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The best-looking smooth setup starts at your monitor’s native resolution, uses supported temporal upscaling, and lowers the settings with the largest frame-time cost first. Keep textures and visible geometry as high as your VRAM and frame times allow; reduce ray tracing and shadows before making broad quality cuts. Then use VRR and a sensible frame cap to make delivery consistent rather than chasing the highest average FPS.
The fastest way to get a smooth, good-looking result
Use this order when tuning a PC game:
- Set the game to your monitor’s native resolution. Resolution determines the number of pixels the GPU must render and is one of the highest-impact options. Do not lower it first if a supported upscaler can recover performance with less visible damage.
- Choose a quality-oriented temporal upscaler. Enable DLSS, FSR or XeSS if the game and GPU support it. Start with the mode that renders at the highest internal resolution your frame-time target can sustain.
- Reduce ray-tracing options and shadows. These usually cost more GPU time than textures or post-processing. Disable individual ray-tracing effects before dropping the entire preset, if the game exposes separate controls.
- Keep textures high until VRAM becomes a problem. Texture quality is generally more VRAM-heavy than compute-heavy. Lower it when you see texture pop-in, stutter during asset streaming or VRAM use approaching the card’s capacity, not simply because average FPS is low.
- Preserve gameplay-critical geometry and draw distance. Reduce these only when GPU or CPU frame times show that world visibility, object density or draw calls are the bottleneck.
- Turn on variable refresh rate (VRR) and cap frames when appropriate. A frame cap inside the display’s VRR range can make motion and input feel steadier than an uncapped rate that repeatedly hits a limit.
There is no universal “best” preset. The right balance changes with your CPU, GPU, available VRAM, monitor resolution and refresh rate, game engine, driver support and tolerance for latency or reconstruction artifacts.
Which settings affect performance the most?
MSI’s July 30, 2026 guide, How to Improve PC Gaming Performance? Graphics Settings That Matter, ranks the main controls by practical impact. Its ratings are a useful order for troubleshooting, not a promise that every game behaves identically.
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| Setting | Typical impact | What changing it usually does | Best first move |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution | Very high | Changes the number of pixels rendered every frame; affects sharpness directly. | Keep native resolution; use an upscaler before lowering output resolution. |
| Ray tracing | Very high | Adds expensive lighting, reflections or shadows and can increase frame-time spikes. | Lower or disable the most expensive ray-traced effects first. |
| Shadows | High in many games | Changes shadow-map resolution, update distance and filtering. | Lower one step before reducing textures or the whole preset. |
| Textures | Medium; generally more VRAM-heavy | Changes surface detail and memory use more than shader workload. | Keep high if VRAM is sufficient; lower when streaming stutter or allocation pressure appears. |
| Geometry and draw distance | Low–medium overall, but workload-dependent | Changes object detail, foliage, world visibility and draw calls; can affect CPU and GPU. | Keep high enough to preserve visibility; lower only after identifying a CPU/GPU bottleneck. |
| Post-processing effects | Low in MSI’s table | Controls effects such as bloom, depth of field, motion blur and some color treatments. | Disable effects you dislike for clarity; do not expect a large FPS recovery. |
| Frame synchronization | Primarily affects feel | Changes tearing, pacing and latency rather than the scene’s rendering cost. | Use VRR when supported, then choose a cap based on refresh rate and latency goals. |
These categories interact. For example, a CPU-limited scene may gain little from lowering resolution, while a GPU-limited scene may gain a lot. Measure the frame time while reproducing the same demanding area instead of relying on a single benchmark number.
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Start with the right resolution and upscaling mode
Native output resolution is the quality anchor
Set the game’s display resolution to the panel’s native output, such as 1920×1080, 2560×1440 or 3840×2160. This keeps menus, text and the final image aligned with the physical pixel grid. Lowering the output resolution can improve performance, but it makes the entire image softer and may introduce scaling artifacts before any in-game reconstruction takes place.
Resolution is classified as a very high-impact setting by MSI. That makes it powerful, but also easy to misuse: a small drop can recover frames while visibly reducing detail everywhere. Try temporal upscaling first when available.
What DLSS, FSR and XeSS change
Temporal upscalers render the scene internally below the output resolution and reconstruct a higher-resolution image using motion information and previous frames. The result depends on the game’s implementation, motion vectors, anti-aliasing and your tolerance for shimmer or ghosting. Check the image while moving the camera, not only in a still screenshot.
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|---|---|---|
| Quality | You need a modest performance increase and want the closest image to native. | Inspect fine foliage, hair, wires and distant geometry for shimmer. |
| Balanced | You need a larger gain and can accept some loss of fine detail. | Watch thin objects and moving particles for instability. |
| Performance | You are rendering at a high output resolution or need a substantial GPU-time reduction. | Check text, faces and high-contrast edges for softness or reconstruction trails. |
As a concrete starting point, NVIDIA’s Fortnite guidance maps DLSS Performance to 4K, Balanced to 2560×1440 and Quality to 1920×1080. That is a game-specific example from 2020, not a universal rule. Start there only when the game, GPU and implementation are comparable, then adjust by eye and by frame-time measurements.
