How TargetFPS works
Select your hardware and target framerate, pick a game — the optimizer produces a recommended settings configuration in seconds. Here's exactly what's happening under the hood.
Step by step
You describe your rig
GPU, CPU, RAM, resolution, and the framerate you're targeting. The GPU is the primary variable — it determines which anchor benchmarks apply. CPU and RAM inform bottleneck adjustments (some games are heavily CPU-bound; TargetFPS accounts for that).
The engine finds your baseline FPS
Each game has a set of anchor benchmarks — real measured framerates for specific GPU + resolution + quality preset combinations, sourced from TechPowerUp, Hardware Unboxed, Digital Foundry, and other independent outlets. The engine interpolates your GPU's position in the performance tier model to estimate your baseline at the game's reference preset.
Settings are costed individually
Every setting level in every game has a fractional FPS cost — for example, enabling Ultra shadows might cost 14% of baseline, while dropping from High to Medium textures costs 4%. These costs are derived from controlled benchmark comparisons and scaled to your hardware tier. The engine builds a complete cost map for the game.
A configuration is optimised to hit your target
Starting from the highest quality preset, the engine iteratively adjusts settings — prioritising those with the best visual-quality-per-FPS-cost trade-off — until your target framerate is met. Settings with negligible visual impact (motion blur, chromatic aberration) are dropped first; high-impact visual features (textures, shadows) are preserved as long as possible.
Results are surfaced with explanations
The dial counts up to your estimated FPS. The "Biggest wins" callout surfaces the two or three settings that recovered the most frames for the least visual cost — the headline changes worth making immediately. The settings table then shows every recommended value with its FPS cost, impact tag, and a per-game rationale note so you understand the "why."
Reading the results
- The dial
- The large FPS number that counts up on load is your estimated average framerate at the recommended configuration. It's derived from the anchor benchmarks for your specific hardware and game — not a theoretical maximum.
- Biggest wins
- The gold callout above the settings table shows the settings where flipping a single option recovers the most frames. Green "+NN fps" figures are the estimated gain from that specific change versus the next tier up.
- Impact tags
- Heavy — this setting has a large FPS cost; it's the main budget item. Low cost — high visual quality, small FPS penalty. Adds fps — upscalers and optimizations that actively increase framerates below their native equivalent.
- Setting notes
- The "In [Game]:" note on each setting row explains how that specific game implements the feature — why the cost is what it is, what the visual trade-off looks like, and when you'd want to override the recommendation.
Data quality tiers
Not all games have the same depth of benchmark coverage. Each game page links its data sources at the bottom. In general:
Setting cost data (the per-option FPS percentages) is sourced from controlled single-variable benchmark comparisons where available, and from developer or community documentation otherwise. We update these as games are patched and new data becomes available.
Hardware landscape (Steam Survey, May 2026)
Our recommendations are calibrated against real-world hardware distribution. The Steam Hardware Survey (May 2026) shows the PC gaming market looks like this:
Source: Steam Hardware & Software Survey, May 2026. Data is self-reported by Steam users and skews toward systems that run Steam — it undercounts non-Steam storefronts but is the best available proxy for the PC gaming hardware landscape.
Upscaling (DLSS, FSR, XeSS)
Upscalers are treated as first-class settings rather than a last resort. When your GPU supports DLSS, FSR, or XeSS, the optimizer will recommend the appropriate quality tier as a primary FPS lever — not a fallback after all other settings are exhausted. A well-calibrated upscaler at Quality mode typically recovers 25–50% of frame time with minimal visible sharpness loss at 1440p and above.
Frame Generation (DLSS 3/4, FSR 3) is handled separately — it multiplies perceived framerate but adds latency. The optimizer surfaces it where supported but flags that it should be paired with NVIDIA Reflex or equivalent latency reduction.
Something look wrong?
If you see an FPS estimate or setting recommendation that doesn't match your experience, let us know: contact@targetfps.com.