Best graphics settings basics: what to turn down first
A plain-English tour of graphics settings: which ones cost the most FPS, which barely matter, and how to use DLSS, FSR and XeSS.
Graphics menus are scary: 40 sliders and no idea which ones matter. Good news: a handful of settings do most of the work. Here's the order we'd tweak them in, from “huge FPS gain, barely visible” to “leave it alone”.
First: know your target
- Competitive shooters: as many FPS as your monitor's refresh rate (144 Hz → 144 FPS).
- Story games: a stable 60 FPS with nice visuals is the sweet spot.
- Handhelds (Steam Deck, ROG Ally): 40 FPS at 40 Hz feels great and saves battery.
Turn on an FPS counter (Steam: Settings → In-Game → FPS counter) so you can see the effect of each change.
The big FPS wins (try these first)
- Upscaling: DLSS (NVIDIA RTX), FSR (any GPU), XeSS (any GPU, best on Intel Arc). These render at a lower resolution and rebuild the image smartly. Use Quality at 1080p/1440p and Balanced/Performance at 4K. This is usually the single biggest boost.
- Ray tracing. Gorgeous and expensive. Turn it off or to Low first if you're short on FPS.
- Shadows. Ultra → High or Medium often gains 10%+ with little visible difference.
- Volumetric fog/clouds/lighting. Surprisingly heavy. Medium is usually fine.
- Resolution scale / render scale. Keep it at 100% if you're using an upscaler, otherwise drop it slightly.
Cheap settings (keep them high)
- Texture quality: costs VRAM, not much FPS. Keep it High if your GPU has 8 GB+ of VRAM. If you see stutter and blurry textures popping in, lower it one step.
- Anisotropic filtering: 16x. It's basically free and makes floors look sharp.
Personal-taste settings
- Motion blur, film grain, chromatic aberration, depth of field: purely style. Many players turn them off for clarity.
- Field of view (FOV): wider shows more but costs a bit of FPS. On PC, 90–100 is typical for shooters.
Smoothness settings
- V-Sync: stops screen tearing but adds input lag. If you have a G-Sync/FreeSync monitor, enable VRR and cap FPS ~3 below your refresh rate instead.
- NVIDIA Reflex / AMD Anti-Lag: turn on in competitive games for lower input latency.
- Frame generation (DLSS FG, FSR FG): adds smoothness, but also a little latency. It's great when you're already at 60+ FPS, and less great for twitchy shooters.
Still struggling?
Update your GPU driver, close background apps, and make sure your laptop is plugged in and using its dedicated GPU. Or let our AI Settings Optimizer suggest settings for your exact GPU and game.