I think there was a similar discussion earlier, but The Witcher 3 requirements discussion sparked this again:

Which are the graphical settings you are willing to sacrifice in order to get an ok framerate?

For me the top three probably are:

1. depth of field, motion blur and such useless effects, if there are any

2. (edge) antialising (MSAA, CSAA, whatever there is): I don't mind that much if there are some jaggies, as long as the game is not ultra-low res. I rather use a higher resolution, than use AA, if I have to choose between the two.

3. Resolution. Yep, I guess e.g. 1280x720 is fine by me, even if I'd prefer full 1920x1080. I don't even consider 4xHD resolutions at this point, especially on computer monitors.

After that it becomes a bit harder to decide. I wouldn't want to use e.g. poorer quality textures, but I think that will become an issue only if there is not enough VRAM, not so much about the GPU or CPU speed. I dislike fuzzy unclear textures.

None. I really have so many games to play that I'm more likely to wait for a PC upgrade than make a significant graphical sacrifice :D If I just need to bump the framerate a bit, it's usually postprocessing stuff, AA and AF

I would lower everything to minimum if needed, but antialising would be the first thing I would turn down and resolution would be the last thing I turn down.

To me a perfect framerate is always more important than graphics anyway.

those 3 pretty much

i dont care for motion blur

im fine with 2x or 4 x AA

and i can play a game just fine in 1280x 860 or lower
as long as the game fills the screen im fine ( unless its 640x800 i refuse to play like that )

indifferent about textures too

This is a really hard question. Even with a 970, there are still games that won't max out (eg. The Talos Principle).

Motion blur always goes off. I really just do not like motion blur.

I will never, ever lower resolution.

If I must I might lower AA a bit.

Also, I don't mind too much about reducing bloom and lens flare.

Anti Aliasing, unless SMAA is available I find other methods either too taxing or completely smoothing out the image so that detail is lost.

Motion Blur - I've never really liked anyway.

Ultra High Textures - I usually get by on high, but nowadays they require video cards with 4GB of RAM in some cases.

PhysX - Can sometimes add very little to the game at the cost of significant framerate (This is what I found with AC: Black Flag)

The first thing I "sacrifice" is depth of field and motion blur. But that's not for performance reasons (I simply don't like it).

If performance isn't satisfactory, I'll lower the SSAO (ambient occlusion), AA, particles and reflections settings, together with the resolution of the shadows (as long as they don't get blocky). I never turn off those features completely though!

After that (if still necessary), I lower the resolution to 1600x900. I wouldn't go lower with the resolution when it's a game that I play on my PC screen. If it's a game that I play on my TV, I'd go down to 720p. I've played Final Fantasy XIII on my TV and didn't notice that it was 720p when the whole Internet was whining about a "bad port" :P

I'd never accept to go lower than the maximum on all render distances! I really, really, really hate when I see things popping up in front of me.

If all of this doesn't suffice, the game goes to my backlog until I upgrade my PC (happened only once, when I still got my 9600GT).

Not that long ago i watched a comparison of Sacred 2 with the PhysX enabled. It enabled lots of little particles that you would affect, swirling around you, leaves blowing in the wind, leaving trails behind you from the leaves, etc. All in all for what all it added vs what it needed, it did seem like the most bloated unneeded thing...

Then again i first played Sacred 2 on the 360 where PhysX wasn't an option...

You forgot to name the shadows and the dynamic lighting. Those two have a big impact on performances.

First thing I do is set AA to x2. Next thing I do is turn off ambient occlusion which may or may not even be perceivable but uses up ridiculous amounts of GPU time. Next thing is probably depth of field which also often has an absurd performance impact (Witcher 2, anyone?) and which is often used very badly.

I absolutely try to avoid to remove details from the game world. Also for years I had a rule that I would never reduce texture resolution but by now texture resolution has gotten so high in some games that I barely see a difference between say "very high" and "max" settings (in Ground Zeroes, among others) and am willing to make sacrifices even there. Depends on their quality and implementation. After all, we've had them since like 2004, whether changing their settings has much of an impact really depends on the game.

Shadow and Bloom

I turn off Bloom anyway; annoys the shit out of me.

I know what you mean but like Depth of Field it's a feature that can either look atrocious or have an amazing effect depending on how the devs used it. Like with many other effects the common problem is that it's overused.

I'm not a graphics whore, but can you really "not perceive" ambient occlusion in some games? Yes, it's a very big hit for the performance, but it is one of the very few "recent" features that I don't want to miss. I think I turned it on and off in almost every game I have and I always found it makes a huge difference.

Honestly, in most games I *barely* see it, often only if I really focus on it or have a side by side comparison. I guess it depends a lot on the game (and maybe I just play the wrong ones). This example illustrates it pretty well. Yes I see it, yes the image on the right looks much more realistic/cinematic or whatever you want to call it but does it justify one of the biggest single performance hits you can take? Another example. Yeah it does add some nice contrasts, makes the image seemingly more detailed and nicer to look at. But it's also the first thing I'm going to sacrifice because there's no chance I'm gonna consciously notice that stuff during gameplay.

And most examples where you can see big visual benefits from ambient occlusion are ones that lack other effects or details. Like here. The reason the difference is so big is that the bushes don't cast any shadows. If there were soft shadows for the bushes I probably wouldn't even see the dark accents that AO added to the image (without focussing really hard on a side-by-side comparison, I guess).

So please don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that it's completely unperceivable, "the brain can't process more than 30 FPS" kind of bullshit. I know what it does, I know why it does it and that it's a cool thing but compared to everything else you can usually regulate in a game it doesn't contribute that much - and it *does* eat up a lot of performance, certainly more than many more essential effects or details.

Motion blur can get the fuck out of any game I play. I also rarely use VSync and Antialiasing might sometimes get the axe.