Turn off ray tracing first if it is enabled. Next, reduce demanding shadow or reflection quality; if the GPU is still the bottleneck, try the game’s supported upscaler or lower its render resolution. Change one setting at a time and keep only adjustments that improve smoothness enough to justify any image-quality loss.
That is a useful starting order, not a universal ranking. The best change depends on the game, your hardware’s bottleneck, and how much visual detail you are willing to trade for steadier performance.
What should you lower first?
Start with expensive visual effects that are enabled, then test resolution-related options if the GPU remains under pressure. Move through the settings below one at a time rather than switching everything to Low.
- Ray tracing or path tracing: Disable it or choose a lower setting if available. These effects can be demanding, especially in GPU-heavy games, but the performance cost varies by title and system. NVIDIA’s Control graphics guide illustrates trade-offs in one game; its results are not a prediction for other games.
- Shadows and reflections: Step down quality before eliminating the effects entirely. Compare the image and frame-rate stability at each level; the cost and visible impact vary between games.
- Render resolution or upscaling: If graphics processing still appears to be the constraint, try an upscaler supported by the game and your hardware, or reduce render resolution. Lower resolution can reduce rendering work, but may make the image softer. With an upscaler, inspect fine text and the user interface as well as the scene.
- Other demanding effects: Test options such as volumetric lighting, ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing, or level of detail individually. Their costs and visual consequences are game-specific.
- Textures and world detail, when memory is constrained: Lower these if the game reports memory pressure or your system has limited memory for its workload. Do not assume every texture-related option is a major FPS lever: AMD’s guidance, for example, describes texture filtering quality as having a small performance impact.
For background on why the best adjustment varies, Microsoft’s Direct3D guidance discusses CPU-limited cases, the GPU demands of high resolutions, and situations where memory constraints make lower detail appropriate. It is general technical guidance, not a diagnosis of a particular PC.
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How to test whether a change helps
- Note your current settings and frame rate. Use the same scene or a built-in benchmark where possible.
- Change one setting, then repeat the same gameplay or benchmark conditions.
- Compare frame-rate stability, image quality, and responsiveness—not just a peak FPS reading. With an upscaler, check text and UI clarity too.
- Keep a change only if the improvement is worthwhile to you. Restore settings that reduce image quality without a meaningful performance gain.
Repeat the process for the next option. This makes it easier to identify which adjustments help in your game instead of accepting unnecessary quality loss.
When lowering graphics settings doesn’t help
If reducing graphics options barely changes performance, graphics may not be the limiting factor. Microsoft notes that many games on systems with high-performance GPUs can be CPU-limited; that observation does not mean every game or PC has a CPU bottleneck.
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Check that the game is using the dedicated GPU, particularly on a laptop, and review the game’s requirements, driver state, and software updates. EA’s PC graphics troubleshooting guidance recommends checking dedicated-GPU use and points to graphics-driver and software troubleshooting. If the cause may be CPU, memory, or a game-specific issue, lowering more visual settings may not solve it.
Upscaling is not one-size-fits-all
Use an upscaler only when the game and your device support it, and judge the result by both smoothness and clarity. Availability and requirements differ by feature and can change. For example, Microsoft’s Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) is a specific Windows feature, not a universal option: Microsoft lists supported device and processor categories, Windows 11 version 24H2 or later, current drivers, and display and game requirements. It renders at a lower resolution and upscales the image; Microsoft also says it is opt-in, does not currently support HDR, and may affect text or UI. Check current eligibility and your game’s compatibility before relying on it.
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Use the settings that solve your actual problem
Higher visual quality can require more processing and reduce or destabilize FPS. EA advises players close to a game’s minimum requirements to try lowering graphics options. But the right choice is the one that improves frame-rate stability or playability on your system without an unacceptable visual trade-off; there is no guaranteed FPS gain for any single setting.
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