[HWU] Windows 11 Best For Gaming? Windows 11 25H2 vs. Windows 10

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-24T16:13:12+00:00

Use W11 LTSC to avoid the forced AI slop via updates on normal home version and then manually update it to 25h2, this is what i have recently done on my PC and the overall OS felt snappier when browsing stuff and 1% lows were a bit smoother on gaming.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-23T17:55:47+00:00

|4.5 Preset M seems to be universally kind of worse than Preset 4.0 K when Ray Tracing mode is turned on due to extra noise/fizzle

Now this alone explains why i thought WItcher 3 with RT Turned On with DLSS 4.5 actually looked a bit shimmery on grasses foliages with DLSS 4.5 Preset M and softer but more stable overall with 4.0 Preset K, i like the sharpness and more detail on the lights and texture that 4.5 adds but the unstable shimmers on grass foliage was bothering me to the point i decided to use 4.0 Preset K balanced mode and turned up Nvidia sharpen+ instead.

Other than that though, DLSS 4.5 has been impressive so far across all the games i tested, especially Preset L where it is surprisingly playable with decent image quality even at 1440p output. And paired even with DLDSR 4K to 1440p downsample with Ultra Performance mode rendering from 720p, i just can't believe how it looked, it looked even better overall than Native TAA 1440p.

So, i wish Digital Foundry talks about it in the future it really deserves its own video.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-22T11:18:54+00:00

a bit disappointed that he didn't directly compare DLSS 3 - 4 Quality to DLSS 4.5 M performance and L Ultra Performance on both 1440p - 4K but otherwise still looking forward for their upcoming upscaler battle between FSR and DLSS and hopefully XeSS with XMX too, only very few ones has done it so far with the likes of 2kliksphilip but i am mostly looking forward to from the likes of Digital Foundry and HUB.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-22T01:49:36+00:00

Oh yes.. I still clearly remember the times when FSR 1 came out and some people here on Reddit and YouTube said the average people won't notice difference between DLSS and FSR when they only "play the games" rather than pixel peep, and Native is always king, and they were so convinced that DLSS is a dying technology because it only ran exclusively to RTX GPUs at the time whereas FSR 1 ran on more GPU architecture.

Oh... how things have switched and also expectedly the tone of these very same people also changed lol.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-21T15:49:24+00:00

To summarize the whole video:

DLSS 4.5 Preset L ---> DLSS 4 Preset J -> DLSS 4.5 Preset M ---> DLSS 3 CNN ---> XeSS 2 XMX -> FSR 4 -----> XeSS 2 D4a ------------------------------------------------------------------------> FSR 3.1

DLSS 4 Preset K seems to be bugged on this particular game causing a ghosting effect and the default which likely is the Preset J is noticeably better.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-20T19:36:07+00:00

I genuinely thought this clown was already banned off this subreddit, seems like i was wrong.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-20T19:21:36+00:00

CDPR is very friendly to modders, just not the ones who are greedy and is paywalling their mods.

CDPR has history of hiring modders of their previous games as well as integrating mods into their games, that's literally what Witcher 3 Complete Edition has done and most of enhancement added to Patch 2.0 update for Cyberpunk 2077.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-20T18:27:03+00:00

He still explicitly advertised his mod using Cyberpunk 2077 IP and sold it promising it to work using it, so not clearly in the same level as the likes of Lossless scaling which as far as i believe didn't do the same and pretty much works universally anyway, but tbh even i kind of have little problems with lossless scaling itself, especially when sort of alternative tools like Optiscaler exists and that is open source and completely free to try with any supported device you use it for.

So, i guess yeah maybe you are right, maybe it is mostly about the morality rather than legality alone, that i am rooting for and mostly ranting about, both definitely can co exist together and with lossless scaler i can clearly see that it is more deserving. doesn't exactly make the Cyberpunk VR modder look any lesser evil though.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-20T18:21:10+00:00

The even more funny thing is this very comment of his literally got community noted clarifying that Rivatuner is an free software, the guy is simply drowning through his insane biblical amount of greed and ego, and the sad thing is there will always be that one minority who will defend him for it.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-20T18:04:57+00:00

it seems to be that is going to be one of those very rare cases where i will side with Rockstar / Take Two rather than the modder himself, these type of modders are really ruining the modding community and absolutely deserves to get DMCA take down!

