While Nvidia isn’t exactly a software company, they’ve built some pretty good utilities to manage the many GPUs the company makes. However, with so many settings at hand, it might be confusing to dial in the best possible settings for a particular setup.
In this article, we’re going over the many settings available in Nvidia’s Control Panel to help you decide the best possible settings for your rig.
Also read: Nvidia Control Panel missing: 7 fixes
Best Nvidia Control Panel settings
Here are the numerous 3D settings that you can change in the Nvidia control panel and their effects. The table below will help you understand what each of these controls in the Nvidia panel does and whether or not you should have them enabled.

Setting | Description | Recommended setting |
---|---|---|
Image Sharpening | Controls the overall sharpness of images and visual quality of games. | Enabled |
Ambient Occlusion | Improves the depth perception and provides soft shadows for in-game objects | Performance |
Anisotropic filtering | Improves the overall image quality by eliminating blurred textures at certain camera angles | Application Controlled. |
Antialiasing FXAA | Improves in-game visuals while reducing performance effect on other aliasing settings | Disabled |
Antialiasing Gamma Correction | Controls gamma correction for antialiasing | Enabled |
Antialiasing mode | Controls how antialiasing is applied in-game | Application Controlled |
CUDA GPUs | Lets you select where CUDA cores are used | All |
DSR-Factors | DSR or Dynamic Super Resolution enhances the image quality by rendering images at a higher resolution | Disabled |
Low Latency Mode | Reduces latency by limiting the number of frames for the CPU before the GPU can process them | Enabled |
Max Frame Rate | Limits the FPS to a certain number such as 60 or 120 | Enabled |
Monitor Compatibility | Allows for control of an external monitor’s refresh rate policy | Enable if you have a G-Sync compatible monitor |
Multi-Frame Sampled AA | Makes sample patterns appear irregular | Disabled |
OpenGL Rendering GPU | Selects the GPU for OpenGL applications | Should be set to your Nvidia GPU |
Power Management Mode | Determines the GPU performance according to the power plan | Maximum Performance |
Preferred Refresh Rate | Lets you override the refresh rate in full-screen programs | Should be set to highest available |
Shader Cache | Saves CPU usage by making a shader cache and fetching data from it instead | Enabled |
Texture Filtering – Anisotropic Sample Optimization | Limits the number of anisotropic samples used per texture pixel size | Enabled |
Texture Filtering – Negative LOD Bias | Used to sharpen stationary images and enable texture filtering | Enabled |
Texture Filtering – Quality | Lets users change texture filtering quality | High Performance |
Texture Filtering – Trilinear Optimisation | Allows better texture filtering performance by allowing bilinear filtering | Enabled |
Threaded Optimisation | Allows the program to use multiple CPU cores | Auto |
Triple Buffering | Allows triple buffering for games and other OpenGL programs | Disabled |
Vertical Sync | Controls how the GPU render rate interfaces with the refresh rate of a given monitor | Disabled |
Virtual Reality Pre–Rendered Frames | Limites the number of frames the CPU can generate before being processed by the GPU | 1 |
Configure Surround, PhysX Settings | PhysX settings | No change required |
Also read: Nvidia Control Panel access denied: 6 fixes