The render scale slider adjusts the visual quality by changing resolution, not just performance.
The render scale slider adjusts the visual quality by changing resolution, not just performance.
Hi, setting the resolution and slider to around 70% would give you a similar visual experience to 720p. Changing the resolution directly to 720p at full quality should match it closely, while adjusting the slider offers finer control over the detail level.
Yes and no. It handles most content scaling, though not every detail. For instance, the UI remains manageable, allowing native rendering alongside game visuals.
Thank you for the feedback! I noticed a variation, and this clarification helps. I’ll favor the render slider instead of adjusting native resolution.
It adjusts the 3D game layer to a different resolution and then scales it back to match your screen size. Because only the 3D part is affected, most visual effects and UI remain intact, keeping the image clear but slightly softer. This approach also avoids the problems of lowering your monitor's native resolution, making a 70% scale generally look superior to converting a 1080p display to 720p.
There are two aspects of render scaling that most influence gameplay. The positive side is the ability to display content beyond your standard resolution without needing special settings or reducing quality. This is becoming less of a concern thanks to DSR handling tasks that previously required more effort. The negative side involves some games applying render scaling or adaptive scaling by default, which can artificially boost performance. For instance, MonsterHunter World uses adaptive resolution across many profiles, helping maintain FPS but often at the cost of visual quality.
The in-game frame scaling essentially reverses the process used in DSR. It reduces the overall pixel count to a target percentage and then increases it back to the desired resolution. I think you were referring to 720p being roughly 70% of 1080p, though that’s not exactly accurate—actual values differ depending on orientation. 1080p contains about 2,073,600 pixels, so at 70%, it would render around 1,451,520 pixels, while 720p sits at 921,600 pixels and 756p at 1,016,064 pixels. A better approach would be to set the game resolution to 720p and apply the DSR scaling factor of 4x in the nVidia Control Panel. This usually yields superior results compared to pushing higher resolutions with frame scaling.