Quick Summary
- Lower expensive settings like shadows and reflections to improve FPS.
- Enable upscaling technologies like DLSS, FSR, or XeSS for significant performance gains.
- Cap your frame rate and disable costly visual effects to smooth gameplay.
- Optimize your system outside the game by updating drivers and closing background apps.
- Achieve up to 30-60% FPS improvement with minimal visual loss.
Before you spend hundreds on a new graphics card, know that a few settings deliver most of the frame-rate you’re missing – often for almost no visual loss. Here are the ones that matter, roughly in order of impact.
Lower the settings that cost the most, keep the ones that don’t
Not all graphics settings are equal. Shadows, ambient occlusion, reflections, and volumetric effects are frame-rate killers that often look nearly identical a notch or two lower. Texture quality, by contrast, is mostly limited by video memory and usually costs little frame-rate – so keep textures high (if you have the VRAM) and cut the expensive lighting effects first.
Use upscaling
Turn on DLSS, FSR, or XeSS if the game offers it. Rendering at a lower internal resolution and upscaling can add 20-50% frame-rate for a small softness hit – the single biggest free performance lever on modern GPUs. Quality or Balanced mode is the sweet spot.
Understanding Upscaling Technologies
DLSS, FSR, and XeSS use AI to upscale images, reducing the internal resolution the GPU renders and then enhancing it. This process can add 20-50% frame-rate without a significant loss in quality.
Quality mode in these upscaling technologies offers the best balance between performance and visual fidelity, making it the sweet spot for most gamers.
Go deeper: AI Upscaling Explained: DLSS, FSR, and XeSS — and When to Use Them
Drop resolution scale before native resolution
If you have no upscaler, a resolution scale slider (render at 85-90% and upscale) buys frames with less quality loss than dropping your whole display resolution. Only fall back to a lower native resolution if you must.
Resolution Scaling Explained
Resolution scaling allows you to render the game at a slightly lower resolution than your display’s native resolution and then upscale it. This method often provides better visual quality than reducing the entire display resolution.
Using a resolution scale of 85-90% can yield a noticeable frame-rate boost with minimal quality loss, making it a practical alternative to dropping the entire resolution.
Related guide: How to Play Retro Games on Modern TVs Without the Blurry Mess
Cap your frame rate and turn off the expensive extras
An uncapped frame rate makes the GPU work at 100% constantly, adding heat and stutter. A sensible cap smooths things out. Turn off motion blur, depth of field, and chromatic aberration – they cost performance and many people find they hurt clarity anyway.
Don’t forget the free stuff outside the game
Update your GPU drivers, close background apps eating CPU/GPU, and make sure the game is running on your dedicated GPU (not integrated graphics) on laptops. Ensure Windows is set to a high-performance power plan. These cost nothing and occasionally fix a mysterious frame-rate problem entirely.
System Optimization Tips
Updating GPU drivers ensures you have the latest performance improvements and bug fixes, which can sometimes resolve mysterious frame-rate issues.
Closing background applications that consume CPU or GPU resources can free up more power for your game, leading to better performance.
Setting your game to run on the dedicated GPU (if available) on laptops can significantly improve performance compared to integrated graphics.
The realistic result
Between upscaling, cutting shadows and reflections, capping frame rate, and updating drivers, most people can gain 30-60% frame-rate with barely noticeable visual loss. Try that before concluding you need new hardware – you may find your current GPU had more to give.
Next level: Gaming Monitor Buying Guide: Refresh Rate, Resolution, and Panel Types
Community Challenge
Try adjusting your game settings as described in the article and report back on the FPS improvement you experience in the comments.
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