Background
I have been messing around with my graphics settings with .12 more than I ever did on .11, and am finding that the game runs pretty good, and I can keep my average FPS >70 across all maps, including the new Mil Base. This is even out in the open and in buildings with a lot of clutter. There are however some odd phenomena that I can't really explain, which I hope to address below. I am mainly making this for the fifteen or so of us that have the 5700 XT, and are having issues. The card itself is great, but drivers and other weird AMD voodoo occasionally pop up. I couldn't find a guide for the card, so I thought I would share my settings. I also didn't want to have to do a twenty minute video because I find them annoying to watch myself.
Settings
I'm going to list my settings that get me to what I'm somewhat happy with. I had shadows set on ultra, but didn't see a big enough benefit to keep them there for the loss in FPS. My game did let me use an "Exclusive Fullscreen" option once, but I haven't seen it again. I'll explain VSync a little further on in this.
| Resolution | 2560×1440 |
|---|---|
| Fullscreen Mode | Fullscreen |
| Aspect Ratio | 16:9 |
| VSync | Off |
| Overall graphics quality | Custom |
| Texture quality | High + texture streaming |
| Shadows quality | High |
| Object LOD quality | 3.5 |
| Overall visibility | 2500 |
| Shadow visibility | 150 |
| Antialiasing | TAA high |
| Resampling | 1x off |
| HBAO | Medium |
| SSR | Off |
| Anisotropic filtering | On |
| Sharpness | 1.0 |
My Rig
It would be remiss of me to not talk about what hardware I have, as it obviously is a sample size of one for this post.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
GPU: Sapphire Pulse 5700 XT
Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus Elite Wifi x570
RAM: 32Gb Ballistix Elite 3600 CL18
SSD: Inland Premium 1Tb M.2
Monitor: Dell 27" 2560×1440 144Hz
Everything is running stock except for the RAM, which is on the highest XMP profile (3600 CL18). Radeon settings are default, with Radeon Image Sharpening on, VSync within the Radeon software is off. I'm running the latest Radeon drivers, 19.10.2. I have not went to the new AGESA for my motherboard, as I am not having any issues right now with my current BIOS.
GPU Utilization
In most of the games I play my GPU is running near-maxed most of the time, resulting in great frames pretty much all the time. I think that this comparison may show what I mean. The Tarkov example is on Mil Base, and the CS:GO example is on Dust II. What I'm focused on is GPU usage and CPU usage, and how they correlate to FPS. The large spike to zero on Tarkov is a stutter. Both runs were similar in length, and offline with AI enabled.
Before I say too much about either of these, I fully understand that Tarkov is much more intensive game than CS:GO. What I don't understand is why there are frequent spikes for Tarkov, down to as low as 40-50%. If the game is more intensive, shouldn't the GPU be working harder more often? I don't think I'm CPU limited here, but I could be wrong. It seems that Tarkov is much more variable in GPU usage than other games, but this is only anecdotal from me with a sample size of one, and only comparing it against CS:GO.
VSync
One of the bigger head scratchers for me has been VSync. I followed the guide that was recently posted for turning VSync off for your GPU's software, and then making sure to turn it on in game. I did this, and capped my FPS to 60, and did not "unlock" frames like the guide said that it would. This is probably due to the fact that the majority of the thread focused on NVidia GPU settings.
An issue I have had with VSync is that sometimes the game will cap the frames at 30 FPS, and I have to Alt + Tab out of the game, and go back in to get it to cap back at 60 FPS. With VSync on the game looks incredibly smooth, and I like the setting a lot if it works. I've found that messing with this while in-game can cause weird tearing if I turn it off when I previously had it on. If I load into the game with it off, no tearing occurs. I attempted to record this on video, but unfortunately the video did not demonstrate what I was seeing on screen. As long as I load in with it on, I don't have tearing, and leave it off.
Shadow Visibility
I like having this maxed out because I can't stand pop-in, especially for shadows. Does it make me less competitive? Probably. I think it's the whole Reshade vs. vanilla argument here, and if I wanted to see in the dark I would just set it to 40.
HBAO
This was a weird one for me, as I could set it to medium or high and get just as good of frames as I did on low. I set it at medium, as it lets me get >100 FPS occasionally. With it on high it looked marginally better than medium, but again I didn't see the cost:reward ratio being acceptable.
Wrap Up
Not sure if this will be of use to anyone, but I wanted to make it in case there's any other AyyyMD guys out there, specifically 5700 XT owners. If you have a trick I don't know, please share, as I'm trying to chase the best FPS while also keeping visuals nice. I'd also like to be competitive in the game, so if there's something in here that is holding me back, I'd also be interested in knowing. If there's something in here you have the answer to, I'd be delighted to know.
Cheeki breeki.
