WARDOGS Best Settings: How to Tune Your PC

Choose a baseline you can return to

Use the official FPS targets alongside your hardware. They include rendering conditions, so “1080p” or “Medium” alone is not enough to reproduce the stated target.

Take screenshots of the graphics pages before changing anything. Include the selected preset and individual values, because choosing a preset and then adjusting one option can leave you with a custom configuration that the preset name no longer describes.

Choose what you want to improve: sustained frame rate, interruptions during play, or visibility. If the game closes, or your character is moved back while the camera remains smooth, use the FPS diagnosis table to select the appropriate investigation first.

Give each change a fair comparison

Begin with a resolution test

Try a temporary reduction in resolution, followed by a similar section of gameplay. A repeatable FPS increase makes graphics workload a useful area to investigate. Little change means that further cuts to image quality may be unproductive; it does not identify a single cause.

Compare individual graphics controls

After that, work through individual controls shown in your current build. If it offers separate shadow, effects or distance settings, choose one and move it a single step before comparing again. These are candidates for a test, not a ranked list of WARDOGS performance gains.

Keep the camera view and activity as similar as practical. An empty road followed by an explosion-filled objective is not a useful before-and-after comparison. When the fight changes too much, save the setting and wait for another comparable opportunity instead of declaring a result.

Steam's performance monitor can show FPS history, utilization and memory information through Settings → In Game. Use the same view of the monitor throughout your comparison. ^{[02]EVIDENCE / 02Valve: Steam In-Game Performance MonitorOpen source (opens in a new tab)}

Check the picture as well as the number

Inspect a distant moving player, the edges of nearby cover and any labels you use during combat. A configuration that produces more frames but makes your usual sight picture harder to read may fail your original goal.

If the current build offers an upscaling choice, compare it separately from the overall preset. Record the exact mode shown in the menu. Changing both at once makes it harder to tell which change affected the result.

For a practical acceptance check, ask whether the improvement persists during aiming and movement, whether the original pause still occurs, and whether you can comfortably read the interface. Stop when the setup meets your needs. You do not need to spend the remaining test window optimizing an already usable result.

Keep a settings record for the next build

A compact record makes a later regression easier to investigate:

After a patch or driver update, revisit the baseline before copying every old adjustment. If one new value makes the result worse, restore that value from your screenshots. If you have lost track of several changes, return to the recorded baseline and start a smaller comparison.