What graphic settings do you normally use and why?

Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering off, so I can get more fps. Texture quality High, I would rather decrease resolution than texture quality. Shadow low or lowest because without shadow games feel weird now. Triple buffering and VSync, didnt pay much attention to both. Vsync because my fps is not high enough to make vsync a problem (below 30 fps). Triple buffering, I dont know what it do. FYI, my laptop I use to play games is below today minimum requirements.

everything max except for ambient occlusion,that usually fucks my frames without even being noticeable.
oh,and blur always disabled,always,that shit's annoying.

To be fair I think these settings are highly dependent on your resolution and monitor since on a 4k screen a setting can be visually better while on a random 1920x1080 screen you would barely (or not even) notice the difference between some settings.

AA either to 2× if old game with MSAA or similar; FXAA otherwise.
Texture: highest possible
Shadows: low or medium
AF: 16×
Vsync: preferably off, controlled by driver instead
Triple buffering: does nothing on DirectX and few games use OpenGL or Vulkan, so not using it.
Oh, and resolution is windowed 1600×900 or 1776×1000 on my fullHD monitor.

FO4
Anti-Aliasing = TAA
Texture Quality = High
Shadow Quality = Medium
Anisotropic Filtering = 8 Samples
VSync = Unknown
Triple Buffering = Unknown

ESO
Anti-Aliasing = On
Texture Quality = High
SubSampling Quality= High
Shadow Quality = Ultra
Anisotropic Filtering = Unknown
VSync = Unknown
Triple Buffering = Uknown
Water Reflection = Medium

Farcry 4
Anti-Aliasing = SMAA
Ambient Occlusion = SSAO
Texture Quality = Very High
Shadow Quality = Ultra
Terrain Quality = Ultra
Anisotropic Filtering = Unknown
VSync = Unknown
Triple Buffering = Off

Skyrim: SE
Anti-Aliasing = FXAA
Texture Quality = Medium
Shadow Quality = Medium
Anisotropic Filtering = Unknown
VSync = Unkown
Triple Buffering = Uknown

(All those were pulled from Geforce Experience. Details on the rest would require a launch of the games, or in some cases a look into their ini files)

edit/update: details of my rig can be found on my steam profile - short version though = i7 6700HQ + 960M @ 1920x1080

Settings depend on your personal preference and it will change based on the game and performance. Personally though, I always:

AA on unless it's FXAA
VSync off
Motion Blur off
FOV 100

and then as high settings as I can get as long as I get steady 50 FPS minimum during normal gameplay.

I use 1366x768 (because I have 19" wide monitor and gtx950 which fit perfectly together) and everything pushed to very high or ultra, depending on the game I'm playing.

VSync always on, since it doesn't affect performance (it could drop the FPS to 30, but I prefer that to screen tearing).
Triple Buffering always on: it doesn't really affect performance, and minimizes the disadvantage of VSync.

The other settings are tweaked from game to game, but in order of importance for me:
Texture Quality (in games with huge textures I might avoid the highest presets)
Anisotropic Filtering (significant quality improvement, and most recent graphic cards handle this with ease)
Shadow Quality (I don't care that much about shadows in most games)
Anti-Aliasing (native resolution is pretty sharp for me)

I set the nvidia options to pick performance over quality, whatever that does. I only have a geforce 430, so not picky about quality. I also never know what all those other options do.

Minimum

:(

View attached image.

Everything maxed if possible. The first things I'll turn down if required are AA (to x2 or x4 -- not as necessary at 1440p), motion blur, and DOF. Motion blur and DOF are more of an annoyance than a "feature" to me; I nearly always turn them off. Oh, and VSYNC on.

My computer specs:
Athlon II X2 270 @ 3.4Ghz
5GB RAM
R9 270X gpu
Native resolution - 1920 x 1080

Anti-Aliasing - i mostly set this to OFF, because i don't notice much of a difference. I really hate FXAA because it makes everything so blurry.
Texture Quality - As high as possible, my gpu has 4 gigs of memory, no reason to not take advantage of this.
Shadow Quality - Depends on the game, but mostly OFF or medium
Anisotropic Filtering - 16x, i like when the textures are pretty
VSync - mainly OFF. I don't mind screen tearing, but i enable it in some games because it locks the framerate to 60 fps. I really don't need 400+ frames when i'm in a menu.
Triple Buffering - OFF.

I also disable effects like Depth of field, motion blur and ssao. The first two i disable because the effects mostly annoy the fuck out of me and ssao is disabled because it is a performance hog and i usually don't notice it.

I'm not that techincal, but I remember something like:

Anti-Aliasing almost minimum
Texture Quality medium
Shadow Quality no shadows
Anisotropic Filtering almost minimum
VSync none
Triple Buffering wut? probably minimum

Why? Cause my pc is from 2007 or 2008 and I don't have enough money to buy a new one :'(

[EDIT FOR SPECS]

Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit (6.3, Build 9600) (9600.winblue_ltsb.160930-0600)
System Model: P5K
Processor: Intel Core 2 CPU 6600 @ 2,40 GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450

Whatever makes the game not lag...

If it can handle 1920x1080 without starting to look like a still frame movie, then cool. If not, I won't hesitate to put it down to 1280x720 or even lower.

