Know what to lower before you murder the whole image.

Adds soft shading in corners and where objects sit close together.

Keeps textures sharper when viewed at an angle and is usually cheap on modern GPUs.

Reduces jagged edges and shimmer, often while helping reconstruct fine detail.

Adds glow around bright lights and emissive surfaces.

Adjusts image brightness or mid-tone response without meaningfully changing performance.

Adds colored fringing near image edges for a lens-like effect.

Changes how many NPCs or traffic actors are simulated in busy areas.

Controls bullet marks, dirt, blood, scorch marks and projected surface details.

Blurs areas outside the camera’s focus, usually in cutscenes or aiming effects.

Chooses fullscreen, borderless or windowed presentation.

Automatically changes internal resolution to protect a target frame rate.

Controls particles, transparency, explosions and temporary visual effects.

Controls explosion particles, lighting, smoke and debris.

Changes how much of the world is visible around the camera.

Adds animated noise to imitate photographic film.

Controls flame particles, lighting, distortion and simulation.

Controls plant density, draw distance, animation and sometimes foliage shadows.

Creates intermediate frames to raise displayed FPS, but does not replace a healthy base frame rate.

Caps FPS to stabilize power use, heat and frame pacing.

Controls model detail, tessellation, mesh distance or the number of objects rendered.

Changes how much grass and small vegetation is rendered.

Adds edge contrast after rendering or upscaling to restore perceived detail.

Adds flare artifacts around bright lights.

Controls how quickly models switch to simpler versions with distance.

Adds visible rays or shafts around strong light sources.

Bundles the quality of direct lights, lightmaps and lighting calculations.

Reduces queued rendering work to improve control response.

Blends motion across frames to make movement look smoother or more cinematic.

Changes the amount, lifetime or detail of smoke, sparks, debris and similar effects.

Controls simulation accuracy, update rate or the number of physical objects.

Groups several screen-space effects such as tone mapping, blur, bloom and color treatment.

Uses hardware ray traversal for lighting, reflections or shadows and is usually one of the heaviest options.

Controls the resolution, update rate or complexity of non-ray-traced reflections.

Sets how many times the display can update each second.

Changes internal rendering resolution without changing the output resolution.

The number of pixels rendered for the final image; usually one of the largest performance levers.

Creates reflections using information already visible on the screen.

Controls how far detailed dynamic shadows remain visible.

Controls shadow resolution, filtering, distance and sometimes the number of shadow-casting objects.

Controls smoke resolution, density, lighting and simulation.

Controls landscape geometry, blending and distant terrain detail.

Controls texture detail and usually affects VRAM far more than raw FPS.

Changes how many vehicles and traffic agents are simulated.

Balances image reconstruction quality against internal render resolution and FPS.

Controls the sharpening applied after an upscaler reconstructs the image.

Synchronizes frame presentation to the display refresh cycle to prevent tearing.

Lets the display follow the game frame rate within its supported range.

Controls how far detailed objects, shadows or simulation elements remain active.

Darkens image edges for a cinematic frame.

Simulates depth-aware fog that receives lighting and shadows.

Adds light scattering through fog, dust and air.

Controls fog, clouds, light shafts and other effects rendered through a volume.

Bundles water shading, waves, reflections and refraction.

Controls reflections rendered on rivers, lakes and oceans.

Controls rain, snow, storms, wetness and related particles.