When a game runs poorly, blindly dropping everything to Low is wasteful; you sacrifice a lot of visual quality for frames you could have recovered by tuning just two or three heavy settings. Some options are enormously expensive while barely changing the image, and others are nearly free. Knowing which settings cost the most FPS lets you claw back performance while keeping the game looking good.
The expensive settings
Ray tracing and shadows
Ray tracing is the single biggest performance eater in modern games, often cutting frame rate by 30-50% for reflections, shadows, or global illumination. Traditional shadow quality is next: high-resolution shadows and long shadow-draw distances are costly, and dropping shadows from Ultra to High or Medium frequently recovers 10-20% with a hard-to-spot difference.
Ambient occlusion, volumetrics, and view distance
Ambient occlusion, volumetric fog and lighting, and reflection quality are all mid-to-heavy costs. Very high view or draw distance also strains both CPU and GPU in open-world games.
| Setting | Typical FPS cost (Ultra vs Medium) | Visual impact |
|---|---|---|
| Ray tracing | 30-50% | High |
| Shadow quality | 10-20% | Moderate |
| Volumetric lighting/fog | 5-15% | Moderate |
| Ambient occlusion | 5-10% | Subtle |
| Reflections | 5-15% | Situational |
| Anti-aliasing (MSAA) | 5-20% | Edge smoothness |
The cheap settings to keep high
Texture quality is nearly free as long as you have enough VRAM, since it mainly uses memory rather than processing, so keep it high for the biggest visual bang. Anisotropic filtering costs only a few percent and sharpens distant surfaces. Draw a line between memory-bound settings, which are cheap if you have the VRAM, and compute-bound effects like ray tracing, which are expensive regardless.
A smart tuning order
Start at High or Ultra, then step down ray tracing first, shadows second, and volumetrics and reflections third, testing frame rate after each. Leave textures and anisotropic filtering high. Use upscaling like DLSS or FSR to reclaim frames without touching individual settings. This targeted approach keeps the image looking close to Ultra while hitting your frame-rate goal.
Upscaling and frame generation
Before you gut individual settings, modern upscalers and frame generation can recover large amounts of performance while keeping most of the visual quality, often making them the first tool to reach for.
Upscaling: render fewer pixels, look near-native
DLSS, FSR, and XeSS render the game at a lower internal resolution and intelligently reconstruct it to your display resolution. In Quality mode they typically boost frame rate by 30-50% at 1440p or 4K while looking close to native, which is a far better trade than dropping to Low. Performance and Balanced modes give even more frames with a bigger quality trade, useful when you are far from your target.
Frame generation: extra frames for smoothness
Frame generation inserts synthesized frames between rendered ones to raise the on-screen frame rate, greatly improving perceived smoothness. It works best when your base frame rate is already reasonable, roughly 60 FPS or more, because it adds a little latency and can show artifacts if the starting frame rate is very low. Pair it with a latency-reduction feature like Reflex for the best feel.
A sensible order of operations
Enable upscaling in Quality mode first, then lower ray tracing and shadows if you still need frames, and add frame generation last for extra smoothness once your base rate is solid. This sequence keeps textures, anisotropic filtering, and overall image quality high while hitting your target frame rate.
FAQ
What is the fastest way to boost FPS without a big quality hit?
Lower ray tracing and shadow quality first, and enable an upscaler like DLSS or FSR in Quality mode. Those three changes recover the most frames while leaving the overall image close to maximum, far better than dropping every setting to Low.
Does texture quality hurt frame rate?
Rarely, as long as you have enough VRAM. Textures mostly consume video memory, not shading power, so higher textures look much better at little frame-rate cost. If you run out of VRAM, though, textures can cause stutter, in which case lower them one step.
Bottom line: Ray tracing and shadows cost the most FPS by far, followed by volumetrics, reflections, and MSAA, while textures and anisotropic filtering are cheap. Tune the expensive settings down first and add an upscaler, keeping the cheap quality settings high, to hit your target frame rate without gutting the visuals.
