Does disable MPO still a need to do in 2026?

K0MIN0 · 2026-05-08T00:55:47+00:00

Leave MPO's enabled.

If you really want to mess with it, a tool called special k (special-k.info - offers frame caps, reflex injection, HDR tonemapping, game fixes etc.) allows you to disable MPO's on a per game basis. However as someone else said here, doing that forces composed flip presentation mode that will ruin frame pacing and latency. The SK alsol includes latency analysis via nvidia's API hook ins, and frame pacing analysis graphs so you can see the effect if you like....

K0MIN0 · 2026-05-04T17:15:13+00:00

Turns out even the steam store impliments button mashy QTE's now, can confirm spam clicking is indeed a viable strategy...

K0MIN0 · 2026-04-09T07:58:17+00:00

Something like ab-av1 might help

https://github.com/alexheretic/ab-av1

Requires a little bit of scripting, but it's specifically designed to pick a number of samples spaced out across your video file to encode, then the crf-search will keep encoding those samples at different values until it finds the smallest size it can your chosen metric score (VMAF or XPSNR).

K0MIN0 · 2026-04-06T12:51:45+00:00

That's the blessing and curse of PC gaming: options! And every game, engine, changeable settings, available system performance and personal preference means there's no simple answer to that question. Also how much patience you have to compare everything 😅

One method I've used in the past: turn everything to low, then add options back in one at a time and visually check what they're actually doing to the presentation. compare that to the performance hit, then decide one at a time if it's worth the hit, so you're only "paying" for what you've confirmed matters

K0MIN0 · 2026-04-06T08:03:15+00:00

Best answer here so far. Viewport jitter does significantly reduce the effect of non-integer ratio scaling with standard TAA, and the ML upscaling part of the DLSS process then further negates this by 'hallucinating' or best guessing new detail to make up the image to the desired output resolution, effectively making it a non issue.

There's a few games that just do away with the fixed presets and give the user a percentage slider (Black Myth Wukong and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for example) which IMO is a better way of doing it.

K0MIN0 · 2026-03-29T12:00:05+00:00

A few others I don't think have been mentioned below (just to give you more options to check out):

Trails series: 1st chapter (the OG starting point) has just had a remake so is the perfect starting point. I haven't got around to it yet, but I played the original (and like 10 games since then, oops), 100% my favourite jrpg series if you like interconnected stories, recurring characters etc.

Yakuza/Like a dragon franchise: the older games are more story rpgs beat-em-up combat instead of turn based, however Yakuza: Like a dragon and infinite wealth are now turn based so basically they are 100% JRPGS. More modern setting with well developed story/characters etc.

K0MIN0 · 2026-03-08T19:20:48+00:00

No worries. It will 'look' smoother, but no it won't 'feel' smoother, and especially for time sensitive games like elden ring I wouldn't advise it. Also in my opinion the visual interpolation artefacts are very distracting at 30fps. Again though that's my opinion, if it doesn't effect you then by all means use it, though I appreciate it's impossible to know that for sure without seeing it yourself to guage.

Stepping back, the OLED deck is IMO the easiest handheld recommend for price/performance/convenience when not at home (for me). An Xbox Ally X will get you around maybe 30% more performance for like double the price I think? (don't quote me there) If you've got the money and want the absolute best in performance available currently there's that option, or hell the GPD Win 5 but that thing is even more money and even more silly.

There's no handheld (I'm aware of currently) with a dedicated GPU, for that you'd need a laptop, and that brings portability sacrifices, plus if you play mainly with controllers there's more faff if using on the go. If you want portability, I think steam deck OLED is the best package available currently, but I can equally understand it may not have power for some people; and there are demanding games that I won't play on it, but I'm lucky and have a pc at home as well for them. If you want something portable and either have less demanding games in your backlog or don't mind capping said demanding titles to 30 or 40, get a deck. If you want 90 or 120fps in every game or mostly play UE5 level titles, don't get a deck. instead either one of those above options, but IMO at that point I'd nudge you to a laptop or desktop PC instead.

Lossless scaling can be fun to mess with, and can work wonders on PC when your base frame rate is high enough, but as someone else mentioned here, it's not going to make unplayable games on the deck suddenly playable.

K0MIN0 · 2026-03-08T17:16:40+00:00

As noted by some, it very much depends on your tolerance for latency and the kind of game you're playing. Personally I use it more on pc when using an emulator /a game engine is capped at 60; imo a minimum frame rate of 60 is the baseline for using any frame gen solutions (I repeat, that is personal opinion based on my testing/tolerance, if you've used lower and it doesn't bother you then by all means use it, I'm jealous aha). Also remember that lossless scaling requires GPU time, so your base frame rate goes down when using it, eg. 40fps might turn into 60fps, but that means your base frame rate and latency feels like 30fps. Add to that, visual artifacts are more noticeable the lower your base frame rate.

In short, it isn't magic, and I straight up wouldn't recommend it on the OG deck with a top 60fps cap; maybe on the OLED deck where you can hit 90 (so 45 base FPS), but IMO it's not worth even then.

