This guide contains every possible setting I can think of to make your Tarkov experience a little bit better. I have 4200 hours in the game and enjoy messing with settings. I wanted to put everything that I’ve found together in one place. Hope it helps.
My build for reference: 3070 Ti, 5800x, 32gb DDR4 3600MHz, 1440p 144hz monitor. I currently average 110-135 fps on 1440p on most maps.
Sections
Drivers
In-game
Windows/PC
XMP
Nvidia Control Panel
AMD Radeon/Adrenalin
Recommended downloads
Audio
DRIVERS Before doing anything else, I recommend starting by updating all of your drivers.
This will automatically notify you when new update are available, and it makes it super easy to download/install
Download with above nvidia link
This also gives you the GeForce overlay, which includes the Recording/Instant Replay features, FPS counter, and a few other cool things
I’ve personally had a few issues with GeForce Experience in the past, so I don’t use it anymore. It always lowered my performance a little bit, especially the recording option
AMD GPU
Download the AMD software, which includes a driver tool (or manually download from the section below that) – Download Link
Download the automatic version at the top, or look below the download button, select ‘Chipsets’, then find your motherboard (It also may detect your mobo and give you an option to click and jump straight to that page)
You can also update chipset drivers from the motherboard manufacturer’s website
*these will both be taken care of with free programs ISLC and Process Lasso, which are explained later – leave them off in game
FOV – 64
This is personal preference for the most part, but FOV does affect camera recoil AND eye relief (not sure that’s the correct term, but that’s how Tigz described it)
Tarkov is dumb, lower quality textures can sometimes cause lower FPS. Try high first even if you’re struggling for FPS
Shadows Quality – Low
Bump this up if you want to, I don’t notice much of a difference
Object LOD quality – 2.5
Overall visibility – 1500
Anti-aliasing – TAA High
Resampling – 1x off
NVIDIA DLSS – OFF
I don’t know a single person who uses DLSS and likes it. I get a lot of visual ghosting with it.
AMD FSR 1.0 – OFF
Consider turning this on if you have a lower end PC or are struggling for FPS. It is kind of similar to DLSS in that it upscales. It is not restricted to Nvidia RTX cards and doesn’t have as many negative qualities as DLSS
NASA PC – colored very high, great PC – high, medium PC – low/off, bad PC – off
Makes everything look a lot nicer. Shadows/depth and stuff
SSR – High
Good PC – High, medium PC – low (if want visual effect), bad PC = off
This is one area where I personally disagree with Vox_E’s guide. He says to leave this off, as it’s already technically enabled if you have textures on High. I’ve tested this myself and noticed a massive visual difference between Off and High (even between Off and Low when looking at water), and imo this is one of the most important settings to make tarkov look “good”. It even changes the look of water/reflections
Anisotropic Filtering – Per texture
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency – ON
You can also choose ‘on + boost’ if you need better performance – my understanding is that it just keeps your GPU ramped up ready to go instead of making it ramp up and down as needed.
Sharpness – 0.2
Personal preference, can also change in nvidia control panel
Here are my personal POSTFX settings (I also use Nvidia Control Panel for colors)
Enabling POSTFX definitely lowers your FPS, but it makes tarkov not look like a dreary Russian wasteland, so I think it’s worth it. I also mess with colors in the Nvidia control panel.
You can load into an offline raid, pull up POSTFX settings, and click “visualize” to make the menu screen transparent – then you can move the sliders around and view changes in real time
Sound
Overall – 100
Interface – 30
Chat – 100
Music – 0
Hideout – 0
Music on raid end – On
Binaural audio – On (explanation in audio section)
VOIP – On
Keybinds
Mouse sensitivity/Mouse sensitivity (aiming)
Personal preference (I use 0.6 for both, with 800 dpi mouse).
Some people like to have the aiming (ADS) sensitivity lower
Double click timeout – 0.3
Reload faster
Change ‘Emergency weapon reload’ – Control + R (and set to Press)
If you keep this at ‘R’ set on double click, every time you try to reload normally the game will wait at least 0.3 seconds before actually reloading. This is because of the ‘Double click timeout’ setting, which is a minimum of 0.3 seconds. The game always waits that amount of time before doing the first action IF there is another action bound to double click of that same key.
I don’t personally use these, but there are a couple of cheeky things you can do by binding multiple actions to the same key
You do this by setting Action #1 to a key and changing the Press Type to ‘Press’. Then, assign Action #2 to that same key and change the Press Type to ‘Release’
Open Tarkov Launcher > Under your name in top right corner, click the dropdown and go to settings
When I close the launcher window > Exit the Launcher
When I launch the game > Exit the Launcher completely
XMP
XMP is basically a preset overclocking profile for your RAM that will allow it to operate at the advertised speed. First, check to see if your RAM is running at full speed. If it’s not, then enable XMP in your BIOS.
To check, open task manager (Control+Shift+Escape) > Performance tab > Memory
Look at the speed. If it says 2133 MHz, or anything other than what your RAM should be, then you need to enable XMP in your BIOS.
PC Settings > Devices > Mouse > Additional Mouse Options > Pointer Options tab > Enhance pointer precision – OFF
Monitor Refresh Rate
PC Settings > System > Display > Click on the correct monitor > Advanced display settings > Refresh rate > Pick the highest number
Power mode
PC Settings > System > Power & Sleep > Additional power settings > Balanced
You can try High Performance if you want, but here is a really interesting comment referencing an AMD spokesperson about why Balanced can be better (comment is specifically about AMD chips with Zen 3 architecture, 1 year old)
Disable Xbox
PC Settings > Gaming > Xbox Game Bar > OFF
Game Mode
PC Settings > Gaming > Game Mode > ON
PC Settings > Gaming > Game Mode > Graphics Settings > Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling – ON
If you are having stuttering issues, you can try turning HAGS OFF to see if it helps.
