I was getting hit with frequent (every few minute) game and gpu crashes in the lesser zone on a new game. I thought this was a linux or gpu related issue, but found some folks complain about it on r/stalker as well.

The fix* turned out to be disabling Async Compute and/or disabling intel low latency in the game settings. (I don't know which one fixed* this crash but I'm a little afraid to play with options atm.)

* as with any random crash issue, this may or may not be fixed because it's seemingly random. But I've played for a few hours now undisturbed.