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

[MiLik97]

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?

 

[Solaris17]

That’s going to depend a lot on game and engine.

I would look at

shadow quality
Reflections
AA
Draw distance

if available

 

[QuietBob]

What is your resolution and what type of games do you usually play?

 

[Kodehawa]

Aside the ones people have pointed out:
Volumetric Fog. Cursed Volumetric Fog.

That one setting can give me 20fps more on some games. Geez.

 

[neatfeatguy]

The option I like keeping up the most is view distance, especially if it's a game that benefits you for having a high view distance.

The one I drop first is always shadows - take them to medium or low. Generally shadows don't make that much of a difference in a game for me.
If water isn't a big part of the game and there's an option to turn down the settings for it, that's the next one I do.
Reflections are kind of pointless, for me, as well. I'm not going to stand around staring at a puddle or into a pond to see the world reflections in it. If I also turned down the water options, reflections are kind of pointless do it only make sense to turn these down/off.
I also always uncheck motion blur - screw that crappy option.
Ambient occlusion can also get unchecked.
Grass/terrain quality can also get dropped should there be an option for it. I'm not there to gaze fondly at the grass that grows out of the ground.

Hopefully those are enough options to keep my performance up. After that I start to pick and choose between whatever remains that I feel I can live without.

 

[cvaldes]

Game graphical setting optimizations heavily vary title by title.

Your specific graphics card model will also factor in based on its individual characteristics (RT cores, Tensor cores, VRAM capacity, etc.).

One way to identify what settings have the most performance impact is to wait for someone else to do a detailed analysis so you don't spend your own time diddling with each option to see if it makes a difference.

For example, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has a lot of graphical options. Luckily, Nvidia themselves have published a performance guide

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Graphics and Performance Guide

The definitive graphics and performance guide for Shadow of the Tomb Raider on PC. Discover the performance and visual impact of each game setting, learn how you can optimize your experience, and get the inside scoop on the tech powering the game.

www.nvidia.com

Naturally this performance guide is a snapshot in time and is aimed at people who own Nvidia cards not AMD ones.

There are third party reviewers who do analyses -- usually not in the same detail -- to highlight graphical features that significantly impact performance. It is worth reading these and considering their suggestions to improve performance.

For any title that has ray tracing effects, I look for performance reviews that specifically analyze those features individually. Sometimes some of the RT effects (like ambient occlusion or shadows) are ineffectively implemented at a high performance cost where another RT effect (like reflections) might actually provide some desirable result.

My primary gaming PC has a 3080 Ti driving a 4K OLED display at 120 Hz. For the newest titles, I occasionally drop quality from Ultra to High because I won't notice the very minor difference while I'm engrossed in the game. For older titles, I have few concerns.

Upscaling features like DLSS are more useful on higher resolution displays (2160p and 1440p) and less satisfactory on 1080p because the GPU is working on too few pixels in the latter case. When enabling DLSS, I always set to Quality mode not Balanced or Performance.

In the end it's really your call. You are basically trading graphical fidelity with frames. It's up to you to decide how low of a frame rate you can tolerate for any given title.

One thing you cannot do is change the same graphical settings on every game and expect the same performance increase across the board.

 

[Dristun]

Screen Space Reflections/Ambient Occlusion are usually quite a drag at Ultra. Turning them off completely ruins the look and makes everything look flat and makes reflections straight out of PS3 era but lowering to High or Medium gives a decent boost while keeping most of the visual impact.

 

[KrazyT]

Motion Blur, dislike this effect !

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Blur, Depth of Field, chromatic aberration and Bloom.

 

[GerKNG]

everything except LOD/Draw distance, textures and AA.

 

[cvaldes]

Blur, Depth of Field, chromatic aberration and Bloom.

I also turn these off -- as well as screen effects and film grain -- but these effects rarely impact performance to any significant degree since they are often applied on already rendered frames.

These are the first effects I turn off because disabling them helps me better assess image quality. They basically take a well rendered image and intentionally damage it with optical defects, what I consider unwanted. How are you really going to judge image quality on a frame with depth of field enabled if 75% of the displayed pixels are out of focus? Same with motion blur.

Turn those effects off while you are tuning performance then enable them for gameplay -- if you want them -- once you are through. However most of these effects are things that cinematographers often try to minimize or eliminate.

 

[InVasMani]

To over simplify don't touch texture quality start with shadows and lighting options then stumble around with the rest until they meet whatever strikes the best balance for you between performance and image quality.

