Do These 'Tweaks' Really BOOST FPS..? | HPET, Full Screen Opt., DPI Scaling, and H.A.G.S in EFT

Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling, Disable Full Screen Optimizations, High DPI Scaling Override, and (the infamous) High Precision Event Timer, are all discussed and explained (in part). I figured that there needed to be some candid discussion on the origin of these "Tweaks" because a lot of people simply switch them on and off with no thought. Since I kept getting asked about them, I knew I had to make a video dedicated to discussing them. Hopefully, this helps clear up any misconceptions and shines a light on blind-following of these tips. I'll keep working on learning more on these and, for now, thank you so much for watching!

Links:

Sources (in rough order):
(DPI Scaling):
(HPET):

Music used:

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro (Snake Oil, Anyone?)
0:54 Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling
2:36 Disable Full Screen Optimizations
6:08 High DPI Scaling Override (by Application)
8:04 High Precision Event Timer
10:11 Final Thoughts and Debrief

Settings:
Resolution: 1440p
Screen: Borderless
Texture Quality: Medium
Shadows Quality: Low
Object LOD Quality: 3
Overall Visibility: 1500
Anti-aliasing: TAA High
Resampling: 1x off (duh)
DLSS/FSR 1.0/ FSR 2.1: Off
HBAO: Max Performance
SSR: Medium
Anisotropic Filtering: On
Nvidia Reflex: On
Sharpness: 0.9
MIP Streaming Off

Specs:
CPU: i5-13600k
GPU: EVGA RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 Ultra
RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) @ 3200mhz CL16
1 TB Samsung 980 Pro SDD
MOBO: MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4 ProSeries
PSU: Corsair RM 850x

#EscapeFromTarkov #EFT #tarkov

[klemintime]

I know this is more of a discussion piece, but I really wanted to get to the bottom of these tweaks and clear the air around what they were actually meant to do. Please do feel free to leave any additional information you have in the comments below and thank you so much for watching and reading this comment :)

[Anktionman]

Been watching your videos now for the last few wipes and I think you're doing a great job and I appreciate the time and care you put into the content. I think videos like this one are as important as your testing and recommendation types because many of us who are trying out these tweaks are probably experiencing a similar result. Game setting tweaks and windows settings changes make little difference, and this can be frustrating. Having been chasing frames in Tarkov for a few years now, I've mostly come to grips with that realization.

For me, I've had mostly consistent performance until this wipe. My hardware is the same and pretty good by today's standards, but I'm anywhere from 15 to 20 less frames per map. Part of me hopes its just the snow lol, but It's probably something more substantial that's causing underutilization in my system since I've noticed it other titles.

Either way I'll continue to tweak and test until I get to the bottom of it, all the while enjoying the content you provide along the way. Thank you!

[jarnolaaksonen]

🦾 Thanks Klem! Hope this clear things for some people. Quality video as always! :)

[saint_snow]

I tested HAGS off and found that I get much better performance in raids. I test online as that's what matters. Offline without AI, fps is massive and fine for my setup, 4090/12900k.
However in raids my fps always seemed off, not ideal, like something wasn't working right. Fps just wasnt as steady, big dips on every map. I decided to turn off HAGS for the first time and found that surprisingly my fps went up 30-40fps in raids in all the maps including streets and was overall stable.
I later stumbled across an interesting thread on the nvidia subreddit from 9months ago discussing that apparently HAGS and Nvidia Reflex don't mix. What they discuss seems to hold true for me as well.
I have also tested HAGS on but reflex off and make sure the low latency setting in control panel is off as well (honestly you shouldn't really use this at all regardless). Once again, stable fps and higher fps. However it is now capped in the game at 144. Which honestly is fine as the post says to cap the fps regardless in this situation. If you want to go higher than 144, you can circumvent this by disabling vsync in the control panel for tarkov and enabling vsync in game. Then set a custom fps cap in Rivatuner for tarkov(this comes with Afterburner).

Whether you run HAGS and turn off reflex or turn off HAGS and keep reflex on in the settings is up to you. You can test which would work better for your system. However, running both at the same time definately is causing issues, not just in tarkov but overall and will cause instability and more latency as well.

[nathhhxd]

that HPET tweak helped me on my old PC because I used to do it for siege because it helped me push over to 200 fps. This PC had a gtx 1070 and a ryzen 5 2600

[reiga]

Something weird I encountered, was that my game felt like it was stuck on 60Hz(default 144, nvidia options are set to 144), like the whole image felt really stuttery and sluggish. I randomly checked the 'Disable fullscreen optimizations', and my game felt way more smoother. I don't think the framerate went up, but the downsides disapeared. I told my friends about it and it worked the same way for them.

