So I keep seeing posts asking questions that have been answered a thousand times. Why? Because mods should have pinned a guide a long time ago, so people can just check there, but for some reason they don't do that.

So I decided to write something myself. It likely still won't be pinned, but at least I'll have something to link the next time someone asks a generic question. And if I see a question I haven't answered here, I'll just try to update this and add it.

What do I upgrade for more FPS? CPU or GPU?

Determine what's limiting you. You can do that by checking your GPU usage via your task manager or programs like MSI Afterburner. If it's reaching 97% or more, then your GPU is restricting you and upgrading it will give you more performance.

If your GPU is not reaching 97% or more, then you're likely CPU limited and upgrading the GPU will NOT give you extra performance. Upgrading the CPU likely will.

Note: Do not look at CPU usage. It is useless due to virtually no modern games using 100% of it and it will confuse you. Use only GPU usage to determine what your limit is by following what I've written above.

Note 2: This is a rough check, there could be other reasons you're not getting the performance you expect, but assuming everything else is configured and running well, this should tell you if your CPU or GPU is the problem.

Will DLSS or FSR help performance?

I wouldn't recommend using them due to issues with scopes and various other problems with the visuals of the game when enabling DLSS. But if you are still considering it anyway:

See the previous section about determining if the CPU or the GPU is your limiting factor.

If it's the GPU, then turning on DLSS or FSR may give you fps. If the limiting factor is your CPU, turning on DLSS or FSR should not give you any performance. Those technologies only reduce the load on the GPU, they don't impact the CPU.

Do I have enough RAM for Tarkov?

Less than 16GB – No. Your game might run but will stutter or even sometimes crash on bigger maps. It probably won't crash immediately or even often, but when it does crash, it will probably be during a fight and you will lose your mind in rage. Not recommended.
Exactly 16GB – just barely enough, should be fine most of the time, but you might have very slight stutters, especially if you're using a hard drive as things will need to load and be removed from your RAM more regularly (so more loading from disk). Less RAM also means less headroom for any caching Tarkov might use. It's right on the edge and likely not enough for newer/bigger maps like the upcoming Streets of Tarkov. But most of the time, it's enough and is probably not an urgent upgrade.
More than 16GB – you've got enough

Is my RAM fast enough?

Firstly, RAM speed / latency has the least impact on performance in games and you should prioritize CPU and GPU. However, to make things optimal:

DDR4 – Try to get at least 3200 MHz or more
DDR5 – Not much choice here yet, get something with reasonably high frequency and low latency
Ryzen specific info – For Ryzen CPUs, you ideally want your RAM running at the same speed as the infinity fabric. Not hitting this golden ratio is not the end of the world, but this is optimal.
- For Ryzen 5000, infinity fabric is running at 1800 MHz stock (FCLK) which is equivalent to 3600 MHz RAM. If you overclock your CPU's infinity fabric to 1900 MHz, then you want to also overclock your RAM to 3800 MHz.
- For Ryzen 7000, you can't do 1:1 cause it's on DDR5, but the sweet spot seems to be 6000 MHz RAM and 2000 MHz infinity fabric (source).

RAM Latency

RAM latency typically seen as CL14, CL16 or as a sequence of numbers like 16-18-18-30.

It's measured in clock cycles, not in time. A CL16 3200 MHz RAM has more latency than a CL17 3800 MHz RAM despite the latency number making it seem like CL16 is better. It's not in this case.

Use this calculator to see what the real latency of your RAM is when measured in time. You want to minimize this number while keeping the frequency reasonably high or matched with your infinity fabric if you use Ryzen (see previous section)

I get random stutters

There could be several reasons for stutters

Your CPU is weak
- To see if this is the problem, perform this test: Lower your resolution to the minimum and all settings to the minimum. Also set the Resampling option in graphics to 0.5x downsampling which will reduce the resolution further.
- The above test reduces the load on the GPU, in order to test your CPU. If you're still not getting at least 50-60 fps, the problem is very likely the CPU.
- To minimize the impact of this, you can try to increase the frequency of garbage collection so it happens more often, but is smaller and less impactful. Go to your game folder and then go in EscapeFromTarkov_Data. Open the file boot.config and change the value for gc-max-time-slice from 3 to 2. This setting will reset every update, so you'd need to go back and change it if it helps you.
Your RAM is too little – see section on RAM above. If the RAM is too little (<16 GB) you'll get stutters. If the ram is just on the edge (== 16 GB), you might get stutters in particular if you're using a hard drive because the RAM won't be able to hold all necessary data at once which will force your game to keep loading and discarding data from the hard drive. Hard drives are slow.
You've got your OS and game installed on a hard drive
- Windows is crap and some of its processes that run in the background sometimes massively spike hard drive usage. Especially in the first few minutes after booting up your computer. This can make your game stutter as it loads some assets.
- In particular, laptop hard drives (2.5 inch) are generally slower than desktop hard drivers (3.5 inch) due to larger discs having to spin faster at the edges to achieve the same RPM. Speaking of which, desktop hard drives are more likely to have higher RPM too.
- Minimize the impact of this by waiting 5 minutes after turning on your PC before launching Tarkov. Also make sure MIP Streaming is off. You can also install the game on a separate drive from your OS drive or just upgrade to an SSD. You've got limited options here unfortunately.

