Black Myth: Wukong is an action RPG that elegantly straddles the line between the demanding combat of Soulslike games and the adventurous exploration of classic RPGs. However, the comparison to Soulslike games stops mostly at its shrines for revives. We would put this game closer to a God of War or Nioh style as It’s a linear action-adventure game with Boss Rush type of levels. Whether you’re seeking intense battles against creatures drawn from Chinese mythology or a more forgiving experience with equally engaging encounters, this game delivers a journey that resonates with a broad spectrum of players. Its stunning presentation and generous design philosophy truly set Black Myth: Wukong apart.

You’re not just playing a game; you’re embarking on a visually spectacular odyssey, where you wield a staff as a highly agile monkey, armed with a suite of powerful spells set on a polished and well-performing engine is also technically impressive and a great benchmark for current gamers. It’s been a long time since a game has left such an impression on me.

Black Myth: Wukong Review- An Action Adventure with Cinematic Brilliance

Based on the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, the game places you in control of the “Destined One,” a reincarnation of Wukong, a legendary monkey who once rebelled against Heaven. Your mission? To remind the various Yaoguai (mythical creatures) that Wukong is back in the game, ready to reclaim the glory Wukong deserved. The gameplay is smooth and combat can often make you feel like you are in an anime, which is why I think it is resonating with many gamers. It has all the right elements of visceral combat, amazing art, wonder, and imagination that beg you to explore it. The polish is clear and minor details, like the flourishes the character does after combat or while in battle, show how much the developer Game Science cared for its presentation.

Black Myth: Wukong offers a captivating blend of cinematic moments and challenging gameplay. The game’s chapters are interspersed with interactive artworks that summarize the story’s progress, connecting back to the source material. There are even some wonky but cool music videos/aminations that help tell the story. A particular one with a white fox was incredible to watch.

While these story elements might be difficult to follow for those unfamiliar with the original tale, they add a layer of depth and authenticity that enriches the experience. The narrative can be somewhat opaque, however, as we have to suffer with a silent protagonist yet again.

We dislike this game design choice – especially after one of the best prologues in recent memory with a fantastic voice actor for the “original Wukong”. Why could we not have that throughout the game? Sure, the Destined One, the player that you control might not be able to have the same voice but anything would have been better than nothing. It feels like a huge missed opportunity and I hope we stop seeing this, especially since the rest of the game is so well-voiced. The sheer spectacle and dramatic encounters make the journey worthwhile for sure but it would have been nice to get some feedback from your character.

Gameplay

The level design itself is mostly linear and some parts of chapter 2 are not the best but it is a worthwhile journey throughout. As you progress, you also gain keys to areas you passed before so can travel back to even near the start of the game for some powerful unlocks. This is optional but it was great to go back and find those mysteries and unlock every secret piece of armor. There is a charge staff for example that builds directly into the smash stance and buffs your damage.

The enemy types you encounter here are also great. A big criticism of some recent games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 or The First Descendant is the sheer lack of different enemy types as you progress. Elden Ring, a masterpiece itself, repeats bosses and this is fine with us as long as they have varied mechanics or fight patterns. Black Myth: Wukong bosses are varied and incredible to play with and even the one huge-head boss that I found a repeat off was different enough and required a different strategy.

There were some frustrating moments for me with certain bosses like a certain crouching one near a temple but I was able to backtrack and get some upgrades to my staff and come back and learn from my previous mistakes. You could also take a different branching path to level up and complete that area or try to brute force your way. That is what makes gaming incredibly fun and rewarding and there is plenty of this here. The game features 90 unique bosses, each with distinct mechanics and designs.

This is not to say the game is perfect, the bosses certainly have some very bad “cheese” and can lead to some “wtf was that?” moments but aren’t the worst we have ever seen. The typical enemies are hiding behind corners or mobs jumping you randomly but it’s still a great deal of fun to combat this with the tools you are given. That being said, the majority of bosses we defeated in one or two tries with some of the more difficult bosses requiring multiple attempts – keep in mind we are mediocre at these types of games.

The combat in Black Myth: Wukong is fluid and dynamic, with an emphasis on stylish staff maneuvers and well-timed dodges. Combat involves combos of light and heavy attacks, different stances, and special abilities. The game offers some deep strategic challenges based on the encounters during its chapters. Players can upgrade their abilities through a skill tree using “Sparks” and customize their builds with equipment and relics, with the flexibility of free re-specs. There is no parry without using up mana with a spell that turns you into a rock, if you time this perfectly it can help stagger large bosses and turn the tide.

