If your processor is the limit, turning down texture quality and anti-aliasing will do nothing at all. Those are graphics settings, and your graphics card was not the problem.
This is the most common wasted hour in PC gaming: someone diagnoses a processor bottleneck correctly, then lowers every setting in the menu and finds the frame rate unchanged. The settings that would have helped are usually three menus away under a different heading.
Settings that cost the graphics card
Lower these when GPU usage is at or near 100%.
| Setting | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution | Very high | The largest single lever |
| Upscaling (DLSS/FSR/XeSS) | Very high saving | Renders fewer pixels internally |
| Ray tracing | Very high | Also costs video memory |
| Shadow quality | High | Resolution and filtering of shadow maps |
| Anti-aliasing | Moderate to high | Pure pixel work |
| Texture quality | Low, unless short on memory | Costs capacity, not speed |
| Ambient occlusion | Moderate | |
| Reflections | Moderate to high | Especially screen-space and ray-traced |
| Post-processing (bloom, motion blur, depth of field) | Low to moderate | |
| Volumetric fog and lighting | Moderate to high |
The notable one is texture quality, which people turn down first and which costs almost no processing. It consumes memory capacity. If you are not running out of video memory, lowering it buys you essentially nothing and makes the game look worse. If you are running out, it is the most effective setting on the list — see how much VRAM you need.
Settings that cost the processor
Lower these when GPU usage is well below 100% and the resolution test says the processor is your limit.
| Setting | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Draw distance / view distance | Very high | More objects to track and submit |
| Crowd or population density | Very high | Each entity needs simulating |
| Object or clutter detail | High | Usually controls how many objects exist |
| Shadow distance | High | Distinct from shadow quality |
| Physics detail | High | Cloth, debris, destruction |
| Traffic density | High | Open-world games specifically |
| Simulation quality / tick rate | High | Strategy and simulation titles |
| Grass and foliage density | Moderate to high | Often both |
| Ray tracing | Moderate | Building the structures is processor work |
| Number of light sources | Moderate |
The pattern: anything controlling how much stuff exists is processor work. Anything controlling how pretty each thing looks is graphics work.
The naming makes this harder than it should be. “Shadow quality” is a graphics setting and “shadow distance” is a processor setting, and they often sit next to each other in the same menu under the same heading.
Settings that cost both
Ray tracing is the main one. Building and updating the acceleration structures is processor work; tracing against them is graphics work. It is the only setting that can be a genuine bottleneck on either side.
Resolution scaling and frame generation shift the balance rather than simply reducing load. Upscaling makes the card faster without touching the processor, which can move you from graphics-limited to processor-limited — and then further upscaling stops helping entirely. Frame generation goes further still, producing frames without the processor preparing them, which is the only setting that can push past the processor’s ceiling.
What to do in each case
Graphics-limited (GPU at 100%):
- Enable upscaling at Quality — usually the largest gain for the smallest visual cost.
- Drop the overall preset one step. Typically 20–35%.
- Ray tracing off, or to its lowest level.
- Shadow quality and reflections down individually if you want to keep the rest high.
Processor-limited (GPU well below 100%):
- Raise the resolution or enable higher-quality settings. You have idle graphics capacity — use it rather than leaving it. This is counter-intuitive and correct.
- Reduce draw distance, crowd density and object detail.
- Enable XMP or EXPO if your memory is not running at its rated speed. This is free and frequently worth several percent.
- Close background software holding a core.
- Consider frame generation if available, since it is the one setting that works around a processor ceiling.
The counter-intuitive one, spelled out
If you are processor-limited, turning settings up can cost you almost nothing. Your card is idling. Giving it more work uses capacity you already own, and the frame rate is being set by the processor either way.
This is why people with strong cards and older processors often play at 1440p or 4K with high settings and are perfectly happy. They are not compromising — they found the resolution where their hardware is balanced.
The reverse is the mistake: someone with a processor bottleneck drops to 1080p Low to “get more frames”, gets the same frame rate, and concludes their machine is broken.
Working out which you are
Run the game, remove any frame cap, and watch GPU usage during actual play. Then drop the resolution to the minimum and see whether the frame rate moves. If it does not, the processor is your limit and the right half of this page is the processor table.
The diagnosis guide covers the method properly, including the traps that produce a false reading.