 

[Veseleil]

Every setting related to shadows, AA, ambient occlusion are a performance hogs. I never, ever set my texture level and draw distance below maximum, also resolution under 100% scaling. Settings that I disable right away are blur, motion blur, vignette, film grain, chromatic aberration.

 

[MiLik97]

Hey, everyone! Apologies for the late reply. I forgot my account credentials already, and before I remembered it was already night-time, so I went to sleep and wanted to reply to you guys today.

Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions, I've wrote them down, but I still have some questions:

That’s going to depend a lot on game and engine.

I would look at

shadow quality
Reflections
AA
Draw distance

if available

What is your resolution and what type of games do you usually play?

I'm gaming at 1440p, and the games that I play vary. Sometimes new AAA titles, mostly some older games (games released back in 2015 and earlier), so like I said, it can vary.

As for looking at AA as Solaris mentioned, since I play at 1440p, AA is usually disabled, as I hardly notice any jagged lines, but sometimes they do appear and are quite visible.

In such cases, which AA method would you guys recommend me to use that does not have a big hit on performance (except FXAA, as it looks ugly to me)? Also how much sampling should I use (2x, 4x...)?

Aside the ones people have pointed out:
Volumetric Fog. Cursed Volumetric Fog.

That one setting can give me 20fps more on some games. Geez.

I've noticed these settings appearing in modern games. What exactly are these "Volumetric X" things, and why do they affect performance so much?

The option I like keeping up the most is view distance, especially if it's a game that benefits you for having a high view distance.

The one I drop first is always shadows - take them to medium or low. Generally shadows don't make that much of a difference in a game for me.
If water isn't a big part of the game and there's an option to turn down the settings for it, that's the next one I do.
Reflections are kind of pointless, for me, as well. I'm not going to stand around staring at a puddle or into a pond to see the world reflections in it. If I also turned down the water options, reflections are kind of pointless do it only make sense to turn these down/off.
I also always uncheck motion blur - screw that crappy option.
Grass/terrain quality can also get dropped should there be an option for it. I'm not there to gaze fondly at the grass that grows out of the ground.

I agree with all of what you've said. I noticed that unless there is a drastic difference, your eyes will get accustomed to whatever graphic settings you use, so if Medium looks "about the same" as Ultra, you won't notice any difference unless you take screenshots and compare it side-by-side.

Also,

Ambient occlusion can also get unchecked.

I've always heard that HBAO+ should be enabled and that the performance cost is negligible (1-3 FPS maybe), is there any truth to this, or should I just disable AO entirely?

Game graphical setting optimizations heavily vary title by title.

Your specific graphics card model will also factor in based on its individual characteristics (RT cores, Tensor cores, VRAM capacity, etc.).

One way to identify what settings have the most performance impact is to wait for someone else to do a detailed analysis so you don't spend your own time diddling with each option to see if it makes a difference.

For example, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has a lot of graphical options. Luckily, Nvidia themselves have published a performance guide

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Graphics and Performance Guide

The definitive graphics and performance guide for Shadow of the Tomb Raider on PC. Discover the performance and visual impact of each game setting, learn how you can optimize your experience, and get the inside scoop on the tech powering the game.

www.nvidia.com

Naturally this performance guide is a snapshot in time and is aimed at people who own Nvidia cards not AMD ones.

There are third party reviewers who do analyses -- usually not in the same detail -- to highlight graphical features that significantly impact performance. It is worth reading these and considering their suggestions to improve performance.

Looking at guides for each game separately is a good idea.

Just curious, but what are some websites where I would find such guides for each game? So far, the best ones I've come across are just NVIDIA's Performance Guides and GamersNexus.

For any title that has ray tracing effects, I look for performance reviews that specifically analyze those features individually. Sometimes some of the RT effects (like ambient occlusion or shadows) are ineffectively implemented at a high performance cost where another RT effect (like reflections) might actually provide some desirable result.

You've mentioned Ray Tracing. Just curious but what is this video setting called (in most modern games), and what exactly is Ray Tracing? Just the post-process effect stuff or is it something different?

My primary gaming PC has a 3080 Ti driving a 4K OLED display at 120 Hz. For the newest titles, I occasionally drop quality from Ultra to High because I won't notice the very minor difference while I'm engrossed in the game. For older titles, I have few concerns.

I'm curious but since I play a lot of older titles as well (those released in 2015 or before), what are those concers that you have? Usually for any older-gen games I just check the article over at PCGamingWiki to see how to run it on modern systems, but that's about as far as I go with it.