Alternatively, you can build into going invisible and leaving behind a clone so you can charge a 3-focus point heavy attack that causes massive damage. There is enough variety here to keep it fun but you still only be playing with a staff throughout the game.

Speaking of focus points, this is an important part of combat, you have to string together light attacks to gain a meter that provides focus points – these you can then spend during combos or a charged heavy attack to unleash a powerful hit.

***Spoiler warning, boss fight*** (also mediocre gameplay warning)

You will also fight mid-tier enemies that you can then capture and embody during battle (spirits), you can also eventually find full-body transformations that you can turn into for a set time during battle – this really helped me during some tougher fights. Defense-wise, Black Myth is rooted in the Soulslike tradition—dodging enemy attacks, managing stamina, and strategically using health-restoring Gourds (akin to flasks). There is no block, however, and as mentioned above instead you have a parry spell that is there if needed.

But unlike many Soulslike games, Black Myth: Wukong strikes a balance that makes it accessible to a wider audience. You do not lose all your progress or “souls” when you die but instead get resurrected at your last shrine to try the level again and again where you can craft spells, tweak armor, increase spirit level, brew power-ups, and so on. It is a great system that doesn’t rely on heavily punishing the player.

The game’s linear but richly detailed environments offer a more focused experience compared to the sprawling open worlds of games like Elden Ring. Thankfully though the world feels authentic and meticulously crafted, encouraging exploration without overwhelming the player.

There are a lot of nooks and crannies to visit for secrets or unlocks and its rewarding throughout and respects your time. Not once did I feel like I fought through a tough horde of enemies just to get some measly gold, even if it occurred in some chests it still felt great.

What did not feel great, however, was the camera. Elden Ring suffered from the same issues, a large enemy locks you in a corner and you cannot tell what you are doing sometimes and are spamming dodge to try to get to a better visual area. It was frustrating at times. For example, in a later chapter, you can drop down into a path with a chest at the end, and suddenly you are surrounded by a dozen or so enemies all hitting you at once while surrounded by walls that the camera is running into – we got through it but not without some gamer rage.

Performance and Benchmarks

Visually, Black Myth: Wukong is breathtaking. The attention to detail in the environments, from the intricate architecture to the atmospheric lighting, is simply awe-inspiring. The game’s world is a visual feast, with every corner offering something new to marvel at. While the game’s design includes some typical video game constraints, such as invisible walls, these are easily forgiven given the overall beauty and immersion. The game boasts high-quality visuals and designs inspired by Chinese mythology, although it occasionally experiences frame rate issues. Maybe about 1% of my time with it I did experience some frame drops or hitching but other than that it’s been incredible.

Black Myth: Wukong does feature path tracing:

The game includes Nvidia’s DLSS Frame Generation which is an AI-driven technology that enhances gaming performance by generating new frames, integrating low latency for responsiveness, and utilizing the advanced features of NVIDIA’s Ada Lovelace architecture. This technology, combined with NVIDIA Reflex, significantly boosts performance while maintaining high image quality. It also includes AMD’s FSR 3.0 for upscaling and frame gen.

In Black Myth: Wukong, advanced ray tracing techniques, including full-resolution multi-bounce indirect lighting, reflections, and caustics, are employed to create a visually stunning and immersive experience. These techniques enhance realism, particularly in lighting, reflections, and shadows, elevating the overall graphical fidelity of the game.

Team Green is taking the cake here, although we do wish we had an RX 7900 XTX to compare with the performance numbers show the optimization, DLSS, and frame gen are working wonders to make this game perform well. AMD is playable, however, with lower-end cards performing close to Nvidia’s lower-end offerings.

Unreal Engine 5 is doing well here to not require an enormous amount of RAM like Resident Evil 4 and many recent games.
Here are the minimum requirements:

Performance:
Black Myth: Wukong 1920×1080 (medium), RT OFF

Black Myth: Wukong 1920×1080 (Cinematic), RT Very High

Black Myth: Wukong 2560×1440 (Cinematic), RT Very High

Black Myth: Wukong 2560×1440 (Cinematic), DLSS Quality

Conclusion:

In summary, Black Myth: Wukong is a remarkable achievement—a game that not only meets but exceeds the lofty expectations set by its early trailers. Black Myth: Wukong has garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews and achieved the second-highest concurrent player count on Steam, praised for its engaging gameplay, polished experience, and absence of microtransactions.

