We have gone through the settings and tested their performance impact, and given a subjective opinion on how much visual impact we think they have. You can optimize your settings by turning up the settings with high visual impact and lower performance impact, and turning down the settings with low visual impact and high performance impact. Note that the performance numbers will change a bit with different hardware, and visual impact is subjective. So it's worth doing your own experimenting. A good place to start is to use the "Recommended" button, which will do a good job choosing settings for common hardware configurations.
Settings are ordered according to performance impact:
1. Graphics Quality
Visual Impact: Very High
Performance Impact: Very High, up to 60%
These are the graphical "presets." Maximum has everything turned all the way up, and looks very pretty. Minimum runs more than twice as fast and can help WoT run on a low-end system, but it looks ugly. If you don't want to mess with all the advanced settings, the medium and high settings do a decent job of balancing performance and appearance.
Drag to compare the Minimum preset to the Low Preset.
Low has more foliage, and the terrain is less flat.
Drag to compare the Medium preset to the High Preset.
Lighting improves moving up to Medium, and smoke no longer clips into the terrain. Moving up to High, lighting once again improves noticeably.
Drag to compare the High preset to the Maximum Preset.
Moving up to Maximum, lighting improves again, and foliage is denser.
2. 3D Render Resolution
Drag to compare 3D Render Resolution 60% to 100%.
Visual Impact: High
Performance Impact: High, up to 35%
This allows you to change the resolution of the 3D parts of the game. Lowering this setting can greatly improve your performance, but it will also make the game look blurry. It is similar to lowering your screen resolution or window size, except that changing 3D Render Resolution will not affect the 2D game interface (ammo count, minimap, aiming cursor, etc). This allows you to scale the interface separately. If you don’t mind the blurriness and want more performance, this can be a reasonable way to get it. The Dynamic adjustment will automatically adjust this setting as-needed, and is a good option. If you have a reasonably powerful system, leave it at 100%.
3. Screen Resolution / Window Size
Visual Impact: High
Performance Impact: High, up to about 35%
Rendering at a lower resolution means fewer pixels have to be calculated, greatly reducing the load on your graphics card. However, you also lose a lot of visual detail. And if your monitor has trouble scaling, or if you pick the wrong aspect ratio, the image can get stretched. It’s better to use the very similar 3D Render Resolution setting, so keep this at the native resolution of your screen unless you desperately need better performance.
4. Vertical Synchronization (Vsync)
Visual Impact: Moderate
Performance Impact: Depends, Low to very high (50%)
This setting synchronizes your framerate with your monitor's refresh rate to eliminate “screen tearing.” Your monitor can’t display more frames than its refresh rate, so if your FPS is consistently higher than your Display Refresh Rate, you can turn this setting on. Otherwise, turn it off, because it can cut your FPS in half.
4a. Triple buffering
Triple buffering uses a bit of extra RAM to greatly reduce the penalty for your FPS dipping below your monitor’s refresh rate. If you have Vsync enabled, turn on triple buffering.
5. Shadow Quality
Visual Impact: High
Performance Impact: High, up to 25%
This setting determines the quality of shadows in the game. Turning off the shadows looks really bad, but even the low setting looks pretty good, and reduces the performance impact to about 7%. Turning shadows to Low is one of the first things I would do to improve performance.
Drag to compare shadows Off to Low.
Drag to compare shadow quality Low to Maximum.
Not a very noticeable difference going from Low to Maximum, but this costs about 18% of your performance.
6. Antialiasing
Visual Impact: High
Performance Impact: Moderate, up to 15%
Antialiasing removes the annoying jagged edges of lines (jaggies). Some people can’t stand jaggies, while others don’t mind them, so whether AA is worth the performance impact is up to you.
Drag to compare AA Off to FXAA.
The FXAA implementation in World of Tanks is better than nothing, and is very light on performance.
Drag to compare FXAA to TSSAA-HQ.
TSSAA-HQ is much nicer, but also has a bigger drain on performance, giving a performance hit of roughly 15%.
7. Lighting Quality
Visual Impact: Moderate
Performance Impact: Moderate, up to 11%
Makes the lighting more or less realistic in subtle ways. It doesn’t look like a whole lot in the screenshots, but having lighting turned on higher makes the world feel more real and less flat. Low seems to be the same as Off, but the rest of the settings all the way up to Maximum make the lighting noticeably better. I like to keep it at maximum. This does not affect fires, explosions, or muzzle blasts.
