WARDOGS Playtest FPS Optimization & Full Breakdown Comparison

Overall Quality

Overall quality has the largest graphic impact, Although it’s a little hard to tell the difference between all the different graphics options, mainly because of the changing weather and lighting conditions. However, most of the visual chains come from moving between low and potato, which removes a lot of the reflections, shadows, and things like that. Most of the graphic options look really good and perform as good as each other. For the most part, set it to what you would expect, with medium being the best middle ground.

Shadows

Shadows has the largest non-upscaling graphic performance difference. For the most part, there’s very little change between these settings besides slightly lower resolution shadows, especially noticeable on distant buildings, until you get to low where shadows are entirely removed from just about everything, making it look like a cheap mobile game. For the most part, performance-wise, there’s no difference from low to highs, so leave this maxed out.

Global Illumination

Global illumination has two states: enabled and disabled. With it turned off, the game looks a little bit too flat and dark. I’d recommend leaving this enabled, even though it does come with a pretty big performance hit, as long as your PC can afford that. If not, preferably disable this and leave shadows enabled for a big performance boost.

Effects

Effects is very hard to benchmark as there’s few places with constant fire, sparks, etc. At least that I could find. And for the most part, on this crashed heli, there wasn’t too much difference between these graphics options, with most of the change likely coming from the changing environment as players moved around, explosions, etc. Changing the effects option didn’t change the frequency or amount of sparks coming from the helicopter nor smoke, so I’m not too sure what this changes. But visuals and performance-wise, it doesn’t seem like too much.

Shading

Shading is the main setting that causes the game to need a restart upon changing presets. So, getting to the same server with the same weather and time environment is very difficult, especially considering how servers fill up so quickly. For the most part, performance does increase steadily as you lower this option, and visuals-wise, there’s not too much noticeable change between these. So, you should feel comfortable playing on anything from potato to high. If you need ball performance, have it set to potato. Otherwise, I’d recommend probably medium or high.

Upscaling & AA

Upscaling and anti-aliasing does have the largest non-graphics setting performance impact. And here I’ve benchmarked everything from no anti-aliasing through most of the upscalers using the quality or ultra-quality presets, including at the very end native options like DLAA, FSR3 native, and XESS native.

As you would expect, the native upscaling does come with a pretty big performance cost, DLAA of which is the most performant of the options, but only available on NVIDIA graphics cards. Out of all of the other options, I would recommend choosing a DLSS or FSR3 on quality for the best performance and visuals. Choose a DLSS on NVIDIA graphics cards.

Mesh Detail

Mesh detail changes how nanite works in the game, and for the most part lowering this option slowly removes different objects in the world, including the ladder in front of me here, changes the quality of the terrain, as well as in the distance, there’s a chain on the table that vanishes as well. Lowering this does remove a couple of decals from the world, making it feel less alive, and most of the performance impact comes from changing it from high to medium. So medium is where I’d recommend you leave it.

Motion Blur

Motion blur currently appears broken as having it enabled or disabled didn’t have a difference even on fast-moving objects. Maybe it only has to do with third-person views for flying jets and things like that. And for the most part, I didn’t see a noticeable performance difference between these, besides the location the helicopter was located.

Post-Processing

Ignore the grass that vanishes when changing the setting. Moving it back up to high did not restore the grass, however, post-processing, as you can see, mostly has to do with the quality of lighting indoors when it comes to ambient occlusion and things like that. For the most part, the changes between these settings aren’t entirely too noticeable, and performance-wise, you should see a relatively big boost coming from lowering it below high, so I’d recommend setting this to medium and leaving it there.

Reflections

Reflections again, lowering the option here changes the resolution of reflections just slightly, and it’s mostly unnoticeable in until Potato, where reflections are completely removed. As these are screen space, they’re incredibly cheap to have. And I’d recommend leaving it on high and forgetting about it. There’s basically no performance difference between these.

Lens Flare

Lens flare on and off didn’t seem to have a difference, even when there were lens flares. This option might currently be broken.

Texture Filtering

Texture filtering changes how textures appear at an angle, and for the most part, visuals-wise, I didn’t notice too much of a difference besides a couple of changing shadows here as time went on. Maybe the terrain in the distance lowers in quality slowly between these options at most, and it’s only really noticeable moving from load to potato. Performance-wise, there’s almost no difference between these, so leaving it high should be fine.

View Distance

View distance is a tough one to gauge. There didn’t seem to be too much difference here. Maybe it’s got to do with even further objects, but at that extreme distance, it’s likely an unnoticeable change, anyways. There is a small performance boost raising it from the higher options to potato, but I’d recommend leaving this on high and forgetting about it. The difference is so small.

Bloom

Bloom does have a noticeable difference with it turned on. Lights do seem a little bit brighter, and performance-wise, you shouldn’t see a difference. Leave this turned on.

Character

The character option changes the quality of clothing, gloves, facial details, etc. on all characters including NPCs, with each step resulting in a slightly more noticeable quality loss. For the incredibly small performance difference, I’d recommend leaving this on medium and forgetting about it. I would assume if you’re VRAM starved, you’ll probably need to have this on the lower end for a pretty big VRAM saving.

Depth of Field

Depth of field also appears broken as of currently. Zooming into an incredibly close object, there didn’t seem to be a difference in the distance.

Particle Spawn Rate

Polycle spawn rate again is very difficult to measure. Here I use the same helicopter. Changing the option, I think, maybe on the lower options than high. This box came out with less frequency, but for the most part, this setting has unnoticeable changes. Leave it high and forget about it.

Bloom Quality

Bloom quality didn’t seem to have any noticeable visual impact between the settings, and performance-wise, it’s almost exactly the same. Leave it up and forget about it.

World

Finally, the world option seems to speak about larger changes. However, I didn’t see all that much difference here for the most part, performance and visuals-wise. This option might currently be broken, but I assume leaving this on the higher end, especially if you have enough VRAM available, should be more than fine. You can lower this for probably a slight VRAM saving, but that’s likely it.