Most gamers who play on 1920x1080p will be able to fully enjoy this game but max settings will require a much more powerful card. Our 4080 Super ran this game perfectly with Full settings on and it was a blast to play.

It’s a generous, beautifully crafted adventure that offers both challenge and spectacle, making it a must-play for fans of action RPGs. Game Science has truly announced itself as a major player in the genre, and Black Myth: Wukong is a clear statement that they are here to compete with the best.

Happy gaming!

This review key was provided by Nvidia, this was not in exchange for a positive review and does not change our review process or influence our scores. Thank you, Nvidia!

The highly anticipated game Black Myth: Wukong is set to redefine gaming visuals with its integration of full ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 3. Developed by Game Science, this action-adventure RPG draws inspiration from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West and promises a breathtaking blend of stunning graphics and immersive gameplay.

Leveraging the cutting-edge technology of NVIDIA RTX, Black Myth: Wukong will deliver hyper-realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections that elevate the game’s visual storytelling to new heights. The inclusion of full ray tracing ensures that every scene is rendered with unparalleled detail, creating an experience that is as visually compelling as it is engaging.

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Complementing this graphical fidelity is NVIDIA DLSS 3, an AI-powered performance multiplier. DLSS 3 uses advanced AI algorithms to boost frame rates without compromising image quality, allowing players to enjoy the game at higher resolutions and with greater smoothness. This technology not only enhances gameplay but also future-proofs the experience, ensuring that Black Myth: Wukong remains visually stunning on next-generation hardware.

With these innovations, Black Myth: Wukong stands poised to set a new standard in gaming. Players can look forward to a game that not only challenges their skills but also captivates their senses with its remarkable visual achievements.

Prepare to embark on an epic journey through a world where myth meets cutting-edge technology. Black Myth: Wukong is more than just a game; it’s a showcase of what’s possible when artistry meets the power of NVIDIA RTX.

For even faster frame rates, owners of GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards and laptops can accelerate performance using NVIDIA DLSS 3 with Frame Generation. 

In Black Myth: Wukong, DLSS 3 multiplies performance with full ray tracing enabled and every setting maxed out. That allows owners of the GeForce RTX 4090, the world’s fastest gaming GPU, to hit nearly 100 frames per second in Black Myth: Wukong’s benchmark. Additionally, owners of the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER and GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER can join in on the 4K fun, running at 74 and 66 frames per second, respectively. If you own one of these GPUs, prepare your eyes for a dazzling display of the very best graphics and gameplay.

At 2560×1440, acceleration of frame rates enables even more configurations to experience Black Myth: Wukong with full ray tracing and maxed out visuals. The GeForce 4090 surpasses 120 FPS, the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER runs at over 90 FPS, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER exceeds 80 FPS, and the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER passes 70 FPS. And the popular GeForce RTX 4070 pops past 60 FPS, giving its many owners a fast, smooth experience in Black Myth: Wukong.

At 1920×1080, which steadfastly remains the most popular gaming resolution, virtually all GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs can surpass 60 FPS with full ray tracing enabled and all other options cranked up, thanks to a DLSS 3 boost. As for the massively popular GeForce RTX 4060, it can get 60 FPS with a few settings tweaks, or with the use of NVIDIA app’s one-click Optimal Settings.

See the full article from Nvidia here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/black-myth-wukong-full-ray-tracing-dlss-3/

For all the pre-launch chatter and years of build-up, we can rest easy! Starfield is downright incredible. Starfield is the best thing Bethesda has ever done – even besting my favorite entry in the series, New Vegas. I loved Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas, and especially Oblivion so I am a huge Bethesda RPG fan. This will be a mostly spoiler-free review, but we can say with confidence this is a stellar new franchise for Bethesda and a labor of love for the studio. The RPG elements are strong, the secrets are the most I have ever seen in a Bethesda game, and there is much to uncover even in the endgame. There is so much to do and fall deeply in love with.

Starfield will be released tomorrow September 1, 2023, in Starfield Early Access for players who have purchased the Starfield Premium Edition, Premium Edition Upgrade, or the Constellation Edition of Starfield.