I’m not sure how much of a difference this makes in Tarkov, but I know that this setting caused issues in the past with some other games. I’ve also seen a lot of reports about this causing issues when ON if you are streaming
Turn OFF surround sound
PC Settings > System > Sound > under Output Device, click Device Properties > Additional Device Properties> Spatial Sound tab > OFF
EscapeFromTarkov.exe Properties
Locate your EscapeFromTarkov.exe file (mine is at C:Battlestate GamesEFTEscapeFromTarkov.exe)
Right click > Properties > Compatibility tab > Disable fullscreen optimizations – ON
On that same Compatibility tab > Change high DPI settings > Override high DPI scaling behavior – ON
Make sure you hit Apply
Now do the same with the EscapeFromTarkov_BE.exe file (disable full screen optimization, and override high DPI scaling)
Pagefile
I saw this suggested on Reddit a lot recently and recently made the change myself.
Open Nvidia Control Panel > Select ‘Manage 3D settings’ from the list on the left
Click on the ‘Program settings’ tab
Select ‘Escape from Tarkov.exe’ from the dropdown list of programs
If you can’t find it, run the game in the background and then click the Add button
Make sure not to select the BSG launcher
Image Sharpening – Sharpen 0.5, Ignore Film Grain 0.17
Vox_E had nothing, I use Trey24k’s settings, and Panjno had 0.2/0.13
Anisotropic filtering – Application-controlled
FXAA – OFF
Gamma correction – ON (Vox_E has this off)
Antialiasing Mode – Application controlled
Antialiasing Transparency – Off
Vox_E has this on Multisample, which does reduce some jagged edges at a very small resource cost
Low latency mode – Depends
Ultra – Nvidia Gsync monitor
On – High refresh rate monitor
Off – 60hz monitor
Quick video explanation of Low Latency Mode and tradeoff between Latency/FPS
MFAA – OFF
Power management mode – Prefer maximum performance
Vox_E prefers Normal
Prefer Maximum Performance basically just keeps your GPU ramped up the entire time. Definitely keep this on if you need FPS, but you don’t really need it if you have a really good CPU
Texture filtering – Anisotropic sample optimization – ON
Texture filtering – Negative LOD bias – Allow
Texture filtering – Quality – High performance
Texture filtering – Trilinear optimization – ON
Threaded optimization – ON (Vox_E has this off)
Triple buffering – OFF
Vsync – OFF
Click Apply
Adjust desktop color settings
This is largely personal preference and depends a lot on your monitor and in-game settings. Some people use this instead of POSTFX. I personally use both.
Go to the ‘Adjust desktop color settings’ section
Select your gaming monitor
Contrast – 55%
Gamma – 1.4 (this helps with brightening up dark areas, but it can look weird on some monitors)
Digital vibrance – 60-70% (mine is set to 65%)
Set up G-SYNC (*Only for G-SYNC compatible monitors)
Go to the ‘Set up G-SYNC’ section
Select ‘Enable for windows and full screen mode’
Enable settings for the selected display model – ON
Click Apply
Adjust desktop size and position
Go to the ‘Adjust desktop size and position’ section
Select your gaming monitor > click No Scaling > Perform scaling on: select ‘GPU’ from dropdown > check resolution/refresh rate
Click Apply (your screen might flash + make you confirm changes again)
Another AMD video by Panjno that goes a little bit more in depth
These are the best guides I can find, but they’re from May 2020. Things might have changed since then, but I was using these settings on my AMD system until I switched a few months ago
Open AMD Radeon
Gaming Tab > Global Graphics
Graphics Tab:
Radeon Anti-Lag – ON
Radeon Image Sharpening – ON
Sharpness – 20-50%
Wait for Vertical Refresh – Always Off (he turns it ON in-game, and OFF here)
Click Advanced
Anti-Aliasing – Use application settings
Anti-Aliasing Method – Multisampling
Morphological Anti-Aliasing – OFF
Anisotropic Filtering – OFF
Texture Filtering Quality – Performance
Surface Format Optimization – ON
Tessellation Mode – Override application settings
Maximum Tessellation Level – OFF
OpenGL Triple Buffering- OFF
Display Tab:
Radeon FreeSync – OFF (can turn it on if you have a FreeSync monitor and are struggling with FPS)
Virtual Super Resolution – OFF
GPU Scaling – Disabled
Scaling Mode – Full Panel
Custom Color (right side) – Worth messing with if you want to add to or replace your POSTFX
RECOMMENDED DOWNLOADS
ISLC – Intelligent standby list cleaner
This replaces the Ram Cleaner setting
Download link – (I know the website looks sketchy af lol, it’s fine)
There is no surround sound in Tarkov. Turn off every single surround sound/3D audio program/setting you have when playing Tarkov – Instructions in the Windows section
Binaural Audio – ON
Apparently Binaural Audio is being removed at some point and replaced with something else. BSG blames steam audio for not integrating correctly or something like that, but it’s not working because Tarkov has spaghetti code. I’ve heard BSG is going to try and build something themselves, but who knows what will actually happen
For now, I highly recommend enabling Binaural Audio (Steam Audio) in the game settings . It definitely has issues, but it is much better at directional audio. You will hear random pops and sounds though
A lot of people have this off, and I didn’t use it for 3k hours. I switched to binaural last wipe and love it. Both are fine.
Seeing as we have some one off premiums for some other nations like Hungary, and an entire Polish tree, of which 90% never existed, I see no reason ...