The more simple forms of Anti-Aliasing usually improve the image a lot while not tanking the frame-rate too much, so I usually go with those (the more complex ones are a huge no-no because DO tank the frame-rate... hard).
Texture Quality tends to tank the frame-rate A LOT so I pretty much never have it high. Usually have it either on minimum or the option above minimum if the lowest option looks like absolute piss.
Shadow Quality also tanks the frame-rate, so I have it on the lowest option that actually has shadows (some games have a "no shadows" option but that is flat out terrible).
Anisotropic Filtering and Triple Buffering - I honestly don't know exactly what these do, so I'm quick to turn them off. XD
VSync - off.

If the game STILL lags I would probably start systematically turning off other options until it stops.
Let's just say I value the experience and the gameplay quality over stuff looking shiny.

I recently bought a secondhand GTX980, and was extremely pissed when I found out it wasn't able to run Fallout 4 at a steady 60 fps (1080p)... tired of fiddling with settings, I decided to try that geforce experience bloatware... I'm not sure what that does, but I clicked "optimize your games" and most run flawlessly now, some with the same exact settings I was using before...

Anti-Aliasing

2x or 4x, more usually isn't necessary on 1080p, but if I can I'll run it at 8x.

Texture Quality

As high as it goes, I haven't found a game yet that I can't run with max textures.

Shadow Quality

As high as I can go. This is usually the first thing I turn down if I need to find performance since it usually has the highest impact.

Anisotropic Filtering

Always 16x since it has very little impact on performance.

VSync

For first/third person games I turn it off and run triple buffering + full screen windowed mode which minimizes screen tearing. Vsync causes display lag, and I'd rather have some screen tearing than lag. For other games, I turn it on.

Triple Buffering

Always on.

Anisotropic Filtering
I keep this maxed at 16x, always. Otherwise, you're basically throwing the texture quality away, and the performance impact is negligible. You might consider lowering this if the game uses a fixed, non-rotating top-down camera, such as in MOBA games. But anything where you can see textures from an angle needs this. (I think the main menu of Borderlands is one place where you can see the immediate impact of different values very nicely, when you change the value and look at the texture of the ground.)

VSync
On. Otherwise, my card (EVGA GTX970) starts with an annoying coil whine. (This happens also in non-VSynced parts of some games, such as the title screens or menus.)

Ambient Occlusion
On, but not necessarily high. Even the lowest setting makes a huge difference compared to AO off.

Anti-Aliasing
Same as AO (even though it's something completely different).

Shadow Quality
Very rarely maxed, it's performance-intensive and usually not very noticeable. First thing I decrease when I need more performance.

Texture Quality
This is more a question of VRAM capacity. If your card can handle a certain texture quality level, then lowering it won't really improve the performance noticeably.

Depth of Field
On, if I want a nice-looking game. Off, if I need either a tiny performance boost, or if I want to play at the top of my skill (i.e. I want to see everything there is on the screen, clearly and immediately)

Chromatic Aberration
For the love of everything you hold dear, off. (It's bad enough that I see small rainbows at the edges of my glasses all the time, I don't need additional synthetic defects in the center of my viewfield.)

Depends on the game. I usually put it as high as possible without losing frames. If I start losing frames, I first disable AA, Anisotropic Filtering and VSync. If I still get some frame drops, I lower the shadows. Not until I've lowered about everything else do I lower the texture quality.

I have an i5-4440 and a GTX 970

Depends on the game. Some games those settings make a huge difference, some games the difference is minimal. The one exception is VSync, I never use it.

That being said, my rig is weak right now (though it still plays a fair amount of new games), plan to get an RX 480 and i5 as soon as possible.

Celeron G1620 2.7GHz
XFX Radeon HD 7770 Core Edition 1GB
8GB G.Skill Ares 1600 RAM

I usually sets whatever works for me play higher than 40 fps. usually deactivate vsync does the job since I really don't mind. the rest, I just lower them if the game requires to play with more than 40 fps, no matter how the graphic looks. anything lower than 40 fps is considered unplayable to me. (I do apply the same rule for my desk and my laptop).

I'm a stickler for IQ over frame rate, so most settings will be geared towards improving the former even if it means sacrificing the latter (to a certain degree). Juggling settings can be a bit challenging considering my native resolution is 3840x 2160 (4K) @ 28 inches, but the monitor handles upscaled 2560 x 1440 nicely with surprisingly acceptable sharpness, so that is a fallback option that I use more often than not. The monitor serves its primary purpose well (multimedia work), but gaming at high res has its obvious merits. I've been using this screen for over two years now and wouldn't dream of going back to full HD.

• Anti-Aliasing: I notice jaggies even at the full 4K res, I find them distracting a lot of the time but not overly so. Considering the performance penalty for non PP AA at the resolutions I'm pushing, MSAA is mostly a no go for anything but older titles, while I use SMAA and TAA if available. TAA has shown practically no performance penalty in DOOM using Vulkan on AMD which is encouraging. On older or undemanding titles I sometimes even force Supersampling, and I find the silky smooth contours very pleasing to the eye. Other times I just turn it off. It depends on the game.
• Texture Quality: Usually the highest possible setting, unless unnoticeable and/or punitive
• Shadow Quality: Medium, or if I can handle it and I notice a visible difference High or more
• Anisotropic Filtering: 8x or 16x
• VSync: Usually set to off but let the driver handle adaptive sync (when it works). On in older games as a frame rate limiter.
• Triple Buffering: Usually off

Depending on the game, I find some form of ambient occlusion can have a noticeable impact on IQ, and I turn this on and aim for the higher settings whenever available, although I tend to forgo the fancier varieties.

VSync always ON. i cant stand on screen tearing. i can handle 30fps limit in some games but no i really cannot stand on screen tearing. especially with fps games it makes my eyes bleed.