For players who purchase the Starfield Standard Edition or subscribe to PC Game Pass, Starfield will be released on September 6, 2023.

That’s not to say that the game is without its flaws – combat can feel awkward, planet traversal is sorely lacking vehicles, and the occasional pop-in for conversations or weird interactions will be seen throughout your journey. The “Bethesda games are always buggy on release” mantra leading up to launch is flat-out wrong, however. I encountered bugs mostly with the conversations because I launched them quickly and my companion could not keep up. There were no game crashes or major bugs after more than 100 hours of playtime.

There are, however, some performance issues. Starfield is extremely CPU-heavy, and even with our RTX 4080, Ryzen 7800x3D build we saw some performance dips. Most egregious – there is no DLSS and this is another title that will exclusively feature AMD’s FSR and FSR2 technology. We will never agree with locking out alternative features, especially since I would have loved to have utilized DLSS 3 on my RTX 4080.

I can see why the game is locked at 30FPS for consoles. Even with 10 months of extra polish time on consoles, there are still some drops in performance. I had a few really hard FPS drops walking into some major cities on the Series S that felt bad, even if they were rare. Hopefully these can be fixed. With some patches, we are sure this will be better. I cannot wait for mods, my mind is racing with the possibilities!

Portable PCs, like the ALLY and Steam Deck
Bethesda explicitly noted not to use Asus’ ROG Ally or Steam Deck in our review as they are below recommended PC spec. I could not even get the ROG ALLY to launch the game due to some weirdness with the Xbox app on our Ally but Xbox/PC streaming worked flawlessly. I had to repair the download, and spam the launch button for it to work after about an hour of messing with updates and settings.

Once loaded, the ROG Ally did run the game decently on low to medium settings with FSR2 enabled while in 15W or 30W mode and it is 100% playable for those who have these portable PCs.

How much will Starfield cost?
Gaming only ever wants to get more expensive. The trend continues here, and if you want early access, you will need to pay $100 or the upgraded difference if you are a Game Pass subscriber. Microsoft has been raising the standard game price to $70 USD, Starfield included. Luckily, Starfield has been confirmed as a day-one addition to Game Pass, so most can experience it without any extra upfront cost.

Starfield is epic in scale – Some may not like this

Let me be clear: Starfield is a near-perfect Bethesda RPG with one of the best campaigns they have ever created. I was genuinely in awe in the latter half of the game, and with respect to Bethesda and your journey, we cannot discuss much that occurs in this portion. There is so much to explore but I did find myself mostly traveling within the major cities.

– 1,000 planets, with many that are mostly resource-gathering areas, but most have their main areas to explore and have fun in with hand crafted secret areas and wildlife to discover.
– Multiple faction quests.
– A plethora of side quests that keep spilling into your lap, begging you to explore and talk to as many NPCs as possible.
– A 40 to 50 hour main story quest.
– Excellent end-game activities to keep you busy including many things we cannot spoil. New Game + is also a warm welcome and a nice twist.

I often found myself drowning in activities (do not ignore these!) that became full-fledged amazing side quests, which I had ignored at first. My advice would be to slow down, and this is where Starfield may be an issue for some who have no patience. The game really and truly does not fully show off everything it has until way after 80-plus hours. I have to really emphasize that the scale is massive, and you will get to see so much more if you take your time and enjoy each individual planet first for all it has to offer.

But that’s the beauty of this game – your journey is going to be massively different from mine. For some, however, who want to unlock all the features or systems at once, they may not like having to invest 100 hours or more to get the game “going.”

Here are a few highlights in my journey while trying to be as spoiler-free as possible:
– I stole over 10 ships and immediately went to jail when I went into orbit near a patrolled planet, not realizing those spacers had contraband onboard
– Got a DJ’s new music back from an overzealous fan.
– Saved a planet from trees’ massive vibrations.
– Spared a man’s life after I learned he only stole a certain thing because he was recently fired and had no other choice.
– Found the source of an anomaly and uncovered the mystery of an artifact.
– Stole a tea recipe so a barista could compete with a megacorp (my companion did not like that).

Missions, side quests, and exploration

There is so much to explore on those far-off planets, so much beckoning that you to hurry to them, that inner child screaming with joy to rush to the end to “power up and unlock it all.” Slow down! Starfield has many, many wild layers to uncover and explore, but I often found myself spending hours on a planet, taking it all in, hours on side quests, and talking to those in a town I just discovered. Then you lift off, steal a ship, fight some space pirates, gather resources, build your outpost, and find a new planet with another hour-long side quest. It’s epic and breathtaking.

