A practical order of operations that works in almost any game.
When a game runs below your target, most people either drag everything to Low (ugly, and often unnecessary) or lower settings at random (slow, and often useless). There's a better order — the same one the FrameCoach optimizer follows, adapted per game:
DLSS or FSR on Quality mode is the largest single gain available — typically 25–40% — at the smallest visual cost. Details in the upscaling guide.
If the game has RT and you're short on frames, this decision usually outweighs every other setting combined. RT is a luxury for GPUs with headroom, not a baseline.
Drop each one notch at a time — Ultra→High→Medium — checking FPS as you go. Ultra tiers of these settings are consistently the worst value in PC gaming: large costs for differences you need side-by-side screenshots to see.
Texture quality costs almost no GPU time — only memory. If your card has the VRAM, keep textures high even on a budget GPU; it's the setting that most defines how good a game looks. If you're over budget, one notch down fixes stutter instantly. (See VRAM explained.)
GPU sitting under 85% usage? Settings were never your problem — crowd density, draw distance and physics options are the only menu items that touch the CPU. The bottleneck guide covers the diagnosis.
Anisotropic filtering (free — max it), motion blur / film grain / vignette / depth of field (taste, not performance), and anti-aliasing in most modern games (TAA is cheap and turning it off mostly adds shimmer). Field of view costs a little, but play what feels right — comfort beats frames.