The Quest for 20 TPS: Benchmarking Modded Minecraft Performance in 2026
Twenty TPS is the theoretical maximum for Minecraft - one game tick every 50 milliseconds. It is the difference between a server that feels alive and one that feels like it is fighting you. On vanilla servers at low player counts, 20 TPS is trivial. On a 30-player modded server running ATM10? It becomes an engineering achievement.
Here are the real benchmark numbers from our test lab.
Test Methodology
All tests run on Space-Node Ryzen 9 7950X3D hardware with NVMe Gen 4 storage, using dedicated allocation (no resource contention). We simulated player load using bot frameworks and measured TPS via Spark's profiling output averaged over 30 minutes.
Baseline: Vanilla Paper 1.21
| Simulated Players | TPS | MSPT |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 20.0 | 3ms |
| 30 | 20.0 | 8ms |
| 60 | 19.8 | 16ms |
| 100 | 19.2 | 22ms |
| 150 | 18.1 | 31ms |
Vanilla Paper holds 20 TPS comfortably up to ~60 players on Ryzen 9 hardware. The TPS ceiling starts to appear above 100 players.
Fabric + Performance Mods (Lithium + Starlight + FerriteCore)
| Simulated Players | TPS | Improvement Over Vanilla |
|---|---|---|
| 60 | 20.0 | +0.2 |
| 100 | 19.7 | +0.5 |
| 150 | 19.2 | +1.1 |
The performance mod stack (Lithium, Starlight, FerriteCore, Krypton) keeps TPS higher at extreme player counts.
Modded: ATM10 (400+ mods, NeoForge)
| Simulated Players | TPS | MSPT |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 19.6 | 28ms |
| 10 | 19.1 | 36ms |
| 20 | 18.4 | 44ms |
| 30 | 17.0 | 57ms |
| 40 | 14.8 | 78ms |
ATM10 at 30 players maintains acceptable TPS but shows the cost of mod complexity. At 40+, lag becomes player-noticeable.
What the Data Means Practically
For modded servers, plan your population cap around these benchmarks:
| Modpack | Recommended Max Players (Ryzen 9) |
|---|---|
| ATM10 / ATM9 | 20 - 25 players |
| Vault Hunters 3 | 10 - 15 players |
| Create packs | 25 - 35 players |
| Fabric tech packs | 30 - 40 players |
These numbers assume NVMe storage. On SATA SSD, reduce estimates by 20%. On HDD-based hosting, reduce by 50%.
The Configuration That Makes 20 TPS Achievable at 30 Players (ATM10)
The key settings that pushed ATM10 from 15 TPS to 18+ TPS at 30 players:
- ZGC instead of G1GC - Recovered 2 - 3 MSPT on GC pauses
- simulation-distance=5 - Single biggest gain (view-distance still 8)
- Chunk worker threads = cores - 2 - Freed main thread from chunk overhead
- Disabled unused mod features - Removed cosmetic features in Supplementaries, Quark options
The pursuit of 20 TPS in modded Minecraft is achievable but requires hardware and configuration working together. Space-Node's Ryzen 9 stack provides the hardware ceiling; this guide provides the configuration floor.
