What graphical settings do you lower or disable for better performance?

[caroline!]

That does remind me, when should you frame limit your game? I always wondered why some games have that option.

I usually always play with the Frame Limit "Off", but if I'm hitting consistent 60+ FPS would there be any benefit to turn on a frame limiter or not? If yes, should you do it in-game or via third-party program?

The only reason I could see why frame limit exists is to get a no-input-delay-no-screen-tearing kind of thing, but in that case, I guess I would need to limit the frames to 144 as that's my monitor's refresh rate.

Another thing that hasn't crossed my mind until now was; since I'm still on my Haswell CPU, what settings should I lower or disable for CPU-bound games? Does it even matter if you change anything in the video options (as they mostly affect the GPU)?

I always cap except in Touhou and here's why. I don't need an old game to run the extra FPS, and I don't want new games to display tearing at lower resolutions, except in TP games, where unlocked or higher capped frames might make the game better, you want it to go as fast as it can to reduce input lag. Some oldtimers will swear using PS2 peripherals will make you better, because it's a dedicated bus -or at least used to be back in the day-, I've tried and didn't notice any improvement, this is probably a placebo that's been around in the community for a long time, like audiophiles or controller geeks have their own.
Most games are locked to 60FPS by default but there are tricks to unlock the framerate (fullscreening, patches, inis), BUT this will come at the cost of the game becoming much more difficult, while this is a good thing for sickos like me, it's hell for casual or newb players, if you run at 120FPS then everything will be twice as fast.

Anyway, whenever possible I enable VSYNC. Look at what my monitor is though, and it'll make sense. For LCD/LED kind of stuff a hardcap via the drivers is better.

About CPU bound settings I'd lower or disable anything physics and particles, volumetric lighting and shadows, those will tank perfomance. It's annoying new games don't allow for as much tweaking as older ones, I remember the F.E.A.R. settings that allowed you to do things like changing the directx mode so you could still play with crap tier onboard graphics, or halving the render resolution to improve FPS, this is a 2005 (?) game and now devs are saying lowering the render resolution is a new thing, meh.
Capping frames alone will also help the CPU.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

For me, it looks like capping frame rate can cause the graphics to idle and lag. Possibly cause the CPU to not go to a high enough frequency as well. That will cause lag.

 

[mechtech]

So my GPU (GTX 980 Ti) is starting to show it's age. There's no more time of being able to bump all video settings to max. and roll 60+ FPS with it.

Nowadays, on most modern games, I have to lower my video settings to a certain degree to maintain a steady 60 FPS gameplay, so I'm looking for some advice on which settings are the most demanding.

When opening a game, and going into it's settings menu, what video settings do you guys lower (or disable) in order to gain more FPS, and in what order?

What are in your opinion settings that have the most impact on FPS while barely giving any graphical difference?

Every game is different. I usually check youtube to see if anyone has already done some experimenting/optimizing. I did that for Borderlands 3. My old RX480 used to run the fans maxed out and would not hit 40 fps, after some tuning on settings, 60fps steady, fans barely ramped up and minimal change in looks.

For me personally I usually disable the following (mainly cause I don't like the looks of it)
-bloom
-depth of field
-anything else that can be over processed or look weirder or worse with it on
-turn down overly crazy shadows - sometimes they can be distracting