Escape from Tarkov has been in Early Access since August 2016 and is still in beta. As you might guess, there are performance issues in the game, but hopefully our guide will allow you to deal with them.
We’ll help you optimize Escape from Tarkov’s settings to make your game smoother. In this guide, we’ll tackle Escape from Tarkov’s performance issues such as lag, fading, consistently low frame rates, jerking, sharp peaks in latency, and sudden drops in frame rates.
The first thing you need to do is make sure your computer meets the system requirements listed below. If your hardware does not match them, the problems mentioned may be related to this. In this case, we recommend that you upgrade. The game puts a heavy load on the processor, so free up its resources or buy a more powerful one.
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- Operating system: Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo / Intel Core i3 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon / Phenom 11 2.6 GHz
- Memory: 6 GB
- Graphics: DX9-compatible graphics card with 1 GB VRAM
- Disk space: 20 GB
RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- Operating system: Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i5 / Intel Core i7 3.2 GHz, AMD FX / AMD Athlon 3.6 GHz
- Memory: 8 GB
- Graphics: DX11-compatible graphics card with 2 GB VRAM
- Disk space: 20 GB
It happens that one or more models are indicated in the requirements for a video card, but this is not the case. To check which version of DirectX your card is compatible with, follow these steps:
Open the Start Menu
Type dxdiag in the search bar and press Enter.
When asked for permission to verify the digital signature of drivers, we recommend that you click Yes.
You should now see your DirectX version.
There are many ways to improve performance in Escape from Tarkov. Let’s start with the most obvious.
UPDATE VIDEO CARD DRIVERS
It may sound trivial, but updating the drivers is really the first thing to try, because usually new AMD and NVIDIA drivers are capable of significantly increasing frame rates. It’s easy and no different than updating any other software.
Open AMD Radeon Software (for AMD graphics) or NVIDIA GeForce Experience (for NVIDIA graphics) and check for updates. If available, download and install them.
SETTING GRAPHICS
The next step is to optimize the settings in the game itself. Chances are this is what you were looking for here, so let’s get started.
Please note that these are high-performance settings, relevant primarily for systems that barely meet the minimum or recommended requirements. If you have a powerful computer and don’t want to sacrifice graphics for performance, you can skip this step.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Run Escape from Tarkov.
- Open the Settings menu and click on the Graphics tab.
- Set the Screen Resolution to your monitor’s native resolution.
- Select Fullscreen Screen Mode.
- Make sure Vert. Sync is checked. not exhibited.
- Set the Texture Quality to Medium.
- Set the Shadow Quality to Low.
- Set the Object Detail parameter to 3.5.
- Set the General Visibility parameter to 3000.
- Set the Shadow Visibility to 75.
- Select TAA Anti-Aliasing.
- Set Resampling to 1x off.
- Disable HBAO.
- Disable SSR.
- For Anisotropic Filtering, select Textures Only.
- Set the Sharpness to 1.3.
- Set the Lobby Frame Limit to 60.
- Set the In-Game Frame Limit to 120.
- Uncheck Z-Blur.
- Uncheck Chrome. aberrations.
- Uncheck the Noise box.
- Uncheck Grass Shadow.
GAME SETUP
You can also further optimize your game settings to improve performance. Just follow these steps:
- In the Settings menu, click on the Game tab.
- If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, in case of performance problems, uncheck the Enable NVidia Highlights checkbox.
- Check the box Auto clean up RAM.
- Make sure the Use physical cores only checkbox is checked if you have a processor with multithreading or SMT support.
- Set the Field of View to 75 (or higher if you like and have the option).
- Set Head Swing to 0.2.
OPTIMIZE NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL SETTINGS
If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, the NVIDIA Control Panel settings can be optimized as follows:
- Open the NVIDIA Control Panel.
- Click on Adjust viewing image settings on the left side of the 3D Settings tab.
- Click on User Preferences and move the slider towards Performance if it is not already there.
- Click Apply.
Fine! Now let’s set up some settings specifically for Escape from Tarkov:
- Click Manage 3D Settings.
- Click on Program Settings.
- Select Escape from Tarkov from the drop-down menu. If the game is not there, click Add and find EscapeFromTarkov.exe.
- Set Power Management Mode to Maximum Performance. You may need to compare this option with the Optimal Power mode because the effect depends on the specific video card.
- Set the Preferred refresh rate to Maximum Available.
- Enable Shader Caching.
- Set the Texture filtering – quality parameter to High performance.
- Disable the Triple buffering option.
- Disable Vertical sync pulse.
- Set VR Preframes to 1.
- If you are playing on a laptop, make sure High-Performance NVIDIA processor is selected as your preferred GPU
If you have an AMD graphics card, the settings can be optimized as follows:
- Open Radeon Settings.
- Click on the Games tab.
- Click on the Global Settings section.
- For Anti-Aliasing Mode, select Override Application Settings.
- Set the Smoothing Level to 2X.
- Enable Anisotropic Filtering Mode.
- Set the Anisotropic Filtering Level to 2X.
- For Texture Filtering Quality, select Performance.
- In Wait for vertical update, select Always off.
- In Tessellation Mode, select Override Application Settings.
- Set the Max Tessellation Level to 32x or lower.
OPTIMIZED WINDOWS UPDATE
Next we can take a simple step that will free up some resources:
Open Update & Security from the Windows Settings pane.
Click Delivery Optimization.
Make sure Allow downloads from other computers is disabled.
DISABLING ONEDRIVE
We also recommend turning off OneDrive if you’re not using it. Right-click the OneDrive icon in the taskbar and click Close OneDrive.
DISCORD OPTIMIZATION
If you’re using Discord to communicate while playing, or it’s just running when you’re playing alone, it can be quickly optimized too. Here’s how to do it:
- Open Discord and go to the Application Settings page.
- Click on the Appearance item and disable the Hardware acceleration option.
- Click on the Overlay item.
- Make sure the Enable In-Game Overlay option is turned off.
GOOGLE CHROME OPTIMIZATION
If you are using Google Chrome, you should also disable hardware acceleration:
Open Google Chrome and go to the Settings page.
- Scroll all the way down and open the Advanced tab.
- Scroll down to the bottom again and turn off the Use hardware acceleration (if available) option.
- Disable the Do not disable services running in the background when you close your browser option.
- Restart Google Chrome.
POWER SUPPLY OPTIMIZATION
You can improve performance by enabling a high performance power scheme. Here’s how to do it:
Open the Start Menu
Type powercfg.cpl in the search bar and press Enter.
Select the High Performance scheme.
TURN ON GAME MODE
Windows 10 has a so-called Game Mode that we recommend enabling:
Open the Start Menu
Enter Game Mode and press Enter.
Make sure Game Mode is enabled.
SSD
If you have Escape from Tarkov installed on your HDD (which we do not recommend), you can significantly speed up loading times by moving the game to an SSD (if available).
CONCLUSION
That’s all! We hope you were able to raise the frame rate.
If you have high ping, we recommend that you check out our guide on how to reduce ping in games. And since Escape from Tarkov is CPU intensive, you might consider buying a new processor, maybe a video card or additional RAM if you have enough In addition, if you need to buy Escape from Tarkov Currency, you can visit the Eznpc site.