Quick update with regards to online Mode:

Bottom line:

If you only have 16 GB of RAM, do not use high texture quality on Streets of Tarkov (and possibly Lighthouse).

• When texture quality is high -> 23 GB RAM used
• When texture quality is low -> 11 GB RAM used

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Dear Tarkovians,

Welcome to my TED-Talk. I finally had time trying out the "new" update and why many of you are having problems, especially with the new map Streets of Tarkov.

I'm not going to talk much about the performance-side or how you can gain more fps. I'll focus on why some of you have RAM-related crashes/stutters and how to avoid them.

As of now, all my tests were done in Offline mode only. The Online experience might differ a bit but the basics still apply. I'll first briefly explain the technical part a bit. If you are not interested in that you may skip the next chapter.

The technical side of things

Programs under Windows are not allowed to address physical RAM (the RAM sticks) directly. Instead Windows manages memory as "virtual memory". "Virtual memory" consists of the physical RAM and the swap file (aka page file, on disk). Physical RAM will be used first but Windows can decide to move unused data from physical RAM to page file to free up the former. This is completely normal and as long as you have enough free physical RAM also not an issue.

It becomes a problem when there is not enough free physical RAM available. In this case old/unused data either needs to be moved to the page file or gets removed from virtual memory. If said data is needed again later, it has to be read from disk (either from page file or the source). This is, of course, slower – even with SSD.

RAM-related stutters happen, when this disk access happens. The slower the disk, the worse the problem. You want to avoid this from happening.

RAM-related crashes of the game happen when there is not enough virtual memory available. Windows then terminates the program to prevent instability.

BSOD means a serious problem was detected and Windows had to stop.

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RAM usage in Tarkov (especially Streets)

I'll focus on Streets here. Everything said is valid on the other maps, too. Just the numbers are different.

I've 32 GB RAM. For someone with 16 GB RAM, the numbers might look slightly different. That's because the game (and Windows) act on memory pressure and I did not have memory pressure during my testing.

Like I've mentioned before, I only tested Offline Mode. There wasn't much difference, FPS aside, between no bots, "as online" bots, and "horde" bots. More (AI) actors do not affect RAM usage.

This is how the RAM usage of the game's process looked like

Please note that "private bytes" means "available to the process", only "Working Set" is what is actually be used by the game.

As you can see, the game allocates about 12 GB of RAM. In some instances, it went up to 16 GB. You can already see why people with 16 GB of RAM are having a hard time.

Here is a more detailed look via VMMAP. Again, "working set" what's important.

And here we have HWiNFO64.

As you can see, my pagefile is used a bit. More about that further down.

What about VRAM (GPU memory)?

I don't have a screenshot for you, but if you have less than 12 GB of VRAM, do not use "High Texture Quality" on the bigger maps. On streets, my VRAM was fully utilised (4K). I've made a post about this a while ago.

What can I do, if I only have 16 GB of RAM?

The good news, you don't have to upgrade your RAM.

But you need to be aware it will be tight and you need to act accordingly.

Things you can and should do:

• Set "Texture Quality" to medium or low. Don't believe me? Try it out! On Streets my RAM usage dropped from 15-17GB to 9-11 GB from high to medium. On low, it's slightly less but not by much. I assume the reason for that is, the high quality textures are stored in different asset files. Bigger texture, bigger assets files -> more RAM needed.
• Close as much background programs as possible. Especially web browsers like Chrome! Keep an eye on programs you need (like Discord) and your available memory.
• The console command "FPS 3" in-game provides you with some statistics. If you have a second monitor, you can use task manager, Sysinternals process explorer or HWiNFO to monitor your system.

Other graphics settings did not have any meaningful impact on RAM usage.

What about my page file?

It doesn't matter if you have 16, 32 or more GB of RAM, you'll need some page file. Do not deactive it or set it too small! If you don't know, let the system manage it for you.

Put your page file on a fast drive (SSD). My page file is 4,8 GB in size (system managed) and Windows used up to 800 MB at one time while the game was running. On average it was just a couple of MB.

What about memory leaks?

At least in Offline mode, I haven't noticed any memory leaks. After a raid, the game's RAM usage dropped to ca 8-10 GB. These are just assets which might be used during your next RAID. This is completely normal.

Online mode might be different, though. There is network stuff happening, communication between players (inventory, player data), loot etc). I'll look into it at a later date. If there is a memory leak, restarting the game every other raid usually helps.

Do I need a RAM Cleaner?

Some recommend the either use the in-game RAM cleaner or use ISLC and it seemed to help them. I don't see why though.

All these tools do is to purge the standby list. The "standby list" contains data pages in physical RAM which are no longer in use but might be used later. With regards to Tarkov, these are asset files (you can monitor that with Sysinternals RamMap). As long as there is enough free physical RAM, there is no need to purge the standby list and if RAM is needed, Windows purges the list automatically. This process takes nanoseconds.

If you have memory pressure because of lack of available free RAM, cleaning the standby list won't help you because the list is most likely empty.

Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD)

It's a bit off-topic but I thought I mentioned it anyway.

If you get a BSOD while playing Tarkov (or other games), this means something went seriously wrong. The usual suspects are:

• Unstable overclock (CPU, CPU's memory controller and/or RAM)
• Outdated drivers (especially GPU)
• non-essential low quality drivers (RGB control software and cheap printer drivers are prone to this)
• Cheap-ass antivirus software
• Hardware failure (defective memory module, mainboard, psu)

It depends on the BSOD's error code. If you ask for assistance, always describe the problem as accurate as possible and_post_the_full_error_code.

That's it for now.

Hope this helps!