I will try to avoid spoilers, so skip to the next paragraph if you wish to avoid a very light spoiler. A perfect example of a favorite moment of mine was running into a derelict ship in orbit – which no one can seem to hail as soon as you pull into the orbit of Paradiso (a paradise Resort planet). The wild quest that unfolds for the secrets inside once you finally board the ship were great. Another was finding a miners simple quest that became a 10+ step mission that was extremely engrossing in Cydonia.

You can easily jump from planet to planet- more on that in a bit. Each feels like its own mini Bethesda game. Want to experience the desert? Head to Akila. Want a cyberpunk planet? Head to Neon. Want to experience something akin to Mass Effects massive cities? Head to New Atlantis. Missions here and the people you run into are varied and fully scripted. It’s so hard to write this review without screaming for you to go explore (spoiler) and fight the legendary (spoiler).

Planet jumping is where I found the most dissapointment. Launching away from a planet or onto once is mostly a menu system. The landing and orbit cutscenes are great but the game loses some of its charm and it would have been amazing to be able to manually take off from a planet if I wanted to.

I am over 100 hours in and have barely scratched the surface of shipbuilding, crafting, modding, and building outposts. Companions are varied and wonderful, and there are many paths for romance or companions to bring along that each have their own conversational style to match your preferred journey. I am not bored, ever. I keep wanting to play because there’s always a different loop I can take. Do I want to finish some side quests, gather resources, or explore new planets? I can easily choose any with the best fast-travel system I have seen. Everything is easily fast-traveled to – with slight limitations during quests – but you can hop from place to place in the blink of an eye. The Series S did have some longer loading screens for me so keep that in mind.

I am very saddened at the fact that there are no land vehicles or ways to easily traverse the planet. I am exploring a planet for a quest that needs to me to survey 100% of the planet in order to complete it. I have been stuck at 98% for over 3 hours with no end in sight moving from location to location to find the missing fauna and it did become frustrating – until I realized I could simply open the world and fast travel across the globe to different physical locations…d’oh!
However, I am still stuck at 98% simply because I got sidetracked with so much to do and the lack of interest in returning to find that missing 2%.

Shipbuilding and space flying are a highlight

Shipbuilding in Starfield is a delightful adventure! It takes a little time to dive into, but once you’re there, it becomes an exhilarating activity as you refine designs, add rooms, balance engines, weight, cargo, and ship systems. I have a fondness for massive spacecraft, not for their power, but because I enjoy wandering around all the rooms and exploring the technology that makes them tick. Although I haven’t delved much into outpost building, it is efficiently designed, allowing you to create attractive bases with relative ease. There are still the same power issues from Fallout 4 but some great options to build and even transport from planet to planet. It’s just not my cup of tea, and the game doesn’t hinge on it except for mass resource collection which I have yet to need.

In the endgame, there is a much greater need to worry about this, so I would say when you first start the game, don’t worry so much about your outposts until maybe 50 hours in, when you begin to start getting overwhelmed with companions.

Space battles are simply one of the best systems Bethesda has ever built. I became quickly addicted even though I knew my ship was severely outclassed. There is nothing I have experienced quite like taking on five spacers at once and barely winning because I was able to knock out all their engines. I kept losing this battle coming into orbit on a planet that I gave up and decided to explore elsewhere – only to see a giant ship land in the distance. I quickly ran over, defeated the owners, made it my new home ship, and instantly got an upgraded ship that was more than the spacers could handle. What a rush!

Starfield is ‘near’ perfect, but there are some minor issues

Bethesda has made some curious decisions and even their refined gunplay from the preview trailer still feels a little off. Some of the game feels like the systems and tech in the Fallout series forced change in Starfield. The need to differentiate between the two “futuristic” franchises is obvious. In Starfield, you get a “watch” that severely lacks the character of the classic Pip-Boy, and some of that classic Bethesda RPG danger feels really off unless you are fighting enemies that over leveled from you. I found myself missing V.A.T.S especially since a version of it exists on your spaceship and things like the menus and radio stations in Fallout. The AI feels set on a path and not as dynamic as I would have hoped but gun fights did feel quite responsive.

