It has almost been a month since the release of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl and it’s safe to say the game has been pretty successful despite launching with a healthy amount of bugs, crashes, and performance issues. That didn’t deter too many players though – fans are sticking by it and the promised hotfixes and patches have been much appreciated.
Now, major patch 1.1 is here (as of December 19th) and offers “over 1,800 fixes and adjustments, including the first iteration of A-Life fixes.” While that includes a large amount of fixes for missions, menus, or even achievements, there are plenty of performance and optimization issues that have been addressed as well.
Stalker 2 patch 1.1 now available on PC
You can read the full patch notes here; the details related to crashes, performance, and optimization in particular are below.
- Investigated, and applied further improvements to dead zones and curves for gamepad movement, aiming and camera controls for a more smooth and controllable experience using sticks on controller.
- Performance improvements in largely populated areas of the map.
- Fixed performance drops on NVIDIA RTX 3000 series video cards with enabled FSR frame generation.
- Fixed issue with game freezing on exiting a tunnel during A Light in the End of the Tunnel mission.
- Fixed issue with not working Razer Kishi Ultra controller, which connected via Bluetooth or cable connection.
- Fixed issue where MSI Force Pro Wireless Controller didn’t work via Bluetooth or dongle connection.
- Fixed issue when Xbox X/S controller didn’t work via Bluetooth connection.
- Controller input improvements.
- Fixed issue with visual artifacts in In-Game UI with DLSS enabled.
- Fixed issue when building disappears in player’s camera at Factory location.
- Fixed issue with a building near Yantar popping into Player’s view while approaching it.
- Fixed fps drops that could be created by large amounts of water particles.
- Fixed fps drops during interaction with corpses in shallow water.
- Fixed multiple EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION crashes.
- Fixed multiple Fatal Errors, Low Level Fatal Errors, and Assertion Failures.
RTX 30 series GPUs now work better with FSR frame generation
Overall, over 200 crashes were investigated, and further fixes were implemented. One that caught our eye and will affect many PC players is the performance drop fixes for those with RTX 3000 series GPUs. Considering the game isn’t the easiest in the world to run, settings such as upscaling or frame generation are recommended.
In our best settings for Stalker 2 guide, we tested the game with an RTX 3080 and also recommended using DLSS (or FSR) paired with FSR 3 Frame Generation. As per our in-house benchmarks, frame gen helped almost double the framerate – going from 65 to 120 FPS with high settings and DLSS quality mode. Since Nvidia’s own frame generation tech is locked behind the latest 40 series, those of you using an RTX 30 series card should now enjoy smoother performance with help from FSR frame gen.