Lower settings in the order that protects image quality
1. Ray tracing
Ray tracing is among the highest-impact options in MSI’s classification. It can affect reflections, global illumination, ambient occlusion and shadows separately. If the menu offers individual toggles, disable the effect that contributes least to your preferred look rather than switching every ray-traced feature off. Reflections and global illumination can be particularly expensive in scenes with many dynamic lights, while ray-traced shadows may be easier to trade for conventional shadows.
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After changing a ray-tracing option, revisit the same reflective or heavily lit scene. A setting that looks inexpensive in a corridor may dominate frame time outdoors or during combat.
2. Shadow quality and shadow distance
Shadows are a practical performance lever because quality, filtering, cascade count and draw distance can all increase work. Drop shadow quality one step, then test a scene with several characters, foliage and moving lights. If the game separates shadow resolution from shadow distance, lower distance before making nearby shadows visibly blocky. Keep contact shadows if they add depth at low cost, but turn them down if they cause a measurable spike.
3. Ambient occlusion and anti-aliasing
Ambient occlusion can improve grounding around objects but may be expensive at high quality, especially when combined with ray tracing. Lower it one tier if shadows are already reduced and GPU time remains high. Anti-aliasing choices affect both sharpness and temporal stability; use the game’s recommended temporal mode before disabling anti-aliasing entirely. AMD Game Advisor lists anti-aliasing and ambient occlusion among options it may recommend lowering.
4. Textures and texture filtering
Textures usually consume VRAM rather than large amounts of shader compute. Keep them high when the card has headroom. Lower texture quality if you see delayed texture replacement, hitching when entering new areas, unusually high VRAM allocation or visible streaming failures. Texture filtering, anisotropic filtering and texture resolution are separate in some games; anisotropic filtering often preserves clarity on floors and roads, so reduce it only after testing.
5. Geometry, foliage and draw distance
Geometry settings can affect CPU submission work, GPU vertex processing and the number of objects visible at once. Lowering them may improve a crowded city or forest, but it can also remove cover, enemies or landmarks at a distance. Keep the setting high enough for gameplay visibility. Reduce it only after monitoring shows the CPU or GPU is spending significant frame time on object density or draw distance.
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6. Post effects and cosmetic blur
MSI rates post effects as low impact overall. Motion blur, depth of field, film grain, chromatic aberration and heavy bloom can be disabled for a cleaner image, but they are usually poor choices when your sole goal is more FPS. Treat them as comfort and clarity settings after addressing high-impact controls.
A repeatable tuning procedure
Changing many options at once makes it impossible to know which trade-off helped. Use the following process for each game.
- Record a baseline. Note output resolution, upscaler mode, ray tracing state, VRR state, refresh rate and frame cap. Play a repeatable demanding scene for several minutes and record average FPS, the lowest sustained behavior you notice and whether motion feels consistent.
- Watch frame time, not only FPS. FPS is an average rate; frame time shows how long each frame takes. A game that reports a high average but produces regular spikes can feel worse than a slower, steadier game.
- Enable the supported upscaler. Begin with Quality at 1080p, Balanced at 1440p or Performance at 4K only as starting points, then inspect motion and fine detail.
- Change one setting. Lower ray tracing or shadows by one step, replay the same scene and compare both frame-time consistency and image quality.
- Check VRAM and CPU/GPU utilization. High GPU utilization with low CPU utilization suggests a GPU-side setting such as resolution, ray tracing or shadows. A saturated CPU thread with a less-busy GPU points toward geometry, draw distance, simulation or a frame-rate limit.
- Stop when the target is met. Do not keep lowering settings merely because a slider exists. Restore any option that costs image quality without solving the bottleneck.
AMD’s Game Advisor can monitor normal gameplay for up to 90 seconds, report average FPS and 95th-percentile frame time, and suggest changes such as lowering the preset, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, render scale or display resolution. The 95th-percentile figure is useful because it captures slower frames without being dominated by a single extreme hitch.
VRR, frame caps and synchronization
What VRR does
Microsoft defines variable refresh rate as a display feature that adjusts the monitor’s refresh rate to the frame rate being delivered. Compatible implementations include AMD FreeSync, NVIDIA G-SYNC and VESA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync. When the frame rate fluctuates inside the display’s supported VRR range, the monitor can refresh at the moment a new frame is ready, reducing visible tearing and uneven pacing.
VRR does not make the GPU render faster and cannot hide severe stutter caused by shader compilation, asset streaming or a CPU stall. It smooths delivery when the frame rate is varying within the panel’s operating range.
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Choose a frame cap deliberately
A cap can prevent the GPU from rendering unnecessary frames, reduce heat and fan noise and keep output inside the VRR range. AMD notes that a frame-rate target can serve this purpose on compatible systems. Set the cap below the monitor’s maximum refresh rate when you want VRR to remain active without repeatedly hitting the ceiling. The exact margin depends on the game, driver and limiter; use an in-game limiter when it produces stable pacing, and compare it with a driver-level limiter if pacing is uneven.
