Short answer: on a weak PC, start with other people’s avatars, not your graphics preset. Most of VRChat’s own performance settings control avatars, so begin by blocking poorly optimised avatars and capping how many avatars you see. Then lower mirror resolution and shadows. Registry edits and network “tweaks” aren’t in VRChat’s own performance guidance, and we’ve removed the ones an earlier version of this page suggested.
Every setting below is from VRChat’s Performance Options documentation. You’ll find them in the settings tab of the quick menu (press the pop-out button).
Is your PC even above the floor?
VRChat’s Steam page lists the minimum as Windows 10/11, an Intel i5-4590 or AMD FX 8350, 4 GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon R9 290, with DirectX 11. If you’re below that, settings can only do so much. Your PC can still join, but busy instances will struggle whatever you change.
Step 1: control other people’s avatars
VRChat’s avatar performance ranking guide puts it plainly: “Your avatar affects everyone else’s framerate.” The reverse is true too, which makes these the settings that matter most in a crowded world.
| Setting | What it does | Low-end PC suggestion |
|---|---|---|
| Block Poorly Optimized Avatars | Sets the minimum performance rank shown. Avatars below it are replaced or stripped of heavy components | Start at Medium. Drop to Poor if Medium hides too many |
| Maximum Shown Avatars | Shows only the closest N avatars, sorted by distance | 10 in busy worlds |
| Hide Avatars Beyond | Hides every avatar past a distance, e.g. 15 m | 10–15 m |
| Maximum Avatar Download Size | Avatars over this file size aren’t downloaded until you click “Show Avatar”. Default 200 MB | Lower it if you have little RAM or a slow connection |
| Maximum Uncompressed Size | Caps the decompressed size, which relates to texture size | Lower it on 8 GB or less of RAM |
| Always Show Friend Avatars | Exempts friends from culling | Turn off if friends’ avatars are the heavy ones |
Two limits to know. VRChat says hidden avatars “will have all renderers turned off”, but “some components will continue to run”, animators included. So culling cuts the rendering work, but not all the processing. And its ranking guide admits the rank is a static check that can label a well-optimised avatar Very Poor, or rate a frame-rate hog Excellent. So if one person still tanks your frame rate, hide that avatar by hand.
Step 2: graphics settings that cost the most
- Mirror resolution: choose Half or Quarter. VRChat’s docs warn that “Unlimited resolution mirrors will significantly impact your performance”. Better still, don’t stand in front of mirrors on a weak PC.
- Graphics Quality profile: VRC Low, Medium, High or Ultra set many options at once. Start at VRC Low, then raise single settings.
- Shadow quality: this only affects shadows from realtime lights. Baked shadows aren’t affected and don’t cost performance, so lowering it helps most in worlds with dynamic lighting.
- Anti-aliasing (MSAA), LOD quality, particle physics quality: each has a cost. Lower them after mirrors and shadows if you still need frames.
Step 3: pick lighter instances
Every extra person is one more avatar for your PC to download and process. Culling helps, but hidden avatars’ animators keep running. If a world is unplayable, a smaller instance of it is the cheapest fix there is.
Our verdict
Do steps 1 and 2 before touching anything outside VRChat. If you’re at or near the GTX 970 minimum and still struggling after that, the fix is hardware, not tweaks. Our guide to used GPUs worth buying gives euro price ceilings for older cards, and the GPU upgrade calculator shows what a given card would add over yours.
What we could not verify
VRChat doesn’t publish frame-rate gains per setting, and we haven’t measured them, so the suggestions above are an order of priority based on what each setting controls, not tested numbers. The earlier version of this page recommended a Unity 6 beta, “TCP BBR v2”, a LargeSystemCache registry edit, a Device Manager toggle for Resizable BAR and an NVIDIA “GSP” setting. We found no VRChat or vendor documentation backing those for VRChat, so they’re gone.
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