How to get the best settings in Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl

Setting the graphics settings to the best FPS for the course is on par with new PC games Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl This is no exception, although this game is especially difficult to optimize. Dialing in exactly what your rig can handle and what you're comfortable with comes down to your preferences and how the Stalker 2 works with your particular hardware.

Stalker 2 Heart Of Chornobyl technician sitting in his chair.

Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl – How to upgrade weapons and armor

If you want to get more damage and resistance in Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl, you need to get some upgrades for your gear.

After testing each graphics setting, we've come up with a near-optimal setting for those with hardware from the last two generations. You may need to change things for your situation, but the settings provided here are a good start.

Best graphics settings

Computer graphics settings menu in Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl.

There are a few basic rules you should follow to get the best performance out of Stalker 2:

Play with as few background programs as possible. Playing with more than a few people is a huge feat.
Do not remove Alt-Tab from the game. Most PC games don't like Alt-Tabbing, but Stalker 2 seems to suffer more than that.
Use the AI scale upgrade if available. Stalker 2 offers DLSS, FSR, XeSS and other upscaling solutions that will only make your game look and run better. Use them if your GPU supports them.

to test, All settings in the Graphics menu were set to Medium As a baseline with TAA as a scaling solution, as it is not proprietary to any GPU manufacturer. DLSS gave our test device better performance than FSR, but other players have experienced the opposite, and so on.

The test area was the opening city of Zalysia on a foggy and rainy day. Walk up and down the main thoroughfare in the afternoon. At ultra-wide resolution with the RTX 3080, we averaged 40 FPS, and all settings recommendations are based on this baseline.

All settings in this test were increased individually from Medium to Epic
keep everything else on Medium for stability.

setting	FPS impact	Optimal settings
Texture quality	insignificant	epic
hair	2 to 5 fps drop with hair in the frame	average
Object details	1-3 frames per second drop	up
The quality of the effects	Drop 2-5 frames per second	average
Material	1-3 frames per second drop	up
Mail processing	1-3 frames per second drop	epic

anti evaporation	insignificant	epic
The power of motion blur	insignificant	0%
depth of field	insignificant	low
Light shafts	insignificant	activated
Clarity	insignificant	20%
DLSS scale upgrade	10+ FPS improvement	balanced
Upgrading the FSR scale	Not used due to graphic artifacts	It is out of order

Shadow quality	Drop 2-5 frames per second	average
Universal lighting	Drop 2-5 frames per second	average
Reflections	1-3 frames per second drop	up
Shadow quality	Drop 5-8 frames per second	average
the clouds	1-3 frames per second drop	up
fog	2-5 fps drop with lowest level compared to other settings	average
the sky	insignificant	up
Foliage quality	1-3 FPS drop, more with more foliage	up
Peripheral draw distance	1-3 frames per second drop	up

Additionally, here are the main specs of the PC used to test these settings. Your results will likely vary, so adjust your settings as necessary from what is provided.

GPU: NVIDIA 3080 Founder's Edition
CPU: Intel 13700K in stock (updated microcode)
RAM: 32 GB
Operating system: Windows 10
monitor: Ultra wide with 12:5 resolution

The main difference factor here is clarity. Play in 1440p or other 16:9 resolutions Most likely, more opportunities will open up to increase your settings. If you are using a graphics card from NVIDIA 40 series or something like 7800XT from AMD, You can use Frame Generation more effectively Which will probably add more gains.

Low power cards like the 4070 and below may struggle with heavier settings
As a 3080 card does, and the less power a card produces, the more trouble it will have, regardless of generation.