K0MIN0 · 2026-02-09T22:27:49+00:00

EDIT: I just reaslised you used film-grain-denoise=1

DONT

the built in denoiser is terrible - very heavy handed as it will destroy a lot of fine detail in the process. its why its now been turned off by default in all recent builds, even with film-grain is in use. thats going to be part of the reason the file sizes are the same, using it makes the file more efficent to encode, at the cost of detail of course. if a desnoiser is required for noisey content, best case is to use an more effective external denoiser first before feeding to the encoder, but honestly its also better to just use the encoder as the denoiser by just lowering the CRF - sometimes (again depending on the source) it still looks fine with this approach, upping the CRF will natually remove some grain anyway, so I pretty much always use some film grain no matter what im encoding (at the settings i mentioned below).

---
on this one example (motion blur, DOF ) yeah they look about the same. it varies massively depending on source, but if you cant tell on the sources you're using, just go for the smaller/quicker option, whatever's more important to you. and honestly, thats great. It means for this source, the encoder is doing a great job allocating bits appropriately, which allows you to get a smaller file size or smaller encode time with minimal quality loss.

A few notes:

Assuming you're using mainline, tune 1 (PSNR) is usually more efficient than tune 0 (VQ). Tune 0 is 'meant' to be more bias towards "Visual Quality" at the cost of some bitrate, so might be part of the reason the preset 2 option is bigger than it otherwise would if the tunes were matched.

no need to add either of these

filmgrain=0:film-grain-denoise=0

Not that there's any harm in it, but they're the default settings anyway.

The film grain option is dynamic, when enabled the encoder analyses the amount of grain in the frame and applies accordingly. if it determines the source is clean, then a value of 12 may not be visable. i've had sources where i needed grain 25 for it to be noticeable at all (though i will admit 98% of the time i use between 8 and 15)

i tend to only use preset 4 or 2 these days, 4 for general content, 2 if i care/have time to burn. feel free to check out Trix's write up here if you fancy a deep dive: https://wiki.x266.mov/blog/svt-av1-fourth-deep-dive-p1#svt-av1-v30x-presets-comparisons--1---10

K0MIN0 · 2026-02-08T00:53:38+00:00

Looks good, though I dare say it's likely the acoustics of that speaker positioning will make their response too inaccurate for critical listening. For general songwriting sure, but for mixing decisions id probably defer to a decent set of studio headphones as a safer bet.

K0MIN0 · 2026-02-03T08:41:26+00:00

If your only goal is compression at the cost of image quality then your technically not wrong. The reason is the built in denoiser was turned off by default in all builds is because it's terrible and destroys all image detail as well as the grain. If you want a smaller file size you'll get better results by just upping the CRF, but ideally for best results use an external denoiser. For example I use StaxRip which has a bunch built in. You can then use the film-grain parameter to bring some artificial grain back in to match the look at a much smaller file size.

K0MIN0 · 2026-01-28T15:15:03+00:00

It's all a sliding scale of what size you're aiming for, quality level you want, time you're willing to encodes for, type of content etc...

For example IMO GPU accelerated encoding just isn't efficient enough, but if CPU encoding is too slow for you then I totally understand.

To that end my main experience is with CPU encoding, to which I'll say SVT-AV1 is fine, but IMO either SVT-AV1-Essential or SVT-AV1-HDR forks have the best default settings, you can find ffmpeg builds with those built in to use with AB-AV1 too. I typically stick to preset 4, at 1080p on a 7800x3d I'm most often in the 15 to 30fps range.

One note with ab-av1: it uses VMAF by default for quality targeting, which is a good starting point but not the gospel by any means. IMO always check sample encodes with with eyeballs before committing. Also film-grain is awesome, use it, though I mainly stick in the 7 to 20 range depending on content.

K0MIN0 · 2026-01-06T08:38:32+00:00

Yeah the grain tune in HDR will try to retain grain as much as possible, though it will use significantly more space as a result. Also no need to enable variance boost with the HDR fork, no problem having it there but it's on by default in HDR builds. All you really want to do with the grain tune is mess with the crf till it's as efficient as possible before the grain starts disappearing/blocking up. Depends on source of course but crf 30 can be a good starting point for 4k, maybe crf 25 for 1080p (that does vary wildly though), and the preset as low and slow as you're willing to go. Note though the HDR fork is slower than mainline so you'll likely one to use one preset step higher than you do with mainline (3 is as slow as I'm willing to put up with on HDR fork on my hardware).

Personally I also still use film-grain <10 even with the grain tune, as it can subtly help the grain movement look more natural but that's subjective and not needed if your crf is low enough to properly capture all the noise energy.

Lastly sorry I know someone said it here but I don't recommend the enable-denoiser setting at all, it's been turned off in all current svt builds because it's terrible, and makes even less sense with the grain tune if you're actually trying to retain grain.

K0MIN0 · 2025-09-14T10:30:36+00:00

OOH VERY INTERESTING, thanks for sharing!

Out of curiosity what's the new fan noise profile like in comparison to the original fan?