Drag to compare Lighting Quality Off to Medium.
Drag to compare Lighting Quality Medium to Maximum.
8. Flora Density
Visual Impact: Moderate
Performance Impact: Low, up to 7%
This determines the density of grass and small bushes. Having this on higher settings makes the world look much less flat. This setting does not affect the bushes and trees that tanks can hide behind.
8a. Grass in Sniper Mode
This allows you to disable the grass and other flora in Sniper mode only—useful if you have bad performance in Sniper mode.
Drag to compare Flora Density Off to Maximum.
9. Extra Effects
Visual Impact: High
Performance Impact: Low, up to 6%
If you like your fiery explosions, muzzle blasts, and fires, this is the setting for you. Even low looks very nice and has less than a 3% performance impact, but I like to turn this all the way up.
Drag to compare Extra Effects Off to Low.
Drag to compare Extra Effects Low to Maximum.
10. Decals Quality
Visual Impact: Low
Performance Impact: Low, up to 5%
This influences lots of little extra details around the map. Having this turned up will make everything a little more detailed, but it’s not a huge difference.
Drag to compare Decals Minimum to Maximum.
11. Motion Blur Effect
Visual Impact: Low
Performance Impact: Low, up to 5%
Motion blur appears when driving or moving the camera quickly. Personally, we turn it off.
12. Track Traces
Visual Impact: Low
Performance Impact: Low, up to 5%
These are the marks in the ground left by your tracks. We like the idea of the track traces, but don’t think they are implemented particularly well. They have weird lighting, and they are often disappearing right in front of you, which breaks immersion. We turn them off.
13. Water Quality
Visual Impact: Moderate
Performance Impact: Low, up to 5%
Water looks nicer on higher settings. This only affects water, so the impact it has will depend on how much water is on screen.
14. Texture Quality
Visual Impact: High
Performance Impact: Minimal, up to 3%
This affects the detail of textures. Since pretty much everything you look at in the game has textures, this will have a big impact on how crisp things look. The performance impact is very low, as long as your graphics card has enough VRAM: 1GB for 1080p, 1.5GB for 1440p, and 2GB for 4K. If your card has enough VRAM, turn this setting up.
Drag to compare Texture Quality Low to Maximum.
15. Terrain Quality
Visual Impact: Moderate
Performance Impact: Minimal, up to 3%
This affects subtle enhancements to the terrain. The ground has a bit more depth and looks less flat when turned up. It seems like most areas only have two settings, High or Low.
Drag to compare Terrain Detail Low to High.
16. Draw Distance
Visual Impact: Low
Performance Impact: Minimal, up to 3%
This adjusts the distance that objects “pop in” and go from being invisible to visible. It does not affect the distance at which you see tanks. Not much seems to be affected by this setting.
17. Post Processing
Visual Impact: Minimal
Performance Impact: Minimal, up to 2%
This affects the optical distortion shock waves from explosions and muzzle blasts, and other subtle effects. These effects are cool, but not very noticeable.
18. Foliage Quality
Visual Impact: Low
Performance Impact: Minimal, up to 2%
This affects the appearance of trees and bushes. Changing the setting changes the appearance, but it’s not a large difference in visual quality.
Drag to compare Foliage Quality Low to Maximum.
19. Dynamic Change of Effects Quality
Visual Impact: Varies
Performance Impact: Varies, 0-50%
If you enable this setting, the game will attempt to auto-adjust the settings to get you a good balance of smooth framerate and performance. Does a decent job, but you can do better manually.
20. Enable Track Effects
Visual Impact: Low
Performance Impact: Minimal, 1%
This will kick up water, dust, or snow from your tracks.
21. Foliage Transparency
Visual Impact: Minimal
Performance Impact: Minimal, 1%
When the camera is looking through trees or bushes, having this setting on shows a few more transparent leaves.
22. Field of View (FoV)
Visual Impact: Moderate
Performance Impact: Minimal, 2%
This affects how wide a view is shown on the screen at once. A lower Field of View is similar to zooming in, and a higher FoV is similar to zooming out. I like the default setting of 95.
Drag to compare FoV 70° to 120° .