Another thread about VERY low GPU/CPU usage

November 22, 2020

Played EFT for about 6 solid months (to the point of depression lol, I was addicted) but I have never participated in Forums, so hello!
After taking a long break, (this game is so stressful) I have come back to EFT being unplayable.

Windows 10
i7-9700
GTX 1660 ti

HyperX Fury 32GB RAM @ 2666 MHz (but this is apparently happening for all RAM speeds)
Corsair 550w 80+ Bronze

Whats blowing my mind is my issue is happening to people with Titan X GPUs and i9 processors with 3200mhz RAM and their forums are largely unanswered. So here we go... another "optimization" issue.

I have spent 3 days watching over 4 hours of Youtube videos and "memory/GPU/power/CPU priority/FPS unlocking" videos that all seem to have the same clickbait thumbnails showing "9999999% improvement" or whatever tagline trends content creators are using for the moment. (excuse my dry sarcasm, I'm being an a-hole, but dude, EFT and the tireless trope of "the game is not optimized" have just about made me regret my purchase) But that's the dice you throw by buying a Beta with a no refund policy. I understand what I electronically signed.

Earlier this year, I couldn't stop talking about this game. It was truly remarkable, nothing like it (and still isn't, since the Beta launched) I'm just wondering why the game has decided to drop CPU and GPU usage to 38 percent respectively, after the first 2 minutes of Raid, absolutely without fail, every time. Level launches, I spawn in, games running at 98 percent loads on each respective piece (GPU/CPU) and I can just watch the top corner of my RivaTuner dropping by 2 percent at a time until the game gets comfortable with 45 FPS at 38 percent CPU load, and 38 percent GPU load. I have reloaded different maps offline (Customs, Woods, Reserve, Labs) every one of them share the same degradation timeline, regardless of anything texture or graphically related. (Level loads, spawn in, hear player pull bolt back on rifle, 134 FPS and 95-98 percent GPU/CPU usage, trickling down to 38% each within 2 minutes, at an avg of 45 fps and some JARRING stuttering.)

I can generally solve 99 percent of my problems with Youtube and Reddit. (I mean, C'mon, they're so useful) What's maddening is that there doesn't seem to be a SINGLE variable that makes a discernible difference (for me). Nothing. Low textures? High Textures? V-Sync in game, but not in Nvidia control panel? Minimal view distance? Maximum distance? No post FX? Post FX of varying suggestions? Reseating RAM to different slots? Running Windows in "Ultimate Performance" mode? Assigning every task related to EFT as maximum priority/power use? Flat, default clock speeds? Overclocked? (MSI Afterburner on/off) RAM cleaner? Using the command line to optimize Windows file integrity and registry? Total, complete reinstall on an M.2 nVME? Reinstall of Windows? High Quality colors off? All check boxes at the bottom of video options unchecked? (ZBlur, etc) Physical cores only? I AM SO LOST. I've done so much troubleshooting that I'm losing track of the methods I HAVE tried...

I am losing my god-damn mind. I paid a LOT of money (which isn't their fault) on Edge of Darkness. I was so excited to hear of map changes. (Customs is probably my favorite map of any FPS I have ever played, in my life) and I love what they did with it. But this is actually unplayable man. Seeing SO MANY people having this issue without a solution is disheartening. (seriously, search "Low GPU usage Tarkov" in Google and scroll down that rabbit hole...) It seems BSG's Forum response to people who have restated the problem here instead of Reddit is "Try running without overclock."

Its hard not to feel duped, here. I want to experience the 12.7-8 updates since having taken a long time off, and this experience is turning abysmal.

This game is so sick, but it's really hard not to hate Unity.

Edited November 22, 2020 by Kaptivus
didn't make it clear in the paragraph full of questions that those were all the methods I've already tried.

November 26, 2020

I have the exact same issue, getting FPS dips down to 30s-40s while non of my system modules (CPU/GPU/RAM) go over 40% load EVER. Settings seems to have zero impact - highest/lowest possible run the same. I've also went through every possible satanic ritual and a hardware upgrade and no difference to write home about whatsoever.

The final kick in the balls is that I see ppl with worse/same rigs on twitch and it seems to run just fine given they are also streaming (those that don't have a dedicated streaming rig). It's frustrating to say the least.