Why does NVIDIA offer a profile that maintains all global settings?
You mean "why is there a Global Settings tab in Nvidia Control Panel?" or "why can I set options in Nvidia Control Panel if they're available and should only be touched ingame?".
If it's the first: Because you might have personal preferences applying to all games you play.
If it's the second: Because Nvidia cannot know which features are supported by a game's engine and which are not. This list is constantly changing. BoX didn't support all these settings in the beginning either.
No vsync "fast" option available here. So I should enable vsync ingame?
"Fast Sync" is available on Maxwell/Pascal (900 and 1000 series) graphics cards only.
All others will want to enable VSync in BoX, except for the odd occasion that you have G-Sync like me.
What are the meanings/effects of "Sharpen" respectively "Dynamic resolution factor"?
"Sharpen" is a post-processing filter that came with BoX Version 2.009.
What it does is this: It makes things look sharper / more crisp. Surprise, surprise!
Since it's a post-processing filter, it's not applied to specific objects, but to the finally rendered image as a whole.
The results of post-processing filters usually aren't as appreciable as normal (object/scene based) filters are.
To me, with "Sharpen" enabled the image looks somewhat artificial, others might think different.
The main audience for that "Sharpen" setting are VR users, where the image easily looks blurred otherwise (due to the comparative low image resolution).
"Dynamic resolution factor" is used to adjust the render resolution and the number of particles "on the fly" in order to try to keep the set "Target FPS" all the time.
If for instance you set a value of "0.5" here, the image will be rendered with up to half of your originally set screen resolution only if the FPS is too low.
This, as the name suggests, will be adjusted dynamically during gameplay.
If you set this value to "1.0" like in my settings, you effectively turn off this feature and the image will always be rendered at the full resolution as configured.
If you suffer FPS issues, you will want to try lowering the distant texture setting first as this has a big impact on FPS while giving little visual difference only.
Is "Landscape filter" also included here?
"Landscape filter" enables Anisotropic filtering for landscape textures.
The setting was introduced with BoX 2.010, prior to that you had to use Anisotropic Filter settings in Nvidia Control Panel.
The performance impact is negligible on any BoX capable graphics card (GTX 750 or better that is).
If you turn off this feature, you will see noticeable landscape texture shimmering at medium distance.
"Blurred" or "Sharp" chooses the filter bias, the difference is hardly noticeable (to me).
Best regards - Mike