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

[the_bears]

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?

 

[WildCard999]

I usually go by the universal (main) (Ultra > High > Med >Low) options then tweak individual options if need be but I usually find a option that works fine with my resolution/preferred FPS between those main options. AA can have some moderate hit on performance and so can draw distance. Motion blur usually doesn't have much of a impact on FPS so pick what you prefer. My last resort is lowering the resolution. There's a bunch more that you can tweak like lighting and shadows but it comes down to the game.

 

[the_bears]

I usually go by the universal (main) (Ultra > High > Med >Low) options then tweak individual options if need be but I usually find a option that works fine with my resolution/preferred FPS between those main options. AA can have some moderate hit on performance and so can draw distance. Motion blur usually doesn't have much of a impact on FPS so pick what you prefer. My last resort is lowering the resolution. There's a bunch more that you can tweak like lighting and shadows but it comes down to the game.

Hi, wild! Thanks for the response!

You've mentioned that AA can have some moderate hit on performance. Just curious but since I play @ 1440p, AA is usually disabled, as I hardly notice any jagged lines, but sometimes they're still there. In that case, which AA method would you recommend to use that's not a big hit on performance (except FXAA, as it looks ugly for me)? Also how much sampling should I use? 2x, 4x...?

 

[punkncat]

What game or games?

For instance, CB77 can easily gain frames simply by turning the crowd level down.

 

[the_bears]

What game or games?

For instance, CB77 can easily gain frames simply by turning the crowd level down.

It varies. Most of the games I play are those released in 2014 or before. But sometimes, I play modern games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 + 2 (the remakes), Middle-Earth Shadow of War, Far Cry 6, etc. just to name a few.

 

[punkncat]

Lol, I have been playing Far Cry 6 over the "free" weekend special they are doing. Almost reminds me of Just Cause insomuch as the storyline and characters. I got Shadow of Mordor a few weeks ago on a free deal. It is very reminiscent of Witcher to me. Anywho....

Every system is different as well as tastes for what is acceptable performance. With time and opportunity to play with settings, just experiment and see what gives you the results you wish for. I like to try and keep the detail as high as possible but will play with other setting to mid or even low in order to keep away from frame dips. I would much rather have a "low" but solid frame rate than to have it stutter and dip.

Aside from this, even something like a 6600/XT or so would perform better than a 980 ti at this point and those can be found pretty cheap. The system that I gave my son is a 4690 with a 970 and it is suffering pretty hard on modern gameplay. We knocked the resolution down to 1280 x 800 IIRC and it does well enough to keep working with it. His next rig is on him...but I am drifting off subject.

 

[the_bears]

Lol, I have been playing Far Cry 6 over the "free" weekend special they are doing. Almost reminds me of Just Cause insomuch as the storyline and characters. I got Shadow of Mordor a few weeks ago on a free deal. It is very reminiscent of Witcher to me. Anywho....

Every system is different as well as tastes for what is acceptable performance. With time and opportunity to play with settings, just experiment and see what gives you the results you wish for. I like to try and keep the detail as high as possible but will play with other setting to mid or even low in order to keep away from frame dips. I would much rather have a "low" but solid frame rate than to have it stutter and dip.

Aside from this, even something like a 6600/XT or so would perform better than a 980 ti at this point and those can be found pretty cheap. The system that I gave my son is a 4690 with a 970 and it is suffering pretty hard on modern gameplay. We knocked the resolution down to 1280 x 800 IIRC and it does well enough to keep working with it. His next rig is on him...but I am drifting off subject.

Oh yeah, 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)?

 

[WildCard999]

Hi, wild! Thanks for the response!

You've mentioned that AA can have some moderate hit on performance. Just curious but since I play @ 1440p, AA is usually disabled, as I hardly notice any jagged lines, but sometimes they're still there. In that case, which AA method would you recommend to use that's not a big hit on performance (except FXAA, as it looks ugly for me)? Also how much sampling should I use? 2x, 4x...?

There’s no exact sampling number I can give you, best way to do it is trial and error. Just adjust until you get the best graphics you can run with acceptable FPS.

 

[kerberos_20]

shadows and lights are usualy compute heavy, then reflections, grass and water effects

 

[Eximo]

Setting view distance slightly below maximum can usually make a difference. Shadows, reflections are the first to go for performance. You can also consider a step down on texture quality, usually a minimal impact on visual quality. Lowering levels of AA and AF can help a lot, but you do gain back jagged edges.

 

[kerberos_20]

you can combine AA with FSR/DLSS, lots of games already supports it, barely any impact on performance and looks better then without AA

 

[OwiHH]

resolution

shadow, AA, anisothropic, shader, lightning

 

[julian_lj]

For games that have this setting, render resolution (distinct from screen resolution) has a pretty big impact on performance.

My current rig is powerful enough that I pretty much never need to tweak settings for more FPS anymore, but back when I used to play on an older GTX950M laptop, render resolution was one of the crucial settings that helped enable me to play games that my system would barely be able to handle otherwise. I understood my hardware wasn't the best and didn't need insanely high framerates, but given that I primarily play(ed) FPS games, I did want at least 60FPS for a comfortable experience.

Two of the games I played a lot - Overwatch and Call of Duty: Black Ops III - have this setting, and running these games at 1280x720 and 50%-75% render resolution gave me a somewhat stable 60FPS. It blurred the graphics significantly, yes - but without a render resolution slider, I would not have been able to play these games at anywhere near 60FPS.

A lot of great suggestions have already been made on settings that impact framerate without sacrificing graphical fidelity, but a setting I wanna throw shade on for a bit is the "Extra" or "Ultra" graphics setting. IMO, unless you have some monster dual RTX 2080Ti rig, it's just not worth it for most.

While it may differ from game to game, often times the difference between High and Extra/Ultra is barely noticeable to the majority of players, while still impacting FPS fairly significantly. Even though I currently run an RTX 2070 Super in my rig, I still keep most of my games at High graphics settings at most, unless it's an older 2000s/early 2010s game.

 

[hotaru.hino]

In general the biggest hitters are:

• Resolution
• Shadows (these typically re-render the scene from a different viewpoint)
  • Ambient Occlusion can also fit in here, depending on the type.
• Detailed reflections (these can also re-render the scene, but most just use screen-space reflections now)
• Obviously detail with clutter or environments or whatnot, especially if they get considered in lighting

I would use https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/grand-theft-auto-v-pc-graphics-and-performance-guide/ as a guide for which settings tend to hurt in terms of performance since there's a lot of options and most games, if they are thorough with their graphics options, typically have the same kind of settings.