What graphical settings do you lower or disable for better performance?

[MiLiKi97 0]

So my GPU (GTX 980 Ti) is starting to show it's age. There's no more time of being able to bump all video settings to max. and roll 60+ FPS with it.

Nowadays, on most modern games, I have to lower my video settings to a certain degree to maintain a steady 60 FPS gameplay, so I'm looking for some advice on which settings are the most demanding.

When opening a game, and going into it's settings menu, what video settings do you guys lower (or disable) in order to gain more FPS, and in what order?

What are in your opinion settings that have the most impact on FPS while barely giving any graphical difference?

[mine18 2]

First things first, don't use Ultra settings as they usually look the same as high and perform a lot worse.
From there, I may go back and forth to compare each setting and see which one is not that noticeable, usually something like hair, reflections, sometimes terrain quality. You really have to go one by one and see which one isn't that useful.
What I really prefer is lowering the resolution, because lower settings can be more noticable than a lower resolution, and if the game in question offers resolution scaling or upscaling of some sort, that makes the decision a lot easier.

[Aemony 150]

Shadows is probably the first thing I tend to lower as that often ends up quite demanding with little actual impact of the overall visual quality.

And volumetric fog if that's an option.

Newer settings like global illumination (world lighting, basically) can also have a huge impact on performance, though lowering it usually comes with a much higher impact to the overal visual quality.