No one really tries to flank you or outsmart you and they often get stuck being target practice at their default locations while your are exploring. Most quests and other activities felt better, and there is a “fight to the death” area you can find that is particularly challenging even at high levels. It’s a strange feeling of easily dispatched mobs or “difficult to even pop your head up” fights.

As mentioned earlier, often you will fast travel to a mission marker, which launches a Grav Drive into a planet’s orbit. But the planet is suddenly surrounded by 6 pirate ships that severely outclass you, so you end up in a death loop unless you load a previous autosave. Be prepared anywhere you decide to fly off to. There may be missions or ships that hail you for trades. You never know what you might be traveling to.

Still, the gun diversity, some secrets, boost packs, and looting are extremely well done here. The guns feel incredible at times, but some feel unbalanced – dealing massive damage with a shotgun for example made me quite over powered for a long period of time. I tried switching to the P90 “Grendel” model in the game and it barely scratched the enemies I would shoot. Most of this can be fixed with balance passes.

Basic skills like stealth or pickpocketing require unlocking the core ability, meaning you can’t perform these activities at all until you invest a point in the skill tree. You don’t NEED the skills to perform the actions or get sneak attacks but without the core skill unlocked it feels bad to have something like pickpocketing locked off.

I specifically unlocked the ‘stealth’ trait because, without it, stealth felt very bad, and I did not like the lack of visual feedback. While leveling up to progress is understandable, the complete denial of access to core systems like this is strange and the cost to unlock could have maybe been a part of the quest instead. Leveling takes some time as well and there are so many worthy skill trees begging to be unlocked for you to progress that it feels bad when you have to spend that precious point in what was a default unlock for Bethesda RPGs.

Additionally, with crafting, you can only track entire recipes, not individual ingredients, making encumbrance a constant issue. There are so many heavy items in this game – especially ship parts – to weigh you down and keep track of. Thankfully, your companion can hold things for you, and you can sell or craft using the inventory that is on your ship’s cargo, so no need to hold it all at once or jettison the precious cargo.

Despite these minor hiccups, everything functions smoothly and feels stable. Although there are occasional frame rate stutters and minor glitches, nothing catastrophic has occurred for me. I hovered around 60 to 70 FPS stable on 3440×1440 with an RTX 4080. Thank you, Bethesda, for providing wide-screen support at launch.- a easily added feature so many ignore!

Starfield is visually stunning, with intricately detailed cities and diverse landscapes. One memorable moment involved exploring a moon-like planet or first landing in Neon. Your jaw will be on the floor even on the Series S where the graphics are toned down. I suggest immediately opening your menu and turning off the over-tuned film grain, however.

Starfield is one of the best games of this generation

For me, Starfield is Bethesda’s masterpiece, the hit Xbox needed, and possibly the game of the generation for the Series consoles. This is a system seller that is also available on PC via Steam or the Xbox app and included in Game Pass. I suggest you try it, you will be happy you did. Tears of the Kingdom brought me joy and wonder this year, but there was nothing for me quite like exploring all the wild amount of dialogue and fun to be had in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or walking into New Vegas for the first time. That feeling is hard to capture and explain – you just have to see for yourself what Bethesda can create.

The worlds Bethesda builds feature dense, lively worlds where every direction offers something new. Walking into an Oblivion gate for the first time or traveling to a new planet – this is what makes gaming great.

I remember first beating Oblivion‘s main quest at over 120 hours and immediately starting another run. Starfield is on a whole other level, with much left to see even after completing the main story. It’s simply a joy to play, and I cannot recommend it more to every gamer.

The feeling of uncovering new things and the natural development in Starfield as you journey through it is unmatched, highlighting Bethesda’s quarter-century of experience and their authentic mastery as one of the best to ever do it. You will literally be overflowing with things to do – or not do- in a universe is teeming with new planets to explore. A definitive masterpiece.

Familiar elements and combat awkwardness exist, but Starfield is completely new, and there are months ahead for me to explore and enjoy. I cannot wait to see the mods and community reaction. Have a blast, and don’t rush!
Starfield gets a 10/10 from BTR. Thank you to Bethesda for providing a review copy.

Vampires are a horror genre staple so it’s quite shocking we haven’t really had an amazing game release featuring them as the central villain in quite some time. So when Arkane, the makers of amazing games like Prey and Dishonored, announced Redfall in June of 2021, it captured my bloodlust. Xbox’s current weak place in the market is begging for a great release which puts a ton of extra pressure for Redfall to exceed expectations.

