Gray Zone Warfare launch plagued with performance issues

Following lots of hype, the tactical FPS MMO Gray Zone Warfare is unfortunately off to a rocky start. Its early access launch is proving riddled with performance issues, which are the primary complaint reflected in the currently 1457 Mostly Negative Steam reviews.

In a 'Not Recommended' review, user KONG writes, "The game is extremely CPU bound in two 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 fine shape, so reports like this are definitely concerning.

A similar review from Lyruko reads, "Barely running 60 fps [using a 3080TI and i9 10900k] with everything at minimum. And I'm experiencing very bad FPS dips and stutters. This gives me motion sickness more than anything. Will review again when performance [is] improved."

Meanwhile on reddit, we see similar results. "RTX 3070, 32GB RAM, and Ryzen 3700X. Can't get stable 50 FPS on low with DLSS Performance," reports one user (Iwack), with many other echoing a similar sentiment.

As ever, user reports on 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, whether it's overclocking, old drivers, performance-hogging programs running in the background, and so on. But even with that in mind, there's a widespread pattern here, which likely means developer MADFINGER Games has some optimizing to do (the sooner the better).

Not all are suffering (at least not too much)

Conversely, some users are indicating respectable framerates. Users like Camper-_- mention 60-70 FPS with default settings running on a Ryzen 7700X, 32GB DDR5 6000MHz, and RTX 3070Ti.

This is far from the only one calling their experience acceptable. Redditor KimchiNamja for example reports they're getting "110-150 fps in base and starter town" on a Ryzen 9 5900x, XFX 7900 XT, 32GB DDR4 3600 RAM and an NVMe SSD. Not everyone can afford to pack such heat, but it's at least good to know high-end players have a chance at strong performance.

FSR and DLSS said to help with low FPS

There is hope for those struggling with performance issues, though: users like Faawks report FSR with Frame Generation on doubles their framerate, solving their previously reported struggles (though not all come to the same conclusion, and some still report stuttering). Meanwhile, NVIDIA users claim DLSS helps a ton, so give that a go instead if you are in that camp.

Related: How to play Gray Zone Warfare – Beta, Release Date, Gameplay, and more

Mind you, this is part of an unfortunate trend where developers are relying on AI techniques like FSR and DLSS to provide acceptable performance in the first place as opposed to enhancing already optimized performance. Still, this is definitely something you want to look into if you're enjoying the game otherwise. The potential downside (at least with FSR) is a worse-looking game and crashes (other complaints we're seeing periodically).

Another potential solution is to enable Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in your Graphics settings (search 'Graphics settings' in Windows), if it's not already enabled.

Want more tactical FPS content? Check out Escape from Tarkov Codes here on Pro Game Guides.