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Which Graphics Settings to Lower First When a PC Game Runs Poorly

Start by checking whether the GPU is the limit, then test ray tracing, shadows, presets, and upscaling one change at a time.
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If a new PC game is running poorly, first check whether the GPU is the constraint, then change one setting at a time and retest the same scene. When the GPU is struggling, try disabling ray tracing, lowering shadows or the overall quality preset by one step, and then using the game’s upscaler or modestly reducing render scale. There is no setting that always gives the biggest improvement: CPU limits and other bottlenecks may not respond to lower resolution.

Check what is limiting performance before lowering image quality

Use the game’s built-in benchmark if it has one; otherwise, choose a scene you can revisit reliably. Note the average frame rate and whether movement feels uneven. A repeatable comparison makes it easier to tell whether a change helped.

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Frame rate depends on more than one kind of work. Unity’s rendering guidance distinguishes CPU-side rendering work from GPU constraints such as fill rate and memory bandwidth. If reducing resolution makes little difference, that is a reason to investigate a different limit—not to keep lowering resolution automatically. See Unity’s graphics performance guidance.

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On supported AMD Radeon configurations, Game Advisor can report average FPS, frame-time graphs and percentiles, and setting recommendations. It is an optional vendor-specific tool, not a requirement; AMD says monitoring may take up to 90 seconds. Details are in AMD’s Game Advisor documentation.

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Change settings in a practical order

  1. Turn off ray tracing if it is enabled. Ray-tracing features add rendering work, but their cost depends on the implementation and scene. Epic’s Unreal Engine Ray Tracing Performance Guide discusses the performance budget involved. Treat this as an early experiment, not a promise of a particular FPS increase.
  2. Lower shadows or the quality preset one step. Unity notes that real-time shadows can be resource-intensive. A broad preset change is a quick way to test whether several demanding options together are contributing; AMD’s Game Advisor documentation gives stepping down from Ultra to High as an example. Labels and effects vary by game.
  3. If the GPU remains the constraint, try the game’s upscaler or modestly lower render scale. Rendering fewer pixels can reduce GPU workload when pixel processing is the limit, but can soften fine detail. Unreal Engine’s dynamic-resolution system can lower screen percentage as GPU workload rises; the exact controls depend on the game.
  4. Retest after every change and stop when the result is good enough. Return to the same benchmark or scene, compare performance and image quality, and keep only changes that help. The goal is smooth, acceptable play—not every option set to Low.

For supported games and hardware, AMD recommends using built-in FSR rather than driver-level Radeon Super Resolution (RSR), because a game-specific integration may include optimizations. Support varies. See AMD’s RSR guidance.

Why there is no universal ranking of settings

The best change depends on the performance limit and on how the game implements each option. Ray tracing and shadows can have substantial costs, but their impact is game- and scene-dependent. Resolution changes matter most when GPU pixel processing is a constraint; they may do little when CPU rendering work or another bottleneck dominates.

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Think of each option as a trade-off among performance cost, visible image-quality loss, and compatibility with your game and hardware. A supported in-game upscaler may preserve a better balance than simply lowering resolution, but it is not available everywhere. Change one option at a time so the comparison shows what actually helped.

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What published FPS gains can—and cannot—tell you

There is no broadly applicable cross-game figure for the FPS gain from lowering a particular setting. NVIDIA’s Control DLSS guide reports that, in its tested GPU-heavy scenarios for Control, frame rates increased “as much as 89%” in its higher-fidelity mode and “up to 197%” in lower-resolution performance modes. Those are NVIDIA’s game- and test-specific results, not expected gains for another game or a typical player.

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Epic’s guidance captures the broader performance-planning principle: “For projects that need to maintain a real-time performance budget, it’s important to set a frame budget in order to achieve that target frame rate.” The statement appears in Epic’s Ray Tracing Performance Guide.

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