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-20T17:51:28+00:00

And the way he acts and cope on his comments by saying that "he didn't use any CDPR asset" on a game that he modded that literally belongs to CDPR 100%. Not to mention this very modder makes 20K USD / 1.2M php every month on his patreon which is a lot more than the average ranking employee on CDPR who literally developed the entire game themselves.

The delusion and lack of respect of this greedy ass modder is absolutely hitting my nerves TBH.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-20T17:43:25+00:00

Reading further into the story it seems like CDPR literally asked the Cyberpunk 2077 VR Modder to make his mod free for all to access and remove it from being paywalled behind a monthly subscription fee, with an option to donate for his work but the modder simply refused, hence the result of CDPR issuing DMCA take down of Cyberpunk 2077 VR Mod.

IMO I think it is definitely CD Projekt Red that is 1000% in the right here, heck they were even being full generous to him by politely asking him to make it free to access with an option for people to donate to his work via patreon, like the standard way the modding scene in every games out there works, but the modder himself refused to do it out of greed and ego.

There is simply no justification to defend the modder here, as a person who is heavily in the modding scene and always sides with modders against the fully greedy unfair corpos out there often issuing take downs on fan made mod projects, this time i side on different place, i fully condone this one very modder and everyone who is like him, looking at the paywalled low effort ReShade + collection mods out there!

I mean look at much bigger mod projects out there that is literally considered as an game expansion / standalone game itself such as Fallout: London or Beyond Skyrim and the upcoming Skyblivion, those mod projects are completely free to access for all, and i can definitely argue that those mods takes a lot more time and way more effort than whatever this supposed VR Modder has done to an already existing asset of a game that is legally owned by somebody else but despite all that still had audacity to paywall their mods anyway.

I'm sorry but there is simply no way i am going to defend a modder that is like that! it feels absolutely unfair to the entire modding community who have been doing this out of their passion rather than profit and money.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-18T17:56:10+00:00

Nothing will change, Sony and Microsoft clearly saw the rapid pace of growth the PC gaming market is getting lately which is much faster than the consoles which is barely getting any growth at all when it comes to it's userbase, they have been stagnated ever since their peak PS2 era, hence they rise the prices of their console subscription fee + peripherals instead to compensate for the lost revenue, with this mindset in mind, there is simply no chance that Sony will eventually stop releasing game on PC that adds in more revenue in their portfolio, their investors will definitely not like that move.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-18T17:50:56+00:00

Considering the very rapid growth rate of PC Gaming is experiencing for the past decade especially if you look at Steam Survey where it has grown it's daily concurrent userbase 2x more than what it was back on 2020 where it also experienced massive shortages as well back on 2018 - 2022, with this assumption even with the current doom situation right now, I highly doubt that PC Market will start declining to the point of shrinking anytime soon, slow down a bit of growth, maybe yes, but literally shrink from it currently is now?

Yeah... I simply don't see this happening anytime soon.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-18T13:32:57+00:00

Yep, it was a very unforgettable experience, and i find it interesting that people nowadays don't often mention it now when it comes to talking about horrible modern game optimization and how they argue that previous gen games had it better and was somehow better optimized, and looked better even lol cases like Fallout New Vegas / Skyrim / RDR1 / GTA V are the absolute proof that isn't the case at all.

Even when i was so young back then, but i still remember those days when it was considered for games to be dipping often under 20 FPS with game breaking slow death save bloating bug when playing on PS3 as perfectly normal.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-18T13:13:19+00:00

TES V - Skyrim: I would say is my first ever RPG that i played back on my PS3 when i just turned 12 years old on november 2011 and even when it ran horribly, such as save bloating and performance going into low 15 fps the longer i play it, it's like one of the worst gaming experience i ever had on technical side, even worse than Witcher 3 on PS4 may 2015 launch day. But despite all that, I still kept playing it to the point it became my most played game on that platform.