Upscaling features like DLSS are more useful on higher resolution displays (2160p and 1440p) and less satisfactory on 1080p because the GPU is working on too few pixels in the latter case. When enabling DLSS, I always set to Quality mode not Balanced or Performance.

Does DLSS even work on older-gen cards like mine (GTX 980 Ti), I've heard it's RTX-specific setting only.

Screen Space Reflections/Ambient Occlusion are usually quite a drag at Ultra. Turning them off completely ruins the look and makes everything look flat and makes reflections straight out of PS3 era but lowering to High or Medium gives a decent boost while keeping most of the visual impact.

Same question as before, but which AO setting should I use?

I've always heard that HBAO+ should be enabled and that the performance cost is negligible (1-3 FPS maybe), is there any truth to this, or should I just disable AO entirely?

Motion Blur, dislike this effect !

Blur, Depth of Field, chromatic aberration and Bloom.

Do these things have any impact on performance? Personally, I disable them as well, as I don't like them too, but I've heard that the performance hit is basically negligible.

everything except LOD/Draw distance, textures and AA.

Just curious but what is this video setting called (in most modern games)? I know that LOD stands for Level-Of-Detail, but most games don't word it as such in the options menu.

Is it just the Draw/Render Distance as you mentioned or is it something else?

To over simplify don't touch texture quality start with shadows and lighting options then stumble around with the rest until they meet whatever strikes the best balance for you between performance and image quality.

Got it, but can you be more specific on the "lighting options"? That is, what are they called when entering video options in the games' menu?

Nowadays, there are so many settings that I don't what is what, and which settings belongs to which category, lol.

 

[GerKNG]

Just curious but what is this video setting called (in most modern games)? I know that LOD stands for Level-Of-Detail, but most games don't word it as such in the options menu.

Is it just the Draw/Render Distance as you mentioned or is it something else?

in MW2 for example it's actually called "Nearby level of detail" and "Distant level of detail"
others call it as you said render/draw distance etc.
i think it's together with high textures and good AA the best compromise since everything still looks nice and "like ultra" just with less shadows, lighting, reflections etc.

 

[AusWolf]

I haven't upgraded my monitor in ages. I'm still on 1080p 60 Hz. When even this isn't enough, I'd look at Anti-Aliasing first and foremost, then whatever needs the most resources and comes with the least visual detail.

 

[cvaldes]

You've mentioned Ray Tracing. Just curious but what is this video setting called (in most modern games), and what exactly is Ray Tracing? Just the post-process effect stuff or is it something different?

This Q&A forum is not the best medium to adequately describe ray tracing, a 3D computer technology that has been around for decades. There are primers and tutorials that describe this in detail so feel free to fire up your favorite Internet search engine (assuming you actually use them). Of course, there are college level courses that cover ray tracing these days.

There are plenty of video game review sites that have RT off/RT on comparison images. It's better looking at these rather than reading a post on some anonymous Q&A forum by someone trying to describe a visual effect in words. It's easier to read a well written article with plenty of illustrations.

The feature is always labeled "ray tracing" in consumer video games. The ray tracing technique can be used for different rendering aspects (shadows, ambient occlusion, reflections, etc.) and sometimes the game developer has separate settings for each one. Other times it's just one setting for whatever ray tracing implementation the game developer employed.

Ray tracing can technically be done on the CPU or the GPU's rasterization cores but that silicon is grossly inefficient for these specific RT calculations and game titles are unplayable due to the slow frame rates. Thus, Nvidia (and now AMD and Intel) have implemented ray tracing cores (differentiated silicon) which are better suited for these algorithms.

Ray tracing is only available on newer cards (RTX for Nvidia GeForce products). Note that ray tracing is almost always an optional setting and if you feel the RT effects aren't worth the performance hit, you can disable them.

I'm curious but since I play a lot of older titles as well (those released in 2015 or before), what are those concers that you have? Usually for any older-gen games I just check the article over at PCGamingWiki to see how to run it on modern systems, but that's about as far as I go with it.

Like I wrote, I have few concerns. I generally do not worry too much about running older games on my 3080 Ti, just max out all graphical settings and proceed my merry way.

Specific compatibility issues are usually well noted at PCGamingWiki. That's a good site for things like quality-of-life improvements. One example would be disabling intro videos.

Does DLSS even work on older-gen cards like mine (GTX 980 Ti), I've heard it's RTX-specific setting only.