Competitive players may prefer the lowest latency that still avoids tearing, while single-player players may prefer a lower, quieter cap. Make the choice based on frame-time consistency and input feel rather than average FPS alone.
When synchronization creates confusion
- If tearing appears above the VRR range, lower the cap or enable the synchronization option recommended by the display and driver documentation.
- If the image feels delayed, test a lower cap, disable unnecessary buffering options and compare the same mouse or controller movement.
- If VRR never engages, verify that it is enabled in the monitor’s on-screen menu, connected through a supported interface and enabled in the graphics driver.
Windows 11 settings that can affect a game
Select the high-performance GPU
Systems with integrated and discrete graphics can launch a game on the lower-power adapter unless Windows is told otherwise. In Windows 11, open Settings > System > Display > Graphics, select the game in the app list (or browse to its executable), choose Options, select High performance and save. Restart the game after changing the preference.
The label and available choices can vary by hardware and Windows build. If the game is already using the intended GPU, changing this setting will not increase performance.
Enable Optimizations for windowed games
Windows 11 provides Optimizations for windowed games for eligible DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 games running windowed or borderless. Microsoft says the feature can reduce presentation latency and support Auto HDR and VRR on compatible displays. Find it under Settings > System > Display > Graphics > Default settings, enable it, and then restart an affected game. The option does not apply to every API, exclusive-fullscreen mode or display configuration.
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Pick a profile based on your goal
| Goal | Recommended baseline | Trade-offs to monitor |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum visual quality at a stable rate | Native resolution, upscaler Quality if needed, high textures, high geometry, reduced ray tracing or shadows only when necessary, VRR enabled. | Upscaler artifacts, VRAM pressure and occasional spikes in complex scenes. |
| High-refresh competitive play | Native resolution or a carefully chosen render scale, low latency-oriented effects, reduced ray tracing, moderate shadows, a stable frame cap below the VRR ceiling. | Reduced shadow distance, less visual detail and latency from buffering or unstable frame pacing. |
| GPU-limited laptop or entry-level card | Native output with an upscaler, ray tracing off, shadows one or two steps lower, textures matched to VRAM, moderate geometry. | Softness at aggressive upscaling modes and more visible pop-in. |
| CPU-limited open-world scene | Keep resolution and image reconstruction quality; reduce crowd density, foliage, geometry or draw distance only where the game exposes them. | Lower world detail or fewer simulated characters without much GPU utilization change. |
| Quiet, cool operation | Use VRR with a frame-rate target, choose a sustainable cap, retain high textures, lower ray tracing and shadows before resolution. | Lower peak FPS in exchange for less power, heat and fan noise. |
Troubleshoot common symptoms
High FPS, but motion still feels uneven
Check frame-time spikes, shader compilation, background tasks and VRR status. A high average can conceal intermittent long frames. Try a cap that the system can hold consistently, then replay the same scene.
Sharp image but unacceptable FPS
Enable a supported temporal upscaler before lowering the output resolution. If the GPU remains the bottleneck, reduce ray tracing and shadows. Keep textures unless VRAM symptoms point to memory pressure.
Blurry or shimmery image after enabling upscaling
Move from Performance to Balanced or Quality, increase the game’s sharpening control cautiously and test motion. If artifacts remain, compare the game’s other supported upscalers; reconstruction quality varies by engine and implementation.
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Monitor VRAM allocation and texture streaming. Lower texture quality one step, close background applications that consume memory and check whether the game is compiling shaders. Lowering resolution alone may not fix an asset-streaming hitch.
Objects or enemies appear too late
Restore geometry, foliage and draw distance before raising cosmetic effects. These settings can affect gameplay visibility and should be reduced only when their CPU or GPU cost is confirmed.
VRR appears enabled but tearing remains
Confirm the display’s VRR toggle, the driver setting, cable or interface support and the game’s refresh-rate mode. Then cap the frame rate so it does not continually exceed the panel’s VRR range.
How to judge whether a setting change is worthwhile
Evaluate every change on six axes:
- Average FPS: useful for broad performance, but insufficient by itself.
- Frame-time lows and consistency: reveal stutter and spikes that averages hide.
- Sharpness and temporal stability: inspect moving foliage, hair, wires, particles and distant text.
- VRAM use: especially important for texture quality and asset streaming.
- Input latency: compare the same action after changing caps, synchronization or buffering.
- Tearing and display support: verify that the game, GPU, driver and monitor all support the selected feature.
Keep a setting only when its performance benefit is visible in the demanding scene you care about and its image or latency cost is acceptable. A setting that improves an empty hallway but not the combat encounter that causes your stutter is not solving the real problem.
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For most systems, use native output resolution, enable the best-supported temporal upscaler, keep textures and gameplay-critical geometry high, and lower ray tracing and shadows first. Add VRR and a sustainable frame cap for consistent delivery, then tune one option at a time while watching frame times. This approach preserves the details players notice most while targeting the settings that actually consume the frame budget.
Quick Recap
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