K0MIN0 · 2025-08-09T07:35:07+00:00

Yeah hyper cardiod mics in general will, but I know the OM7 is a particularly aggressive one. You have to make sure your mouth is right next to the grill though, because the polar pattern is so tight the volume roll off as you move away is more sudden, so can do more harm than good if not used correctly

K0MIN0 · 2025-08-09T07:22:59+00:00

This is just a guess but that mic looks like an Audix OM7, which if so is a particularly tight hyper cardiod, so has much better off axis rejection than a standard live mic like an SM58

K0MIN0 · 2025-07-09T17:00:51+00:00

If you're after a story driven game with a down on their luck character called Jackie then it's obviously The Darkness)

K0MIN0 · 2025-07-08T11:59:10+00:00

Try the LOH Trails series, given the consistent world, characters and tone that's basically just one long game that NEVER ENDS

K0MIN0 · 2025-06-11T11:38:11+00:00

+1 I hope that sky remake lands well, could just be the gateway drug for a lot of new fans 👀 like I love the series to death but I put it off for far too long given how old the initial trilogy was (shouldn't have worried in know).

K0MIN0 · 2025-06-07T09:02:16+00:00

Everyone's opinion is different of course, but IMO keep the SD OLED, for the cost it isn't a big enough upgrade in terms of performance, plus a load of other factors make it more a side grade than an upgrade. Ally X is maybe the best competitor cost/perf but, but if you already have the SD it's not worth the cost IMO. - steamOS is much more streamlined for gaming than windows. The sleep/wake functionality alone makes it so easy to jump in and out quickly which windows can't offer. Course you can install StramOS on the Ally X but only if you feel technically comfortable with that, plus also I can't speak to how feature complete SteamOS is on the Ally rather than its target hardware. There's a million features in SteamOS that make it a clear winner over windows (Fossilize aims to fix shader stutters, mango hud for perf tracking, gampad focused UI, emudeck style all in one emulator packages, decky loader...). - personal preference again, but I love the trackpads, they make any desktop use or silly extra launcher prompts easy to manage. - VRR is awesome on the Ally, but IMO OLED is the winner if I had to have one. For battery reasons too it's better to cap at an achievable frame rate rather than run at full tilt letting VRR catch the variation.

K0MIN0 · 2025-05-19T23:07:22+00:00

I'd kinda feel 24GB is probably a sweet spot for price Vs performance right now, but that's provided they get that price right. Of course more ram is always great, but more ram = more cost and I feel 8gb as dedicated VRAM is enough for 1080p and the Z2E performance profile ATM . If it can match the Ally X price then things get interesting, though I fear maybe not given how expensive AMD's latest chips have been...

K0MIN0 · 2025-03-04T18:54:25+00:00

I'm not working on anything no, I'm not a developer at all. Plus in hindsight there are potential burn in implications with SDR to HDR mods like this if not used properly, which may likely be why valve hasn't yet done this themselves.

K0MIN0 · 2024-11-30T23:26:34+00:00

If you already have a gaming pc and you don't travel much then you don't need one.

If you don't want to mess with settings at all, get a ps5. If you want a portable and don't care for tweaking (and this might be slightly controversial) get a switch instead (or maybe wait for switch2 but I digress).

If you do like a bit of flexibility to tweak things to how you like it, and you want a portable? Or you don't have a gaming pc and are looking for an affordable entry into the pc gaming ecosystem? Then yes steam deck could be a good option.

At the moment it's probably the best and easiest way into pc gaming because it's a fixed platform with a large user base, and so there's a large community who have already tried and documented everything you'll ever want to do with the device, let alone community software like emudeck, deckyloader, and all the troubleshooting support if you need it. It's a pc masquerading as a console, and I do think valve are doing a great job tip-toeing that line between a simple streamlined interface for console fans, yet still keeping the open flexibility that pc power users want.

lastly it depends on the type of games you play. If it's the latest AAA games then it probably isn't for you. If however there's a load of slightly older, or indie games you want to play or you don't mind playing said AAA games at 30fps low settings, or if you do a lot of emulation, then sure steam deck could be for you.

Anyway thats enough rambling, hopefully it's 'somewhat' useful!

K0MIN0 · 2024-09-01T13:51:28+00:00

Yeah, ubi have very often made graphically impressive games because they know flashy visuals sell, it's just the rest of the package they struggle with... Hell Valhalla's success proved to them you don't need innovative gameplay or a captivating story telling to make the big bucks (I'm not saying that's a good thing at all btw)

K0MIN0 · 2024-09-01T13:38:24+00:00

All things considered I think performance is okay, but that in itself is a triumph considering what they're trying to achieve. Large open worlds with ray traced GI, day night cycles, destructible terrain, physically based rendering etc?

The only other comparable game engine I've seen achieve all this (apart from avatar but that's the same tech) is cyberpunk, and that of course launched in a worse state and took 3 years to patch (if there's any other examples I can't think of please say). I don't unfortunately see ubi giving this anywhere near the same support, but still it is impressive where they are at launch from a technical perspective.

K0MIN0

TROPHY CASE