A lot of you may already know this but I made a guide that will prove useful to beginners in improving their games' image quality and frame rate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZqaoBo2Y7Q

Here's also a spreadsheet detailing what the individual terms discussed in the video:

http://imbacore.blogspot.com/2013/12/Nvidia-Control-Panel-Settings-Tweak-Guide-Performance-Graphics.html

The above should make everything clear what setting to tone down and/or ramp up in order to optimize your games.