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.