The excitement for Redfall’s hero-based looter-shooter gameplay centering around vampires has such a high ceiling because of this atmosphere. Microsoft needs a win. It’s Arkane, so we know they have a history of hitting it out of the park with combat, stealth, and a great story. But after delays, the announcement that consoles would be locked to 30fps at launch, and after a quiet launch week, some concern set in.

The press embargo was set right before tomorrow’s release at 8:01 PM ET today. A red flag went up instantly. This is a review-in-progress as we were provided a key close to release and have not had time to complete the entire story but have completed the majority of its major missions. In fact, a 69.4GB patch dropped this morning adding DLC.

After playing, I understand the fear of reviewers about gameplay spoiling major elements of the latter half of the game. For FPS fans, Redfall provides some great gameplay elements to sink your teeth and time into, but it also lacks direction and its vision is muddied with formulaic systems and some glaring issues. Let’s take a deeper look at Redfall in our review of the PC version for Steam. Thank you to Nvidia and to Arkane for providing a review copy for our coverage!

Characters

Redfall has you choose one of four main characters which is one of the biggest draws for me upon release. Going in with friends to experience a 4-player massacre of vampires and their minions could be a real blast. Central to Redfall is its first person and hero shooter design. The four playable characters at launch are cryptozoologist inventor, Devinder Crousley; telekinetic student, Layla Ellison; combat engineer, Remi de la Rosa; and special forces sniper, veteran Jacob Boyer. Redfall has more character releases planned later.

Each character has a trio of upgradable special powers, two are useable for limited times, and an “ultimate” that recharges more slowly over time. Each power has its own unique spin on combat and abilities to play with. Vampires invade the area known as Redfall, and after some opening events, there is no physical way to escape from the area. You and the town’s citizens are fish trapped in a bucket being saved for feeding time.

The opening sequence is pretty great and sets the tone well. The massive cascade of frozen water serves as an ominous foreshadowing of the immense power our enemies hold. Our characters had previous run-ins with the main antagonists that provided them with their abilities.

I really disliked that Bungie made us go to their website to read “grimoire” cards to understand the lore. The same thing is done here with Redfall – most of the backstory ends up by being briefly told in side conversations, and if you want more, you need to read one of the many, many notes strewn across the world or by gathering 100 items that provide more exposition from a central character. It is hard to describe how grandiose the game can be and yet so small at the same time before you actually jump in to play.

Disappointingly, Redfall at times can feel paper thin, and I believe it could have been truly great with more time in the coffin until it was ready to withstand the heat of the sun and its place in the current landscape. Gamers will notice.

We want the deep world-building and narrative that Arkane is known for, and if more time was needed for a sophisticated presentation, I would have begged for it. Without going into later story spoilers, Redfall’s premise is that a biotech corporation known as Aevum was working with a scientist seeking immortality, an experiment went wrong and the vampire hoard was unleashed. Almost immediately, many of the town’s residents became cultists who wanted this same immortality and began to worship and defend the vampires with the promise that once they die they would be reincarnated as all-powerful beings.

A once idyllic island town is now the center for survivors, and you are someone luckily granted special powers that you have right off the bat. Conceptually, its a great setting for this game and it was very interesting to explore. With vampire nests to destroy, bosses to defeat, safehouses to set free, and so much loot to gather for upgrades – the base systems are there for a great time.

But while Redfall’s premise does an amazing job of setting up some great missions, the presentation feels extremely dated. So much so I am not sure that most players will stay long enough to experience the latter half of the game which begins to feel incredible at times.

Let’s take a deeper look at the gameplay.

Gameplay

After the opening sequence, your first mission is to approach a surrounded firehouse with survivors inside. Cultists are standing outside, literally, not banging on the walls or trying to break in – they are standing there in groups just waiting to pick survivors off. This is the same immersion-breaking feeling most of the encounters have in the game. Something feels like it was missed or changed in development.

Most gamers won’t care about small details as they may just care about the overall story and the gunplay. Well, after first picking off the cultists, you meet your first set of survivors for your new home base. There is little to no backstory for the characters without reading interactable letters, and they sort of just fall into place as expert base builders with a doctor, a gun expert, a clergywoman, and more. Redfall is shockingly light on explanations and barebones in so many other similar places that lowered our expectations for the rest of the game.

