The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes Quality vs. Performance Mode Comparison

The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes comes with a Quality and Performance mode on PS5. Here’s a comparison between these two modes.

The first thing that you will notice when you boot the game is that there is a new “Graphics” option that provides a Quality mode and a Performance mode. So what exactly is the difference between both modes?

What Is Quality and Performance Mode In House of Ashes?

The quality mode of the game renders at 4K resolution but drops the frame rate to 30 FPS. Keep in mind that House of Ashes uses a cinematic resolution that crops the top and bottom of the screen. While this is a design choice rather than a budget one, it means the game doesn’t run at native 4K on any platform including PC, unless you mod it.

That said, the Quality mode bumps up some of the effects like the depth-of-field, texture quality, and draw distance. Most of the changes in this mode appear to be minimal but coupled with the 30 FPS and for a story-driven game with minimal gameplay, it feels pretty much spot-on for the first experience.

Performance mode retains the 4K resolution but drops some of the effects like the texture quality, depth-of-field, and so on. It runs the game at 60 FPS and this is pretty obvious in shots where the camera is panning across objects or the character is in motion. If you prefer 60 FPS, this mode is ideal for it.

So what is the best choice here? It all depends on your preference. Quality mode is perfectly fine if you want to experience the game with all the bells and whistles, but for a replay, we’d suggest the Performance mode because it runs at 60 FPS and thus should offer a better experience the second time.

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