I believe DLSS only works with RTX cards. Please verify with Nvidia.

DLSS comes in three versions, 1, 2 and now 3. Version 1 was the initial release and rightfully criticized for its unimpressive performance. Version 2 is much more robust. Version 3 can include a newer technique called frame insertion (again, best to read a longer illustrated article about the feature elsewhere). Frame insertion can introduce unwanted latency so again whether or not you enable it should be a decision made on a title by title basis. If I recall correctly DLSS 3 + Frame Insertion is only supported by Ada Lovelace (GeForce RTX 40-series) cards.

 

[Kapone33]

Settings from Ultra to high. Turn off Vsync (every time) and let the GPU sing. SAM, hardly ever FSR and we are good. Most important 5800X3D for supreme 1% lows. Yes I replaced a 5950X with a 5800X3D for Gaming.

 

[MiLik97]

This Q&A forum is not the best medium to adequately describe ray tracing, a 3D computer technology that has been around for decades. There are primers and tutorials that describe this in detail so feel free to fire up your favorite Internet search engine (assuming you actually use them). Of course, there are college level courses that cover ray tracing these days.

There are plenty of video game review sites that have RT off/RT on comparison images. It's better looking at these rather than reading a post on some anonymous Q&A forum by someone trying to describe a visual effect in words. It's easier to read a well written article with plenty of illustrations.

The feature is always labeled "ray tracing" in consumer video games. The ray tracing technique can be used for different rendering aspects (shadows, ambient occlusion, reflections, etc.) and sometimes the game developer has separate settings for each one. Other times it's just one setting for whatever ray tracing implementation the game developer employed.

Ray tracing can technically be done on the CPU or the GPU's rasterization cores but that silicon is grossly inefficient for these specific RT calculations and game titles are unplayable due to the slow frame rates. Thus, Nvidia (and now AMD and Intel) have implemented ray tracing cores (differentiated silicon) which are better suited for these algorithms.

Ray tracing is only available on newer cards (RTX for Nvidia GeForce products). Note that ray tracing is almost always an optional setting and if you feel the RT effects aren't worth the performance hit, you can disable them.


Like I wrote, I have few concerns. I generally do not worry too much about running older games on my 3080 Ti, just max out all graphical settings and proceed my merry way.

Specific compatibility issues are usually well noted at PCGamingWiki. That's a good site for things like quality-of-life improvements. One example would be disabling intro videos.


I believe DLSS only works with RTX cards. Please verify with Nvidia.

DLSS comes in three versions, 1, 2 and now 3. Version 1 was the initial release and rightfully criticized for its unimpressive performance. Version 2 is much more robust. Version 3 can include a newer technique called frame insertion (again, best to read a longer illustrated article about the feature elsewhere). Frame insertion can introduce unwanted latency so again whether or not you enable it should be a decision made on a title by title basis. If I recall correctly DLSS 3 + Frame Insertion is only supported by Ada Lovelace (GeForce RTX 40-series) cards.

Damn, didn't know ray tracing technology was that old and had so much literature about it.

But, if it's an option that's only available on RTX cards then I think it's safe tor me to disable it, as it probably wouldn't work on my 980 Ti anyway.

Same with DLSS, I guess.

Settings from Ultra to high. Turn off Vsync (every time) and let the GPU sing. SAM, hardly ever FSR and we are good. Most important 5800X3D for supreme 1% lows. Yes I replaced a 5950X with a 5800X3D for Gaming.

Sorry, but what does the "SAM" stand for exactly?

 

[neatfeatguy]

Damn, didn't know ray tracing technology was that old and had so much literature about it.

But, if it's an option that's only available on RTX cards then I think it's safe tor me to disable it, as it probably wouldn't work on my 980 Ti anyway.

Same with DLSS, I guess.

Sorry, but what does the "SAM" stand for exactly?

DLSS/RT are only available on cards newer than yours so those are options you never have to worry about. As it stands, personally I don't think raytracing adds anything special to games so even with my 3080 I never make use of it.

 

[cvaldes]

Sorry, but what does the "SAM" stand for exactly?

SAM — like ray tracing and DLSS — is another computer technology that is better explained away from Q&A forums. Once again your best course of action would be to fire up a search engine and find an introductory article that explains it hopefully with some diagrams.

However in a nutshell it‘s a pathway that gives your CPU faster access to the graphics card memory. Unlike RT and DLSS this is not an in-game setting.