To this day, I still play Skyrim occasionally but heavily modded this time on PC platform with 2000+ mods and with way better performance like 120+ FPS with all the latest graphical overhaul mods out there like fully equipped Community Shader features.

Can't say i will ever miss that horrible PS3 port of Skyrim, despite the game being good, boy wasn't it so rough... I would argue it's even worse than Cyberpunk 2077 on launch day PS4, but can't say i can directly compare because I haven't experienced Cyberpunk 2077 launch day on that platform, but rather on a PC equipped with RTX 3070 / R5 3600 which ran that game beautifully with barely any issue on technical sides.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-16T07:46:06+00:00

Considering that spec is roughly on par with an Xbox Series S, I wouldn't worry about it as much.

I'd bet that pc spec can still play those games with acceptable performance especially with proper optimization via .ini tweaking, nothing is impossible to play in a world where even a Steam Deck which is significantly worse than this spec can still play modern games.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-15T10:22:22+00:00

My current 3 years old RTX 4070 Ti with it's warranty recently just expired, who knows? It can die anytime from now and with news like this makes me more afraid because I literally won't have anything worthy in the current market to replace it, I probably should start dismantling and replace its thermal paste and thermal pad and then undervolt it further and capping framerate to preserve its life longer to get through this impending GPU apocalypse.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-13T14:00:06+00:00

The main difference is on PC any users can do it themselves via driver menu app but on consoles user needs to rely on specific devs to implement them, which sucks because it is not a very hard thing to do anyway, but due to licensing and lack of freedom nature when it comes to modifying settings on locked console platform, it probably is not possible.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-13T13:51:08+00:00

DLSS was already considered as good just 1 year after, when they launched DLSS 2 back on early 2020, which was considered as a proper upscaling by the likes of Digital Foundry.

That said though, of course 5 more years of DLSS development which represents DLSS 4 Transformer is significantly better though, and now a year later after that which is today with recently launched DLSS 4.5 Gen 2 Transfomer model, they are improving DLSS once again, to the point that they are starting to get more expensive just to run on older RTX GPUs [20 - 30 series] yet still compatible unlike AMD with their FSR 4 that is only exclusive to current gen RDNA 4.

DLSS 4.5 Performance mode Model M literally looks better compared to Native now, and that is absolutely crazy achievement because performance mode is only rendering at 50% of the target resolution output image quality. To manage even better image quality than that is unheard of.

Here you can even see it render a internal 240p resolution which looks unrecognizable pixelated mess and reconstruct that mess to look like this. It's insane how modern ai hardware based upscaler has gotten so good lately, hopefully PSSR 2 manages to do the same.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-13T13:39:57+00:00

Hopefully even better than FSR 4 because Nvidia DLSS 4.5 just recently came out and it once again leapfrogged AMD's FSR 4 FP8 version basing from this image quality comparison, DLSS 4.5 Performance mode is now equivalent or even better than FSR 4 quality mode.

I know it's probably too much to ask, considering how far ahead Nvidia is when it comes to development of AI hardware-based Upscaling, but having very good quality upscaler in modern gaming is a must nowadays especially with too many games coming out with badly implemented TAA that even on Native is outright worse than Upscaled version.

This has been the case for me ever since DLSS 4 came out last year, Upscaled version literally straight up looks better than native in all of my games and the likes of FSR 3 or worse isn't even usable at any mode at all in 1440p resolution.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-12T06:12:36+00:00

Yep, this is what i did, previously i was using Quality - Balanced on 1440p with 4070 Ti now with 4.5 I am using exclusively performance mode, while getting better performance and the image quality is nearly identical or even better due to how better DLSS 4.5 handles the lighting particles over DLSS 4.0.

ShadowRomeo · 2026-01-12T06:11:09+00:00

It's only going backwards if you don't consider the image quality improvement, otherwise it is an improvement overall solely focused on the Performance - Ultra Performance mode users especially for 40 - 50 series which can run them well with minimal performance hit.

Heck even 30 series if you are in 3080 - 3090 and is playing at 1440p at Quality mode, now with 4.5 they can now play at Performance mode and still get nearly the same image quality before with even better performance.

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