[thachester]

I could feel the pain when you mentioned HPET.

[pedraaaa]

Thank you very much. I love your explanations.

[wildgg]

Great video on explaining these tweaks.

Like you mentioned it's hard to test/benchmark these individual settings since there is no ingame benchmark to run. With that said though if each one of these recommended tweaks help by even 0.5fps, (yes 0.5 is margin of error) assuming they do help, all of these little tweaks will add up. And I think because they can add up, it's one of the main reasons why people say or claim they gained FPS.

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together"

[jwilsyo]

after watching your video in regards to cpu vs gpu bottle necks, turning HAGS on was the solution to get my frame time and GPU busy to line up.

[cousinlarryw]

I've spent way too much time trying lots of different ways to optimize windows and if I can offer any advice it would be this: Keep it simple. A lot of times when I followed optimization guides and changed a bunch of settings that I knew nothing about it made things run poorly or just made my system unstable. I recently started from scratch (fresh windows install and default bios settings) and only undervolted my cpu and gpu and used the chris titus tech windows utility to change some things. Other than that I only changed settings in windows that I was 100% sure helped performance. My computer has never run better. I've really enjoyed these videos and testing and concur that way too many optimization guides are absolutely misleading and often times wrong.

[Mithaldu]

for some of these it might be worth trying to see if you can detect any difference in furbench, passmark etc. for cpu or gpu bound scenarios

[inreisen]

A really weird situation that I happened to see in Tarkov today. When I enable AMD FSR 1.0 in-game, it doesn't get enabled in the first time. I was checking my GPU usage on an offline raid in Shoreline in a specific place where I get around 80-90% GPU Usage, when I turn AMD FSR 1.0 for the "first " time my GPU Usage didn't change at all. But for a second time(disabling it and re-enabling it) it did its job and reduced my GPU Usage from 80-90% to 50-60%. So my theory is that some settings don't get enabled when you "first" time enable them, you need to either restart the game or try it for a second or even a third time.

Another problem is that DLSS and FSR 2.2 shows rain and snow stuff "too much". I was playing the same offline raid on Shoreline and it was raining snow(sorry for my bad English idk how do you say that so I will just say raining snow). I realized that with AMD FSR 1.0 and with no downscalers(I mean no DLSS, FSR 1.0 nor FSR 2.2), raining snow's "opacity" is really low it doesn't bother you that much and doesn't block your vision. But with DLSS or AMD FSR 2.2 enabled, "opacity" is nearly 100% you see all the raining snow blocking your vision. Same scenarios also happens with the usual Tarkov rain(without the snow).

Idk wtf is going on with these downscalers. I have a CPU Bound scenario and I was using DLDSR with DLSS for smoother experience but this day I switched to AMD FSR 1.0. The thing is, none of these are 100% stable to work with.

[youyou-ticp]

i have an old pc with an i7 3770 and HPET is off in the bios by default for 64bit os. when i switched it on the performance in gears 4 was horrible

[andreyz]

I just got a 3070ti, whenever Nikita decides to update to unity 2023 and up the graphics on the game as he said too, wtf am I gonna need to run it then if it's considered a bottleneck with a 5800x3d?
Do i have to sell my house for a 5090 ti super?

[yl-]

Hey Klem I figured out why HPET helped so much in my case, I used XTU and Ryzen master, both REQUIRED HPET meaning that the moment you launch them the HPET is enabled, other wise it's software disabled. Thats why when I reinstalled win 11 and started to tweak the systems for 5950x and 9900k there was such a difference. TLDR it's off by default, only turns on when a app is needed hence lot of those need restart.

[ThePlaion]

What about Win32PrioritySeparation? Good number probably can get good resoults.

[johnnywick]

I benchmarked all these myself as well and everything besides HAGS had at best a 0.3 fps difference which was probably just a temp, system fluctuation. HAGS did give me like 1+ fps more.

It all depends on your system. Some older pcs or just other pc's in general may or may not benefit from these settings.

You can never tell anyone which setting is truly better or not because all pc's are different.

For example I get 5+ more fps for unchecking the use physical cores only option, while others may actually lose fps or see no difference.

[sergtrufanov]

Hello Clementine, dunno if you read comments on your old videos, but still. I tried disabling hpet on my intel xeon e3-1270, yeah i know its potato nowadays, but it still can handle games well. So i had like 4-6 min customs loading times in pve on a ssd! after disabling hpet i loaded in leas than minute... Gonna try pvp today, i had 13 min ground zero load lol

[milanfarago]

Nice video, but I don't understand one thing, I have a 1920x1080p 27" monitor, if I turn on the override high scaling behavior and the disable fullscreen optimization in rocket league, it will be much better. How is this because it's only a low dpi monitor.