Here's a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 performance and settings guide I hope gets out of date really fast

Photo by Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

I maintain my opinion that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is definitely worth experiencing, even though it's flawed in numerous significant ways. Just to be clear, it has some serious issues across the board.

This complicates my typical review and settings guide for new games, whether or not I have the right music to accompany it. Is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 facing such significant technical issues that it's better to hold off until a few updates come out before trying it? And how can we determine the optimal settings when features like FSR 3 frame generation aren’t functioning properly?

Overall, it’s probably a good idea to evaluate the current performance of Heart of Chornobyl on PC as it stands right now. The game has already made a solid impression on the Steam charts, and there are likely many more players enjoying it through Game Pass, which means a lot of dedicated fans might be trying to improve their framerates. Below, you'll see my best efforts to offer some advice, though I really hope GSC releases updates and fixes soon, rendering this entire article as outdated and useless as a two-decade-old pot of radioactive borscht. Go ahead, GSC, prove me wrong. I dare you!

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Chornobyl PC Specs & Performance

Let's first review the hardware requirements, which were recently revised ahead of the November 20 release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

In short, wow. It's not surprising to see the GTX 1060 and RX 580 listed as the minimum requirements for contemporary high-quality games. However, with the Core i7-9700K categorized in the Medium tier and the RTX 4070 recommended for optimal performance, it's clear that Heart of Chornobyl isn't designed for casual gamers looking for a survival FPS. The game's extensive and bizarre open world is also evident in its hefty storage requirement of 160GB on an SSD.

You can either try to play on minimum system requirements or upgrade to a powerful RTX 8000, but no matter what hardware you use, you'll still encounter some quirks with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. I completed the main story using an RTX 3090, and I still faced flashing textures, random crashes, and strange issues, like a cutscene that inexplicably dropped to about 15 frames per second, which then affected overall game performance until I restarted. You'll also experience typical stuttering associated with Unreal Engine 5, even though the game insists on doing shader compilation each time you start it up. Plus, even when everything seems calm, you'll notice significant differences in performance; for instance, a setup that runs at 60-70fps in an open area might drop down to 30-40fps in a crowded town.

I picked one of these trading centers to test the equipment, as it would provide a clear idea of whether specific hardware could manage demanding conditions. There was some positive news: the GTX 1060 was able to perform adequately at 1080p, achieving an average of 33 frames per second on the Low settings, aided by FSR in Performance mode. My basic gaming laptop, which has an RTX 4050, initially struggled, hitting only 23fps on Low settings with Quality-level DLSS. However, once I activated the frame generation feature from DLSS 3, which S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 supports for all RTX 40 series cards, the performance jumped to 48fps.

Surprisingly, upgrading to better components only led to more worries. The typically fast RTX 4060 struggled to manage the Epic preset at its native 1080p resolution, averaging just 33 frames per second. Even after switching down to Low settings, it only increased to 45 fps. This doesn’t bode well for any expectations of significant performance boosts from adjusting the quality settings.

At 1440p, the RTX 3070 didn't perform well, barely reaching 32fps on Epic settings with DLSS set to Quality. Lowering the graphics to High didn't make much of a difference either; it slightly increased the frame rate to 38fps. Even switching DLSS to Balanced mode only resulted in a minimal boost back to Epic settings, where I ended up with just 34fps—an increase of only 2fps.

Overall, the upscaling methods—DLSS, FSR, TSR, and TAA—tend to fall short of expectations. DLSS 3’s frame generation is particularly beneficial, nearly doubling the 1080p/Epic performance of the RTX 4060 to 61fps. However, it does introduce some input lag, even with Nvidia Reflex enabled to reduce latency. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get FSR 3’s frame generation to function on recent graphics cards at all. While it did work on the GTX 1060, the output was fuzzy and suffered from even greater input lag than DLSS 3.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 doesn’t perform very well with high-end graphics cards, and the RTX 4070 Ti produced some surprising results. When using the Epic preset and enabling Quality DLSS, it averaged 34fps at 1440p and 35fps at 4K, which is quite disappointing. That's not how resolutions are supposed to behave, RTX 4070 Ti. On the other hand, the more powerful RTX 4090 only managed to achieve a few extra frames at 4K, landing at 39fps with the same settings. While enabling DLSS 3 improved performance—boosting the RTX 4070 Ti’s 35fps to 58fps and the RTX 4090’s 39fps to 68fps—it's still underwhelming. I would expect better performance from these GPUs, even in such a demanding Unreal Engine 5 game.

The Steam Deck? Don't bother – S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 doesn't seem to recognize its controls, so you can't even get through the EULA. This might actually be a good thing. I have a feeling that attempting to run the game would cause the Deck's little processor to overheat immediately.

Best Settings Guide For S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2

There's no need to go through every single quality option since the difference in frames per second between Epic and Low settings is just around 12fps. This suggests that most of the 25 or so individual settings probably won’t have a significant effect on performance. I did a thorough test on the RTX 4060 and discovered a few settings that can help you gain an extra frame or two. You might want to try the following combination to achieve performance close to Epic without making major sacrifices. Just keep in mind that significantly improving your performance beyond this point isn’t likely without DLSS 3 support; much like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is a game that generally delivers the frame rates it offers.

On my RTX 4060, this setup averaged 39 frames per second, only 1 frame better than the High setting and 4 frames less than the Medium setting. While it may not seem like a significant upgrade, I noticed that this combination resulted in fewer noticeable drops in frame rate and less stuttering compared to the High setting. It also preserved more of the visual quality associated with the Epic preset compared to what you get on Medium.

To truly enhance your performance in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the key factor is whether your PC supports DLSS 3. If it does, give it a shot; incorporating it with the settings mentioned earlier raised my frames per second from 39 to 78, which is much more in line with what the RTX 4060 can deliver. If your system doesn’t support DLSS 3, you might need to rely on future patches for improvements. I can't recommend using FSR 3 for generating frames as a backup; even when it functions, it tends to produce a distracting blur, and the added input lag might disrupt the intense gun battles in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 where quick reactions are crucial. Moreover, the standard FSR upscaling suffers from noticeable detail issues, particularly at greater distances. That’s why I opted for the game’s built-in TSR upscaler for systems without RTX support.

I believe that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has the potential to thrive, even with some rough edges. Historically, this has been a key characteristic of the series. However, issues like DLSS not significantly increasing frame rates or cutscenes affecting performance take away from that bold, ambitious feel and, importantly, these are problems that can be addressed. Let’s hope for some real improvements, and that the only challenges we face while playing will come from those tough psi mutants attempting to mess with our minds.