How do I make my game look better on stream?

In the in-game settings, set these:

Texture quality – Low
Object LOD quality – minimum (2)
Overall visibility – minimum (400)

The above settings will reduce the complexity of textures which will allow your encoder to spend more bitrate on things that actually matter instead of the pattern of someone's shirt or the details in the bark of a tree. Yes, your game will look a bit worse to you, but it will be less blocky on stream.

I could make a demo comparison of this if requested, but honestly, you should be able to see the difference yourself, especially during motion.

Alternatively, you can also lower your stream fps down. Less frames means more bitrate can be spent on each frame, making each frame look better. Also, more of the frames will be key frames. Dropping from 60 to 48 or even to 30 can have a noticeable effect, especially if you're not streaming at the maximum bitrate allowed on your streaming platform.

How do I uncap my framerate and also remove v-sync?

Turning off v-sync in-game will remove v-sync, but it will limit your framerate to 144 (type "fps 1" in console to see both current fps and fps limit), so if you're on a 240 Hz monitor and you can get more than 144 frames, then this sucks.

There are 2 ways to fix this:

Turn NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency to "ON" or "ON + BOOST" (recommended)
Turn v-sync on in the game and off in your NVIDIA control panel. Unsure about AMD. This does 2 things – turning on v-sync in-game removes the framerate cap of 144, but introduces v-sync. The former thing is good, but the latter is bad. But then we can force v-sync off by turning it off in the control panel.

Either solution works. Or just do both, even if you turn on Reflex Low Latency, I would still force disable v-sync in control panel, just in case.

What is Mip Streaming

MIPs are textures with different levels of complexity. Things that are further away do not use their full detail textures in order to use less GPU and make the game run better since you can't see the detail when it's far anyway. Higher quality textures begin being used as you get closer to the objects.

Normally the game loads all MIPs into VRAM. But if you enable this option, it will only load those that are needed right now and will load others dynamically based on when and if they are needed. This saves VRAM by loading them when they are needed, but slightly increases CPU load which is not a good thing because the game is already CPU limited and this might just reduce your FPS slightly.

Should not be used unless you have a GPU with very little VRAM (2-3GB). On anything else, turn Mip Streaming off.

Benchmarking the game or watching benchmarks online

If you want to test your settings and your FPS, either play a scav or go in offline, but make sure you enable PvE and scavs. This is because the largest impact on your CPU is the need to process scavs and other enemies on the map. If the lobby is empty, you might falsely get more FPS than you would in online and it would not be an accurate representation of the game.

The same goes for videos you see of people benchmarking the game on YouTube – try to find out if they are playing with enemies or without. If they are playing in offline without scavs, then the test is not accurate and you should skip that video.

What performance can I get with X cpu and Y gpu?

Firstly, make sure you've read the previous section on benchmarks and make sure any benchmarks you watch are done with some enemies in the lobbies, otherwise they are not accurate.

For evaluating CPUs
- Go on YouTube and search for the CPU, e.g. "5800X Tarkov benchmark".
- Make sure the benchmarks you find are paired with a higher tier GPU (Not necessarily your GPU, just any really high tier GPU. This is to make sure the CPU is being tested in the benchmark, not the GPU)
- Look at 1080p low benchmarks only – this will test the CPU. High settings or higher resolutions might be GPU limited, so it would not be an accurate test of what the CPU will do. It doesn't matter if you intend to play at 4k. Still look at 1080p low benchmarks.
- The FPS you see after following the above steps is the maximum fps the CPU should be able to reach, assuming your GPU is good enough to not limit it.
For evaluating GPUs
- Go on YouTube and search for the GPU, e.g. "RTX 3080 Tarkov benchmark"
- Make sure the benchmark show GPU usage, this is important.
- Make sure the benchmarks you find are paired with a high tier CPU only
- Make sure the benchmarks you find are at the resolution and settings you want to play at – e.g. if you have a 1440p monitor, look for benchmarks at 1440p and with roughly the same settings you wanna use e.g. high.
- To determine the maximum FPS the GPU can do, check the GPU usage.
  - If the GPU usage is at 97%+, then you're looking at the maximum FPS the GPU can do at those settings and that resolution.
  - If it's not at 97%, then the CPU in that benchmark is not fast enough and the GPU can do more FPS than what you are seeing. Try to calculate the real FPS by taking the average usage, e.g. 80% and trying to scale the FPS to the usage. E.g. if the benchmark you're watching is showing 120 fps at 70% GPU usage, then the maximum fps of that GPU is probably 25-30% higher than what you're seeing. So about 150 fps.
For evaluating a CPU + GPU combo
- The best way is to just find a benchmark with exactly the CPU and GPU you're interested in, but these might not exist, so there are alternatives
- Do all of the above steps to try to find the maximum FPS each of your components can do separately from each other
- Take the lower number of the 2 maximums to determine what FPS you'll be playing at. So for example, if you think the GPU can do 180 FPS, but the CPU can only do 120 FPS, then your game will run at 120 FPS – the lowest of the two.