Getting in

Settings, and what each one costs

WARDOGS ships a deep options menu. The studio has published what it changed about performance, but no recommended preset, so this page keeps the two apart: the changelog first, then four settings guides — which agree on six sliders and contradict each other on six more.

A first-person view down a muddy alley between sheds in morning haze, weapon raised at a distant figure. — A first-person view down a muddy alley between sheds in haze, weapon raised toward a distant figure. Screenshot: BULKHEAD / Team17, via the Steam store page.

What the launch build changed

Frame generation can be turned off without restarting the game, and the render target pool became configurable.
Shadow cache refreshes were reduced, which the changelog ties to hitching when you take control of a character.
“Shadow quality is now clamped to Low on high benchmark scores rather than being switched off entirely.”
Two crash paths in the frame generation pipeline were fixed, and a legacy graphics dependency was removed.
“Improved startup reliability, with clearer messages when something fails early and a route to recovery.”

All five listed in Steam announcement — Pre-Load Live & Season 1 Changelog A later patch adds only that more GPU crashes were addressed. From Steam announcement — Scheduled Maintenance & Patch 0.11

The game overrules you here

That shadow clamp is the interesting one, because it is the only place in the changelog where the build decides for you. The wording is specific: on high benchmark scores shadow quality is held at Low instead of being switched off. It says nothing about machines that benchmark lower, and the studio did not give a reason.

What four guides agree on

IGN, Overgear, G2A and a benchmark video land in the same place on these six. None of it is the studio’s advice, and the benchmark was recorded in the closed beta rather than the launch build.

Setting	Where they land	Who says so
Global illumination	Off	All four turn it off. The benchmark is the only one that put a number on it: about 20 per cent.
Post-processing	Low	All four. The benchmark measured roughly 3 per cent between Low and the higher presets, so this one is about the image, not the frames.
Reflections	Low, or off entirely	IGN and Overgear say Low; G2A and the benchmark drop to Potato and say the difference is hard to see.
Picture-in-picture scope	Off	Overgear, G2A and the benchmark, which measured about 30 per cent because the scope renders the view twice. IGN does not cover it.
Motion blur	Off	IGN, Overgear and G2A. The benchmark turns it off too, but says that is taste rather than a measurement.
VSync	Off	IGN, Overgear and G2A all give input latency as the reason. The benchmark does not cover it.

Where they contradict each other

These six get presented as settled advice by whichever guide you happen to read first. They are not settled, and two of them — Reflex and textures — are straight opposites rather than differences of degree.

Setting	What each one says
Shadows	IGN: Low Overgear: Low, raised to Medium if the frame rate already holds G2A: Medium a benchmark video: Medium: Low measured the same as High, but goes pixelated at distance
View distance	IGN: Medium Overgear: High, because the sightlines are long G2A: High if performance allows, otherwise Medium a benchmark video: Medium: it mostly moves tree lines, not players
Textures	IGN: Low on all five texture sliders Overgear: High if the VRAM is there G2A: High if VRAM permits, filtering at Medium
Upscaling	IGN: DLSS on Ultra Performance Overgear: Quality first, Balanced when that is not enough G2A: Quality, and avoid the aggressive modes a benchmark video: Balanced or Quality, depending on the boost you need
NVIDIA Reflex	IGN: Disabled Overgear: Enabled G2A: Enabled on supported GPUs a benchmark video: Its own test ran more consistently with Reflex off
Depth of field	IGN: On, at Low quality Overgear: Off, to keep distant areas sharp G2A: Off

Two more worth knowing

Frame limit. All four leave it unlimited by default. Overgear, G2A and the benchmark add the same exception: cap it if your frame rate swings, because steady frame times feel better than a higher peak.
Field of view. Overgear settles on 95, G2A on 95 to 110, and the benchmark on 100 for itself — or 60 if frames are all you care about, which is the only place any of them measured FOV at all. IGN gives no number. The tradeoff they all describe is the same: wider sees more, and makes distant players smaller.

Before you blame the settings

Hardware first: the published minimum and recommended tiers each come with the resolution, preset and frame rate the studio claims for them, and measured frame rates on real PCs show how other hardware fares in a crowded match. If the game will not start at all, or dies with a code, that is a different problem — error codes and crashes. And if you play on a pad, the input settings are on the controller page.