Just for whom find it interesting, there is very little difference in graphical quality but

the difference in performance is huge.

 

In both cases tessellation and terrain shadows on, the difference between lowest and

highest mesh resolution setting:

 

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This could be a driver issue for you as i dont really see much of a performance hit ( if any ) on my GTX760 swapping between low and high.

Nvidia is known to be better/focused on tesselation than AMD.

 

If you have AMD card tesselation should be the first checkbox/slider to play with, for performance purposes.

He has an HD7870 (if the specs are still up to date) so that might explain it.

Something definitely askew here.. I see no such drastic differences at all...  

You're right styckx, I forgot that I have shadow distance set to 50.000, which seemingly takes a toll when mountains fill the screen at close distance together with high lod mesh setting. Lowest setting for mesh doesn't have much impact and for those hi-flyers like me seems the best way to go: lowest mesh, over exceeding terrain shadow distance. Because mountains further away don't benefit from higher mesh settings than the lowest.

Shadow at 50000 in cfg: