Hiding lines enhances the drawing and clarifies the design. The addition of shading produces a more realistic image of your model.
A visual style is a collection of settings that control the display of edges and shading in the viewport. Instead of using commands and setting system variables, you change the properties of the visual style. As soon as you apply a visual style or change its settings, you can see the effect in the viewport.
You can create your own visual styles by changing the face and edge settings and using shadows and backgrounds.
3D graphics display and memory allocation can slow performance on your system. Adaptive degradation, performance tuning and memory tuning are different approaches to delivering the best performance possible.