Graphics settings

Graphics settings are a 10-level adjustable bar for the looks (and performance) of Roblox.

In order to run games smoothly, computers with enough power can handle between 8 and 10, but they most likely require an external graphics processing unit, rather than internal graphics. For low-end computers, a graphics level between 1 and 3 is recommended. Mid-end computers can use a graphics level between 4 and 7, unless the game has many graphic intensive details.

Graphics Mode
The GraphicsMode drop-down box shows a list of all graphics modes for Roblox to work. There are currently 6 graphic modes available. You can select one by going into Roblox Studio, going into settings (ALT+S), going into Render tab, scrolling down to general and picking a graphics mode from the drop-down. This setting only affects Roblox Studio, Changes can be only done to Roblox Studio and has been tested by 3rd party apps such as MSI Afterburner, Roblox currently supports only Direct3D11 in Roblox Player to keep support for playing in Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems.

Automatic
The default graphics mode, this option chooses the best graphics mode for your computer depending on your CPU or RAM.

Direct3D11
The 11th generation of the DirectX series as an API Framework. It supports for Shader Model 5.0, Dynamic shader linking, addressable resources, additional resource types, subroutines, geometry instancing, coverage as pixel shader input, programmable interpolation of inputs, new texture compression formats (1 new LDR format and 1 new HDR format), texture clamps to limit WDDM preload, require 8-bits of subtexel and sub-MIP precision on texture filtering, 16K texture limits, Gather4(support for multi-component textures, support for programmable offsets), DrawIndirect, conservative oDepth, Depth Bias, addressable stream output, per-resource mipmap clamping, floating-point viewports, shader conversion instructions, improved multithreading.

Metal
Apple's 3D graphics API framework, This graphics mode was added recently on November 5, 2016. Metal further improves the capabilities of GPGPU programming by introducing compute shaders.

NoGraphics
When selected, the game will not be rendered, and instead, a Diagnostics window will show on screen. It is used to diagnose issues with graphics, in-game physics, etc.

OpenGL
OpenGL is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.

Vulkan
Vulkan is a graphics API that came out in 2016 and later included in Roblox Studio in 2017 is a next-generation continuation of OpenGL. Like OpenGL, Vulkan targets high-performance realtime 3D graphics applications such as video games and interactive media across all platforms and can offer higher performance and more balanced CPU/GPU usage. Other major differences to Direct3D (prior to version 12) and OpenGL are Vulkan being a considerably lower level API and offering parallel tasking. In addition to its lower CPU usage, Vulkan is also able to better distribute work amongst multiple CPU cores.

Trivia

 * The debug console tracks if you have anti-aliasing.