This section takes a close look at the graphical options in Path of Exile, and their effects on the game’s performance.
The ‘performance impact’ in each subsection below is the measured difference in average FPS between playing the game with all settings at their highest and turning only the setting in question down to the lowest (or off) while leaving all others untouched.
It is also worth pointing out that the performance impact is not necessarily perfectly additive. So if disabling one setting increases FPS by 10% and disabling another increases FPS by 10%, disabling both would not be expected to increase performance by 20%. Instead, the increase would likely be somewhere from 12-18% total.
Finally, at 1440p and 4K resolutions, turning some of these settings down or off entirely can have huge performance improvements, but at the cost of a significantly more noticeable drop in visual quality.
For the sake of good indicative screenshots, they were taken from various locations within the tutorial area for quicker comparisons. Performance impacts were then calculated through repeated gameplay at different areas.
Defaults?
So, as you'll see from the second major feature below, when it comes to graphics settings... Path of Exile is its own beast. There are no presets as such, just what the developers have set for the most rounded game experience with the current build.
Some of you with high-end rigs will notice that this in-game 'developer default' isn't actually the maximum settings level, yet bumping these up over what the developer has advised might have a limited improvement on visuals for a noticeable performance hit. So use the settings above the defaults if you absolutely want the best visual experience, even at the risk of lowering your framerate.
Performance impact: Indeterminate (potentially huge difference between minimum settings and default settings, but default varies between PCs)
Dynamic Resolution & Target Framerate
These options are two of the more useful settings for those of you running on older systems, or those just wanting to make sure they hit a minimum performance level in-game.
They work in tandem, and once you have dynamic resolution enabled, you can then set a target framerate for the game. This caps out at 60 FPS as it's essentially designed to give a baseline performance for the game, yet it will default to 30 FPS for higher visuals over smooth gameplay.
It's significantly different to an in-game preset, because this is the game deciding on the fly if your system can handle the current game visuals and adjusting accordingly.
Performance impact: Indeterminate (potentially huge difference between using and not using the setting, but usage varies between PCs)
Anti-Aliasing
Ah, the ol' faithful jaggies setting! This aims to reduce the presence of jagged lines at the edges of things in-game. With a fast-paced action RPG like this, you'll really notice the performance impact of this as more and more mobs are on-screen and you're using the more flashy skills (as the game has to work harder to keep the world and its inhabitants looking sharp as you're running through them).
As you might expect, this setting has a larger performance impact at higher resolutions, as the game works harder to keep the world geometry crisp. On the plus side, AA is less useful at higher resolutions anyway, because the increased detail when rendering the edges of stuff tends to mimic the end result of anti-aliasing.
Performance impact: ~25% between Trilinear and MSAA x8
Drag the bar to compare Anti-Aliasing on Trilinear and MSAA x8.
Lighting and Shadows
There's 4 settings here, and a LOT of it is situation-based, so we're going to break this down a little so that it makes more sense:
1. Lighting type: Shadows and Global Illumination
The global illumination part of this is what will (if anything) have a fixed performance cost. Having this part enabled shows things like glow effects on objects and Ambient Occlusion for the world. What it doesn't touch is the in-game action (spells, death animations, etc). If you're wanting to adjust the quality of the global illumination, then there's a standalone option for adjusting that, but keep in mind its lowest setting is the developer's default setting currently. We would only advise going into the higher options on a very high-performing PC.
2. Number of Lights
This is a big one following on from the shadow settings, as your above fiddling can now be impacted by what you set here. If you leave it on low, only the basic environmental lights will be rendered, essentially so you can see the world you're exploring. The developer default of medium then adds additional sources to things like your skills. So if you're blasting enemies with fireballs, they'll light up the world dynamically as they travel. Finally, the High option is something that (again) is more reserved for heavy-duty rigs, as this now adds an additional dynamic light mode to things that get duplicated on screen (things like exploding projectiles).
Performance impact: ~15% between Low and High
Drag the bar to compare Lighting on Low and High.
Water Detail Level
As you might suspect, this impacts the quality of the water in the game. You'll notice this at higher resolutions if you stop and look at it, but it's not super noticeable at lower settings if you need the boost. Even so, the developers have this on High by default.
Performance impact: ~3% between Low and High
Drag the bar to compare Water Detail on Low and High.
Texture Quality
If you're running on a lower resolution, you're not going to miss this too much—whereas if you're not running the higher quality textures at 1440p and up, you'll see this far more clearly.
Performance impact: ~10% between Low and High
Drag the bar to compare Texture Quality on Low and High.
