Graphics settings: what each option really changes
A map of the video menu to gain performance without making the game ugly.
Every PC game has a video menu full of technical names. The good news is that a few options account for most of the load. Knowing which ones saves hours of trial and error.
The heaviest ones
- Render scale and upscaling: DLSS, FSR and XeSS draw the image at a lower resolution and reconstruct the rest. It is usually the biggest gain with the least visible loss.
- Shadows: high-quality shadows multiply the GPU's work. Dropping one level is almost never noticeable in normal play.
- Ray-traced global illumination and reflections: beautiful and expensive. Turn them off first if smoothness is the goal.
- Ambient occlusion: darkens corners and gaps. Medium cost, subtle effect.
The ones that depend on video memory
Texture quality costs little in processing, but it takes up graphics card memory. If you have memory to spare, keep it high. If the game stutters instead of slowing down, that is the first suspect.
Finally, cap frames per second to what your monitor can display. Rendering frames the screen never shows wastes power and heats up the computer with no benefit.
