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Gray Zone Warfare is deploying hotfixes, but performance remains grimSurprise Steam hit is still stutters galore, even on lowered settings
Surprise Steam hit is still stutters galore, even on lowered settings
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Madfinger Games
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Madfinger Games
Hardcore tacticalFPSGray Zone Warfareis proving to be yet another of 2024’s unexpected successes, shifting over half a million copies when it launched into early access last week. Unfortunately, in its attempt to eatEscape from Tarkov’s lunch – a timely one, given that game’sself-inflicted DLC misery– it’s currently choking on the wishbone of some truly dire performance issues. Even players with tip-topgraphics cardsare seeing heavy stuttering while out in the field, and none of the updates released thus far, including today’sHotfix #3, have done much to soothe it.
Said hotfix does include some fixes for other widespread problems, including a second attempt at preventing players from becoming headless when rejoining a server (an amusing though resilient glitch, given a previous hotfix had also tried to nix it). But having played a bit of this third patch on a usually reliableRTX 4060, there’s clearly an awful lot of work left to do before Gray Zone Warfare performs acceptably.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Madfinger Games
The possibility remains that performance could be cleaned up as part of the standard early access development process,as we’re currently seeingwithNo Rest for the Wicked. There’s no saving yourself in the meantime, though, as lowering the quality settings brings only minor benefits. I still say it’s worth doing, as I did see a teensy reduction in stuttering after dropping my own graphics options, but there’s currently no way to fully or even significantly smooth out those performance dips on your end.
With that in mind, here’s what I’d recommend for Gray Zone Warfare’s settings:
A few other notes:AMD FSR 3frame generation may seem like a no-brainer, but this has problems of its own, showing signs of poor frame pacing, a nasty ghosting effect on fast-moving objects, and added input lag.DLSS 3frame generation looks and operates far better, and while it’s limited to GeForce RTX 40 GPUs, I can’t recommend the more agnostic FSR 3 in its current state.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Madfinger Games
