How to run the game on a poor GPU and increase performance

I run this game on a GTX 1650 SUPER (far below the minimum requirements) on high settings and at 60FPS. Here is how you can do the same with whatever GPU you have with the ultimate scuffed Into the Radius setup. (Note: This will work on other VR games too)

Note: Someone reportedly was able to use a GTX 1050 to run this game using the methods in this guide. Please share what GPU and methods you use in the comments.
Other low end cards said to be able to run the game with this are the GTX 980 Ti and the GTX 1060 3GB

Note: Patch 2.2 improves CPU performance

Virtual Desktop for Quest 2 users

One of the most helpful things you can do to help run this game is to use the Virtual Desktop app for the Oculus Quest 2. This is a 20 dollar application to download on your headset that allows you to wirelessly stream PCVR games to your headset.

Why use this instead of AirLink? After all, AirLink is free and built in to the Quest 2.
Virtual Desktop allows you to easily reduce the render scale (lower lens resolution but much better performance). This is nice, but the biggest thing is that Virtual Desktop allows for the headset hardware to carry some of the load. Half of the game's frames will be rendered by your PC, while the other half are rendered by the headset, allowing for a lighter load on your GPU in exchange for a shorter battery life for your headset (playing this game for several hours in one sitting has unhealthy psychological effects anyway so the reduced battery might be a good thing). Using Virtual Desktop is one of the biggest things that will help you run this game if you use the Quest 2. However, this will not work for any other headsets, but keep reading as there are PC end things you can do.

If you are unable to buy Virtual Desktop then AirLink is your best bet, as it is much faster than using a link cable (and cheaper).

If your WiFi is not good enough or you are far from your router, then consider buying a WiFi range extender and plugging an ethernet cable into there. I do not have a direct wired connection to my router, but I am plugged into a WiFi extender and it still works with 500MBPS actual clocked download speeds and 5G frequency.

Overclocking your graphics card

Overclocking may be a big scary word, but it is actually quite easy and safe. You don't even need any wild equipment or hardware to do it, all you need is some free software.

AMD cards:

If you don't already have it, download Radeon software here https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/software

Under the performance tab, click tuning and then click overclock GPU. The software will automatically overclock your card and give you a performance boost.

Nvidia cards:

The first piece of software you need is MSI Afterburner. This software allows you to freely modify your clock speeds, fan speeds, and power/thermal limits to your liking. It can be downloaded here: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

The second piece of software you need is MSI Kombustor. This software allows you to test and see if your overclock is stable or not. It can be downloaded here: https://geeks3d.com/furmark/kombustor/

A short informational video tutorial I recommend is Userbenchmark's 2 minute tutorial. It is slightly dated but is still quick and effective. Userbenchmark is not a credible source of part performance and has heavy anti-AMD bias, avoid them beyond this video

Intel integrated graphics:

You're out of luck lol

The downside of heavy overclocking is that artifacts (not the valuable kind) may appear in your game that break immersion. This includes colored light flashes and torn textures. These artifacts are rare and the torn textures only happens on large solid colored objects that you look at for a long time. For me this was only the table and floor in your sleeping quarters at the base. The heavier the overclock, the more artifacts you get. AMD overclock and lighter Nvidia overclock tends to get no artifacts at all.

AMD FSR OpenVR

Note: As of patch 2.3 AMD FSR is integrated into the game. If you are playing on 2.3 or later you should ignore this section

An extremely powerful piece of software created by the community brings AMD FSR technology into not just this game, but any game running on Unity or Unreal 4. This is a tool that I personally use on this game and it is so powerful that I don't even need to overclock.

All instructions to install this are included on the GitHub page: https://github.com/fholger/openvr_fsr

The software itself (and the source code, it's open source) can be installed here: https://github.com/fholger/openvr_fsr/releases/tag/fsr_v1.1

To find the install folder for this game, right click on the game in your library, hover over manage, and select browse local files. The folders you need to follow from there are:
Engine, Binaries, ThirdParty, OpenVR, OpenVRv1_5_17, Win64
After navigating there, rename openvr_api.dll to openvr_api.orig.dll
After doing this, put the openvr_fsr._v1.1zip file you downloaded from GitHub into the folder and extract all the files.
Your end result should look something like this:


As this guide ages, the version numbers in the files will likely increase, but the steps should remain the same. If anything drastically changes, let me know in the comments of this guide and I will update this.

This method drastically improves performance, more so than overclocking, and brought my performance from 20-30 FPS to a silky smooth 60FPS.

The only downside to this method is that some (very few) anomalies will appear in-game (not the spacetime kind but the graphical glitch kind). Some strange issues with models may appear for a brief moment and throw you off a little, but it is nothing serious and is not worse than the overclocking.

Note from the author

This guide is old, made during the first version of the game with the old map. I have since replaced my 1650 SUPER with an RX 6800XT, and no longer need this guide myself. However, I will still respond to comments and try to maintain the guide. If you have any questions/issues or something in this guide changed/no longer works, please comment something. Steam notifies me for every comment on here.

If the guide helped you, please like or favorite the guide. If it really helped you, you can give it an award (but I'm not starved for Steam points, I have other guides that are way more popular).

Enjoy the radius, stalker!

[Crug]

This guide was a lot more relevant before FSR was in the game

[Fitts]

The only thing a can do is overclock, since i dont own any quest, what i have is a htc vive, that one from 2016

[Sheikahchu]

I have no clue what happened, but now the performance got better and worse at the same time, gonna try to use the Steam Link option to see if it improves

[heyo its mayo]

@Sheikahchu are you using steamvr,
steam vr tanks the performance.
So try runnung itr with and without steamvr and see if there is a differance,
there was for me :)

[Sheikahchu]

It's up to date, which also makes me wonder what could be going on, I've tried to reduce all of the settings of the game, which works, but ends up looking like shit, so I have to be in a constant battel of Visuals vs Framerate while my other VR Games work flawlessly on high or ultra settings

[Crug]

I'm not really sure then. I don't experience the same issue. Last time I was having issues with VR performance the solution ended up being updating my Quest 2 from settings, so you can try that.

[Sheikahchu]

I'm running Windows 10 atm

[Crug]

What OS are you on? Windows 11 has issues with a lot of VR games

[Sheikahchu]

The CPU is a Ryzen 7 5700 X (Not overclocked, water cooled), The ram is 2 16GB Modules DDR4 @3600 Mhz, I'm running the game from an SSD, It's a WD_BLACK 2TB SN850X

[Crug]

Can you share details on your CPU and RAM? Are you running the game on an SSD or an HDD?