The Last of Us Part II Remastered - Overview and comparison of graphics settings and their impact on performance
At the request of the workers, this time the screenshots were made with performance measurements in MSI Afterburner, so that it would be better to see how exactly this or that setting affects performance. Please note that previously all screenshots were made with VSYNC enabled and locked at 60 fps. In the game itself, the frame counter often jumps on a flat place, so sometimes a lower preset can have a lower number of frames per second on the screenshot than a higher one. Sometimes fps generally changes within the margin of error.
All measurements were taken on the following configuration with a screen resolution of 1080p:
CPU - Intel Core i7 11700F
GPU - MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING X TRIO 12G
RAM - 32 GB DDR4 3200 MHz
SSD - Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1 TB NVMe
The game has a pretty decent list of graphics settings, and for most of the graphics parameters, there are 4 levels: Very High, High, Medium, and Low. Those settings that were not included in the review did not have a visible effect on the image quality, or the difference is only visible in dynamics, which is quite difficult to track. Also, for some graphics parameters, a comparison was made only for Very High and Low settings, since at least some noticeable difference appears only at the extreme values. For upscalers, the comparison is carried out only in the native.
Let's start with anti-aliasing and upscalers. The game features DLSS, FSR, XeSS, TAA and SMAA. Oddly enough, FSR does a better job than allx and for some reason even the lights shine brighter in this mode, although in other respects it is not inferior to DLSS in terms of image quality, and there is practically no noticeable difference. As expected, XeSS did a worse job than allx, as it blurs the image a lot. TAA also does a great job, and SMAA generally adds visual noise to the edges of some objects and looks little better than completely disabling anti-aliasing. The difference in performance comes down to the error: fps jumped from 117 to 120, and only when switching to SMAA did it go over 120.
The DLSS settings also include Legacy and Transformer. We couldn't find any noticeable differences - only the fps became slightly higher when switching to Transformer.
Render distance. There are differences between all presets, which is manifested in a decrease in the detail of objects in the distance. The transition from Very High to High settings is most noticeable. Further reduction is not so noticeable. The impact on performance is the strongest, especially in open locations. In some places, the difference can reach 30-40 frames between the maximum preset and the lowest.
Texture quality. Very High and High do not differ much, but the transition to Medium is much more noticeable - the textures become blurrier. The impact on performance was manifested in a decrease in the consumed video memory from 10 MB on Very High to 320 MB on Low. Also, the processor load on Low decreased from 7% to 663%. Otherwise, the fps counter, surprisingly, again did not show significant differences between the presets.
Texture filtering. The most noticeable transition is from x4 to x2 - the wall textures at an angle become more blurred. Subsequent transitions to Trilinear and Bilinear make the picture even less clear. The impact on performance is practically not felt.
Shadow quality. The transition from Very High to High and from Medium to Low is most visible - the clarity and amount of shadows decrease, especially on small objects. The transition to Low is most noticeable visually. In terms of performance, only Low settings gave an increase of ~10 frames, in other cases there is almost no difference.
Shadows in screen space. The differences are clearly visible between all presets - when you lower the settings, soft shadows from small objects disappear. The transitions from Very High to High and from High to Medium are especially noticeable. The impact on performance is minimal.
Panoramic Illumination Maps. Two options: on and off. When off, the load on the CPU и GPU.
background light shading. Options Quality, Performance and Off. The difference between the first two is minimal, but when completely off, individual elements of depth are visually lost. Has almost no effect on performance.
Reflections in screen space. When lowered, the quality of reflections deteriorates. Performance changes slightly.
Real-time reflection quality. Contrary to expectations, there are differences only between Very High settings and completely disabled, and the visual difference is small: the lighting becomes less bright, the shadows in the vegetation are a little denser. Performance is almost unchanged.
The Last of Us Part II Remastered Overall, it shows excellent optimization and a flexible settings system, but most of the graphic parameters do not have such a strong impact on the final picture. Significant visual differences are noticeable only at extreme values, and the difference in performance is often within the margin of error or depends on the scene.
Of all the parameters, the most noticeable impact on performance and image are: rendering distance, texture quality, shadows and SSAO. Other settings - like reflections and panoramic maps - although they provide a small fps increase when disabled, are almost visually indistinguishable.
It is worth noting separately that the game has made a significant step forward compared to the first part - especially in terms of loading and compiling shaders. In the original The Last of Us Part I at the first launch, compilation on the processor from the config could take up to 20 minutes, and only after several patches this time was reduced to about 10 minutes. In the remaster of the second part, there are no such problems: the start is much faster, which makes the first minutes in the game much more comfortable.
The remaster also noticeably refreshes the picture - thanks to the introduction of modern graphic technologies, the visuals have become even cleaner and more realistic. This is especially noticeable in lighting, anti-aliasing and materials. Even against the background of current PC games, the project looks decent.