So, you’ve just bought your first GTX 1080 Ti, or maybe your second, or third, dare I say fourth?
My, you have really bad luck with graphics cards, don’t you?
Anyway, that’s not the point.
You’re here to find the best possible settings for your GTX 1080 Ti in the Nvidia control panel.
And we’re here to hook you up with some OP tips and tactics to maximize the power of your GPU.
With these settings, you can expect to get the best possible performance out of your graphics card that you can.
However, keep in mind that your actual in-game settings will have a huge impact on performance, and you’ll have to figure that one out for yourself.
Anyway, let’s get into it!
Nvidia Drivers
First, you’ve gotta start by installing the drivers in the first place, if you already haven’t, by navigating to the driver download page here.
Once on the driver page, simply select your Product Type and Series, then find your graphics card on the Product list.
Then select the operating system you’re using (most likely Windows 10 64-bit), and set the Driver Type to Standard.
Finally, select Game Ready Driver as your download type and hit search.
Now that you’ve reached the download page, hit download and follow the GeForce Experience installation.
GeForce Experience Installation
As is with most program installations, go ahead and agree to the Nvidia End User License Agreement to install. Whether or not you read it is up to you, of course.
Click get started to begin the installation.
Once installed, you’ll need to log in with one of the given options to use the Nvidia GeForce Experience app.
After you’ve logged in, you’ll be given the option to have your games automatically optimized for your GPU. We suggest selecting this option before continuing.
Now that all that’s all done with, head over to drivers and click Download to install the latest Nvidia drivers for your graphics card.
3D Settings
For the first setting, you’ll want to start under 3D Settings > Adjust image settings with preview and click Use my preference emphasizing. Then set the slider to performance.
Then click Apply.
After clicking Apply, under the same tab select Use the advanced 3D image settings and hit Apply again.
Heading over to Manage 3D settings now, we’re going to change a couple of these but leave most of them Default (unless you’ve got other ideas).
The first setting we’ll check here is the CUDA – GPUs.
Just double-click the word All and make sure that your main graphics card is the one checked, then click OK.
This next setting is a little iffy and you may or may not have it, but just in case you don’t see it on your control panel you can ignore this step.
Under Maximum pre-rendered frames select 1. If you have a much older computer, you may want to drop it down to 3 or 4.
Next, we have Power management mode.
Once again, click and scroll to Prefer maximum performance then select it.
For the Preferred refresh rate, set it to the Highest available setting.
Set Texture filtering Quality to High performance.
In our final setting, Threaded optimization, just turn it on.
All of the 3D settings are in place, now click Apply to make sure they all, well, apply.
Display
Under Display > Change resolution, all you want to do is make sure your refresh rate is properly set to the maximum allowed (in my case 60Hz).
Then select your preferred resolution.
Moving on to Adjust desktop color settings, it’s more of a personal preference thing.
You can leave the default selection that allows other applications, such as your monitor, to control the settings. Or select Use NVIDIA settings to customize via the control panel.
From here you can adjust and fine-tune the settings until you find a configuration that works for you. We suggest using an HD landscape image as your desktop background as you adjust.
Also, remember to hit Apply to save your settings once you finish.
Video
Here, again, we have some more optional settings. Though these aren’t really for gaming.
These settings are more for getting the best viewing experience out of videos and movies.
Under Color, you have an array of settings to play with, so just as with the desktop color settings you can adjust to your liking.
The gamma settings are here if you really think you need them, but we don’t suggest partaking.
Here at the end, we have the Advanced settings for Dynamic range.
This setting just allows you to choose the color range for your monitor. Movies will benefit from the Full (0-255) range, as with Limited produces lower quality shadows and highlights.
Well there you go, now you’ve got your PC set up for the most optimized gaming experience via the Nvidia Control Panel, but you may actually not be done yet.
There are many settings we didn’t entirely cover and some that we didn’t even touch at all and we recommend you run through the rest of the settings to just play around and figure out exactly what configurations tickle your fancy.
Who knows, you could have an eye for over-the-top saturation, or maybe you want everything to look washed out and gray for a gloomy day. The possibilities are endless and the choice is all yours in the end.
Just please try not to break everything!