and looking to locate so that is the texture screenshot comparison of Fallout 4's texture resolutions there is effectively Zero Performance impact going from medium to ultra there's a bit of vram consumption that's the the one thing we can measure but there's no FPS difference so I'm not I'm not really sure I understand why the textures are this way this is certainly not normal we just did a huge texture quality comparison in our Black Ops Graphics optimization guide on the website and you can see major differences there as far as Fallout 4 though the difference is is basically non-existent and you can just run a lower texture setting if you wanted to uh to consume a little bit less vram or something like that so that's all for this video check the link in the description below for more information hit the article for that kind of stuff and subscribe as always check out the patreon page and the postal video If you like this kind of content and I'll see you all next timehey everyone I'm Steve from Gamers nexus.net and this is a Fallout 4 texture comparison which is kind of a loose word as you'll find throughout this video so Fallout 4 like most modern games has a settings drop down to change the texture quality when you go into the options menu this has three options medium high and Ultra and using Ultra will consume more vram on the video card so do keep that in mind be tesda actually recommends a 3 GB minimum vram for the gpus allocation for texturing at Ultra now in our testing we found that the game consumes about 2.6 to 2.9 GB of vram at 1080 Ultra and in theory textur would contribute a large part to this so then what you're about to look at is a couple of screenshots these were taken at 4K and then we have dialed in on certain parts of the screenshots to try and really highlight different textures the game like Signs and things like that these are not scaled they are cropped so there's no scaling going on here the screenshots as you can see show basically no difference if we took away the word telling you which setting was used for the screenshot you would probably not be able to identify them and that's because there is actually no difference between the textures on medium or Ultra or high and we have found exactly two differences the two differences are in one screenshot there's a plant in the bottom left the the the focus of the screenshot was the wall the brick wall but there's no difference there so we look in the bottom left and you see a plant that plant is slightly different in Ultra versus low or medium and the difference is actually not anything to do with textures at all it has to do with Fallout 4's procedural generation of plant life and foliage and ground coverage so that's not even related to textures basically the next slight difference we saw was in this screenshot of a trash can so again the focus was the trash can I was hoping based on a lot of past experience with texture comparisons that the word on the can and that some of the finer details would be more blurry or down sampled on the lower texture resolutions but in this screenshot it's the same thing you look in the back right corner we can zoom in over there and you'll see that the letters s and a looks slightly different in the in one of the screenshots than the other one so looking at this Fallen sign in the background you can see some difference in the texture in the rust for example and in the S and the A on the sort of tapestry hanging down you can see there's less Clarity around the borders of the letters and this is the only real example in Diamond City that we could find of a texture quality change and even that took quite a bit of digging and looking to locate so that is the texture screenshot comparison of Fallout 4's texture resolutions there is effectively Zero Performance impact going from medium to ultra there's a bit of vram consumption that's the the one thing we can measure but there's no FPS difference so I'm not I'm not really sure I understand why the textures are this way this is certainly not normal we just did a huge texture quality comparison in our Black Ops Graphics optimization guide on the website and you can see major differences there as far as Fallout 4 though the difference is is basically non-existent and you can just run a lower texture setting if you wanted to uh to consume a little bit less vram or something like that so that's all for this video check the link in the description below for more information hit the article for that kind of stuff and subscribe as always check out the patreon page and the postal video If you like this kind of content and I'll see you all next time\n"