Poor performance and heavy frame drops can be caused by various reasons, either depending on the content you're loading in or external factors to the VRChat client.
Before anything, PC users should review our System Requirements article to ensure that your system is capable of supporting VRChat. We cannot directly assist users experiencing issues with systems that do not meet these requirements.
VRChat In-App Troubleshooting
- Poorly-optimized avatars and worlds are very often known causes of performance issues. Utilize the Trust & Safety System to increase your Shield Level and turn off avatars for users that you may not be directly interacting with or may be using 'Very Poor' / 'Poor' avatars
- You can use the 'Performance Options' button on the top-right of your Safety Menu to increase the minimum requirement for displayed avatars (we suggest trying 'Medium') and reduce the maximum avatar download size
- On the same menu, you can also enable the 'Convert All Dynamic Bones To Phys Bones' option to ensure that you're utilizing Phys Bones which we've optimized to be much more resource efficient
- Lastly, utilize the 'Adv. Graphics' submenu to reduce your Graphics Quality, as well as the Multisample Antialiasing option to an option that your system can easily support. If you're unsure, we recommend reducing them as much as possible for the purposes of troubleshooting
General PC Troubleshooting
- Update your GPU drivers, as doing so is critical and outdated drivers often cause performance issues. If you're using an Nvidia GPU, head to this link to find your latest drivers. If you're using an AMD GPU, head to this link instead
- Check your PC for any available Windows Updates
- Check your PC's Power Plan to ensure that you're running on a plan suited for heavy usage. Power Plans such as Power Saver can drastically decrease the available resources to VRChat and result in reduced performance
- Open up your Task Manager and close any applications that may be utilizing a lot of your CPU or Memory resources
- If you're using applications such as f.lux or any other software that could be impacting your performance, close them entirely for the purposes of testing your performance
- If you're using Steam, check your SteamVR render resolution by navigating to the SteamVR menu and select Settings > Video > Render Resolution. If this is scaled up, you may experience noticeable performance issues. Try changing it to "Auto" and let SteamVR determine this as needed
- If your GPU is specifically being strained, reducing the Refresh Rate under the SteamVR menu may help. You can do so by navigating to Settings > General > Refresh Rate and selecting a lower option that your GPU can easily support
- Some users have described improvements in SteamVR performance by disabling 'SteamVR Home'. You can do so by opening up your SteamVR Settings, making sure you have 'Advanced Settings' set to Show, and then turn 'SteamVR Home' to OFF
- Turn off Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling by navigating to System > Display > Graphic Settings. If you're on Windows 11, this option should be under the "Change default graphics settings" option. Once you've made the change, restart your computer for it to take effect.
If you continue to have issues beyond this point, please submit a Support Ticket and describe in as much detail as possible what conditions result in the heaviest frame drops and how often you experience them.
We've provided users with plenty of options to fine-tune their VRChat experience as your system allows it but a good deal of troubleshooting will come directly from optimizing your system and freeing up its resources as needed.