Your current graphics card is too old anyhow to take advantage of RT, DLSS or SAM anyhow. You should read upon them on your own time because they are newer features that are becoming important features in today’s gaming landscape and will factor in your next purchase decision.

DLSS/RT are only available on cards newer than yours so those are options you never have to worry about. As it stands, personally I don't think raytracing adds anything special to games so even with my 3080 I never make use of it.

Again this demonstrates why people who are interested in these new features should read illustrated performance guides on a game by game basis.

Most games with RT implementations do so delivering scant benefit at a large performance hit. However some games are most successful at showing marked benefit. RT reflections are generally more noticeable than RT ambient occlusion or RT shadows. RT reflections on Control are fantastic, definitely worth checking out.

 

[QuietBob]

I'm gaming at 1440p, and the games that I play vary.

If you can't achieve acceptable frame rate at 1440p with your desired graphics settings, I'd start by lowering the resolution to 1080p. Higher resolutions put greater demands on the GPU, and your 980Ti simply lacks the rendering power to provide fluid gameplay at 1440p in most modern titles. In fact, it will also struggle to provide 60fps in many newer games at 1080p, unless you compromise on image detail.

Besides, at your current resolution you are greatly limited by the card's 6 GB video memory, and your fps will slump once that limit is exceeded.

Now, the "right" balance between visual fidelity and sufficient frame rate is a personal matter. It may also depend on the type of game. Many slower-paced single player titles can feel comfortable at 40-50fps (given stable frame times), so you may wish to prioritize image quality. For competitive online shooters, you'll probably want higher frame rate, and may not care so much about graphics quality.

As for the options that provide a measurable performance boost -- as has been pointed out by many people here -- turn off MSAA (multi-sampling anti-aliasing), disable or lower SSR quality (screen space reflections), any form of xxAO (ambient occlusion), shadows, and depth of field.

Just curious, but what are some websites where I would find such guides for each game?

Dark Side of Gaming does great performance analyses, too.

 

[Fizban]

If you can't achieve acceptable frame rate at 1440p with your desired graphics settings, I'd start by lowering the resolution to 1080p. Higher resolutions put greater demands on the GPU, and your 980Ti simply lacks the rendering power to provide fluid gameplay at 1440p in most modern titles. In fact, it will also struggle to provide 60fps in many newer games at 1080p, unless you compromise on image detail.

Besides, at your current resolution you are greatly limited by the card's 6 GB video memory, and your fps will slump once that limit is exceeded.

Now, the "right" balance between visual fidelity and sufficient frame rate is a personal matter. It may also depend on the type of game. Many slower-paced single player titles can feel comfortable at 40-50fps (given stable frame times), so you may wish to prioritize image quality. For competitive online shooters, you'll probably want higher frame rate, and may not care so much about graphics quality.

As for the options that provide a measurable performance boost -- as has been pointed out by many people here -- turn off MSAA (multi-sampling anti-aliasing), disable or lower SSR quality (screen space reflections), any form of xxAO (ambient occlusion), shadows, and depth of field.


Dark Side of Gaming does great performance analyses, too.

1080P on a 1440P display often looks rather bad, 720P might even look better simply due to it being evenly divisible, but ideally I'd stick to 1440P if at all possible, and use FSR to upscale to that resolution rather than lowering to 1080P or 720P.

 

[MiLik97]

If you can't achieve acceptable frame rate at 1440p with your desired graphics settings, I'd start by lowering the resolution to 1080p. Higher resolutions put greater demands on the GPU, and your 980Ti simply lacks the rendering power to provide fluid gameplay at 1440p in most modern titles. In fact, it will also struggle to provide 60fps in many newer games at 1080p, unless you compromise on image detail.

Besides, at your current resolution you are greatly limited by the card's 6 GB video memory, and your fps will slump once that limit is exceeded.

Thanks for the info, but personally, lowering the resolution is something that I would do last when all else fails, or I may not even do it, because as @Fizban said, the quality looks terrible once you play on any resolution lower than your native.

So, honestly, I would rather uninstall the game, and wait until I buy better hardware than play on a lower resolution.

 

[sLowEnd]

I always turn off motion blur and bloom. I can't stand those in any game, regardless of performance.
Next to go, if needed, is usually ambient occlusion and shadows. (Typically I'd lower shadow settings, but rarely go as far as to actually turn them completely off.) Anything else varies on a case by case basis.

The settings I'm least willing to compromise on are texture quality and resolution.