Following much hype, the tactical FPS MMO Gray Zone Warfare is unfortunately off to a rocky start. Its early access launch is proving fraught with performance issues, which is the main complaint reflected in the currently 1457 Most Negative Steam reviews.
In a “Not Recommended” review, user KONG writes, “The game is extremely CPU bound in double digit framerates with massive stutters and on the fly shader compilation and loading. At least it's a good looking map…” With a 7800X3D CPU. and RTX 4090 GPU and the RAM to match, by all accounts this guy should be in good shape, so reports like this are definitely concerning.
A similar review from Lyruko reads, “Barely running 60 fps (using 3080TI and i9 10900k) with everything on minimum. And I'm experiencing very bad FPS sickness and stuttering. This is giving me motion sickness more than anything. Will review when performance (is) improved.”
Not everyone suffers (at least not too much)
On the contrary, some users indicate respectable frame rates. Users like Camper-_- mention 60-70 FPS with default settings running on Ryzen 7700X, 32GB DDR5 6000MHz, and RTX 3070Ti, and this is far from the only one who calls their experience acceptable.
As always, user reports of performance issues should be taken with a grain of salt as there could be hardware or software issues that have nothing to do with the game at play, be it overclocking, old drivers, performance-hogging programs running in the background. , and so on. But even with that in mind, there is a widespread pattern here, which probably means that developer MADFINGER Games has some optimization to do (the sooner the better).
FSR and DLSS said to help with low FPS
However, there is hope for those struggling with performance issues: users like Faawks report FSR with Frame Generation about doubles their framerate, solving their previously reported struggles (although not everyone comes to the same conclusion, and some still report stuttering). Meanwhile, NVIDIA users claim that DLSS helps a lot, so try that instead if you're in that camp.
Related: How to play Gray Zone Warfare – Beta, Release Date, Gameplay and more
Be warned, this is part of an unfortunate trend where developers rely on AI techniques like FSR and DLSS to provide acceptable performance in the first place as opposed to improving already optimized performance. However, this is definitely something you want to watch if you enjoy the game otherwise. The potential downside (at least with FSR) is a worse looking game and crashes (other complaints we see periodically).
Another possible solution is to enable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in your Graphics settings (search for 'Graphics settings' in Windows), if it is not already enabled.
Want more tactical FPS content? Check out Escape from Tarkov Codes here on Pro Game Guides.
