This section takes a close look at the graphical options in Warframe, 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 expect to increase performance by 20%. Instead, the increase would likely be somewhere from 12-18% total.
As an additional last point before we get into it, there is a difference between PvE and PvP performance—based on the connection speed and the number of players which are in your field of view at any given time. Plus, some of the newer areas (from the Fortuna update) are graphically more intensive, usually to the tune of up to 30-40% less frames at 4K, with the intensity of the impact scaling down to around 10-15% at 1080p. This is fundamentally why, although comparison shots below are in the standard mission areas, the example builds above have been designed with the Fortuna update in mind.
Quality Preset
A simpler option for those of you who don't like messing between various settings, there are Low, Medium and High presets already in the game for your use. Most obvious changes come in lighting and texture detail.
Performance Impact: ~100% between Low and High
Drag the bar to compare Quality Preset on Low and High.
Runtime Tessellation
This setting allows for higher detail models to be loaded based on the player position in the world. If you're mainly a melee player, you might find this setting easier to turn off so that the engine doesn't have to work so hard placing you as you're zipping around the world. If you're like me and prefer sniping, leave it on for some lovely details when scoped!
Performance Impact: ~5% between Off and On
Local and Blur Reflections
Again, the impact here is very different depending on play style. If you prefer ranged, then you can feel free to leave this on. If you love your melee and like to be in motion, turn these off if you want to save yourself some performance.
Performance Impact: ~5% between Off and On
Volumetric Lighting
This setting is all about those lovely light rays and fog effects. As a lot of these environments have a significant amount of both, turning this off can really help your performance if you're struggling. In the example shot, take a look at how the smoke lights up significantly brighter when this is turned on as the light interacts with it, whereas with this turned off you can hardly notice the smoke at all.
Performance Impact: ~5% between Off and On
Drag the bar to compare Volumetric Lighting Off and On.
High Dynamic Range
HDR displays a broader spectrum of colors. This is something that's really nice if you have a good quality monitor capable of HDR—otherwise, it's a bit of a waste. In the example shot, the open space with significantly different light levels results in a noticeably different scene with HDR off, especially with the cavern walls and the amount of light being cast and highlighted.
Performance Impact: ~10% between Off and On
Drag the bar to compare High Dynamic Range Off and On.
Adaptive Exposure
Like HDR, this can have a very different impact on your performance depending on the environment—but it's more about how naturally light interacts with the environment, and looks balanced from the perspective of the player. In the example shot, it's very obvious from the direct light sources, yet the observant among you might be able to pick out the differences on the cavern wall as well.
Performance Impact: ~5% between Off and On
Drag the bar to compare Adaptive Exposure Off and On.
Glare and Film Grain
Glare is something you won't notice under normal circumstances; you really only pick up on it in environments where you go directly from dark indoors to very bright outdoors. But even then, it does not have a noticeable performance impact, so it's personal choice. Likewise for film grain. It's more noticeable at 4K, but at 1080p and 1440p it's not really in the way, like (for example) what you might see in Mass Effect.
Performance Impact: No noticeable FPS change between Off and On
Ambient Occlusion
This can have a high impact on your performance if you enter a large space with lots of detail, mainly because this setting handles how light interacts with surfaces. In the comparison, look at how having a little more accuracy on light and shadows can have an impact on how the mountains, buildings, and plants appear.
Performance Impact: ~10% between Off and On
Drag the bar to compare Ambient Occlusion Off and On.
Dynamic Resolution
By default, this is set to 100%, meaning the game is rendered at whatever resolution of monitor you're playing on. However, you can lower this down to as much as 50% of the original resolution, which (as you might imagine) can have a high performance benefit at the cost of a significant loss in quality. (This loss in quality can be a bit hard to detect in our screenshots, which are below the in-game resolution.)
Performance Impact: ~25-75% between 50 and 100 (depending on native monitor resolution)
Drag the bar to compare Dynamic Resolution on 50 and 100.
Shadow Quality
Does what it says on the tin: impacts the quality of the shadows. This is not very noticeable on player shadows, but has a very noticeable impact when combined with having other light-specific settings enabled also.
Performance Impact: ~5% between Low and High
Drag the bar to compare Shadow Quality on Low and High.
Filtering and Anti-Aliasing
Lastly, these settings have been grouped together as—although there are 4 different options all-told—going from the maximum options to everything turned off will only total to a 8-12% jump in performance. Not to mention that you can actual reduce these as you go for higher in-game/monitor resolutions, as it can cancel out the need for additional smoothness due to the massive increase in detail displayed.
Performance Impact: ~10% between Off and on Anti-Aliasing Anisotropic (16x) with TAA 8x (and 100% TAA Sharpen)
Drag the bar to compare Filterting Off and on Anisotropic (16x) with TAA 8x (and 100% TAA Sharpen).