I always get rid of motion blur and depth of field.

I used to use resolution to control frame rates as well (but stopped doing this when my CRT monitor finally gave up and I had to join the flat panel world). Other than that, I'd tone down AA before resorting to tweak guides to see what the best balance gets - or sometimes I use the Geforce Experience programme to get a steer before tweaking myself.

Usually, I try to keep all other effects on, but I have just played Shadow Warrior (2013) - has anyone managed to play that with mirrors turned on?!

I usually play everything to a minimum when needed (turning off features when the option to be turned off is present), similar to what NoNewTaleToTell has said. Also, resolution tends to be wonky since sometimes even lowering it is not enough. But I agree, it zooms in things way too much for me to appreciate the game when it's low enough so I leave it alone until it's a last resort. I also do not change bit quality much from default, it's been a weird experience so that is almost on level with resolution in terms of priority. Sometimes, I also play games in windowed mode, it helps in some cases. Usually, turning off all programs while playing a game is enough with framerate while leaving settings to default. If the game lags with everything to a minimum, it not worth the effort to run until I can run it on a better device.

Also - does anyone actually like motion blur and DOF? Those plus bloom seem to have met with universal distaste from people here (myself included).

One does not simply "turn off" Licurg.

I tried playing one of the NFS games with the blur on. Yeah....that was bad! Closest I've ever come to have an epileptic seizure.

Shadows
Grass
Water
Motion blur
Bloom

Heck, if I have a game with issues, I'll set everything to low or off and then start adding things to see where the problem lies. As long as I can handle the way a game looks and plays, I can do without lots of the extraneous stuff.

I liked the DOF effect in Darksiders. It gave a feeling of distance in some of the larger areas where you had a horse.

You've never been drunk, have you... but I know what you mean. The effect surely isn't completely unrealistic but it's certainly usually overused.

True, but obviously something gets a bit blurry, though, when it moves quickly through our field of vision and we don't / are unable to track it with our eyes. Most games overuse motion blur but for example Resident Evil 5 made in my opinion fantastic use of it. There is no blur when just running and looking around but it's used to underline quick motions of stuff on screen. It's mostly used in a rather subtle manner but does wonders to some enemy animations like a hammer (or axe, not sure) swung by a huge fella in the first level. I think that blur is what makes me squint every single time whenever that hammer (or axe, still not sure) is swung just past the camera. To me it does actually feel much more "real" due to the blur.

...ill get the electric razor

everything, id rather have bare minimum effect rather than low fps (not if my pc have great gfx card to begin with) .esp bloom effect, that always make me headache

Completely off topic but the BEST drunk effect I have ever seen was in The Witcher... Staggering swaying screen with forced twisting movement... so perfect!

Sacrifice time and money instead.

Hardware get better and cheaper with time, so while waiting for hardware capable to run top games to be affordable, let's clear our backlog instead.

Probably bloom and motion blur. I usually just leave Vsync on because screen tearing is god awful, but if it isn't that bad (or I'm playing an online game) I turn it off.

I'm willing to sacrifice pretty much everything if I can get the game to play on a tablet. On the other hand I don't buy games with high requirements anyway.