This base is never attacked and is literally just a place you come back to get supplies, make occasional small talk, and interact with a missions table to get photo cutscenes between your custom character and the survivors. I believe the reason for this is because of only having four characters and it may have been easier to just replace their skin for the cutscenes. I understand that the visuals needed to be presented, but with such barebones characters it would have made me care more about them if they actually talked to you.

Between missions, they will talk to each other and then later you get in-game conversations with dynamic character movements and interactions that I really enjoyed especially near the end of the first half of the game. If this was more fleshed out, I would have cared much more about these characters and saving them.

However, none of it matters as once a major defeat occurs, in order to progress the story you have to leave the main island and can never return. I’d prefer to go back and experience those levels again when I want to and have fun in the sandbox that was created, but its completely shut off.

The second area feels more like the real main game in almost every way. Characters are more vocal, the area feels more dense and packed with hidden items and more enemies to fight. The story is finally fleshed out and its vast world is begging to be explored. Only in the second half is where Redfall shines and becomes extremely fun.

Gunplay

We suggest not playing the healer characters during single-player as they won’t offer much utility. Some of the abilities become extremely powerful with later unlocks like Jacob’s raven damaging anyone in its path. However, the AI needs some serious work and I often found myself ignoring gun perks and upgrades as a necessity to improve my experience.

None of it is truly fundamental to the experience and most hero’s abilities would help multiplayer sessions. However, story progression is not shared due to the nature of the game’s design but the loot and levels you gain are.

Flawed AI is one of the biggest issues we ran into. It’s bad. I mean really bad especially for the poor cultists who get the short straw. They funnel in the same path, get stuck on rocks, have clunky animations, and have no real cognition or ability to flank and outsmart you while at the same time having god-aim. It’s a bad combo especially when being sniped at from a distance.

I am not sure any patches can address this, but with Jacob at launch, AI is broken and basically stuck in easy mode. Even on higher difficulties and with later invisibility unlocks, I could cycle between walking directly into a large group of enemies, grabbing the quest item, and then going invisible again, and they would just go on their way. The same could be said about shooting from a specific area – the AI just funnels directly to you and poses no real challenge ala Deathloop.

Other characters have similar “cheese” but I would recommend increasing the difficulty of the game for a better challenge. The shooting experience is still fantastic – from sniper rifles to UV lasers that petrify the enemy vampires – it is a blast to play.

In some well-designed areas like the vampire nests, it reminded us of entering the Elder Scroll’s Oblivion Gates. These moments however are few and far between if you love to fully explore the world. Some missions are surprisingly good but getting there is such a slog that some may never progress to experience them. The moment-to-moment gameplay constantly clashes badly with each other. It is tiring especially when combined with performance issues.

Speaking of vampire nests, these are some of the best gameplay areas in Redfall. They pack strong vampires in large numbers that can overwhelm you quickly even with Jacob’s invisibility and it requires careful planning. Conversely, there is little punishment for dying as progress does not reset and there are typically no timers, so if you can go in gun blazing.

Vampire nests reached another level that let me see the vision for Redfall which makes it hurt to see it ignored for the rest of the gameplay. The tone, the atmosphere, and with your back against the wall fighting off vampire hoards is such an amazing concept!

In one mission, you go to investigate a boat and as soon as the quest item is picked up it triggers an angry mob that immediately surrounds your only exits with deadly red mist, a mini-boss, and a mob of bloodthirsty vampires. You can see this all unfold beneath you from the boat’s windows. Your only option is to bite back and fight your way out. The game is filled with these bursts of incredible and stunning moments with fantastic and engaging gunplay that is then mixed with poor performance, bad lip-syncing, and horrible AI.

I am really reminded of Destiny 1’s live service launch which was obviously a victim of a large form of rewrite and rebuild. Perhaps Redfall had a similar fate but we will never know. Arkane has promised gamers that this will be their most supported game yet and we really hope so. The core gameplay is incredible but it reminds us of Cyberpunk 2077’s promise of a better future when all we need now is the vampire killing fun we have been salivating for.

The loot, the loot, the loot, the loot, the loot

Let’s talk loot. Vampire bosses keep repeating “the blood, the blood, the blood, the blood” but all I care about is if they will give me fun weapons to kill them with. Loot and gameplay can keep a game alive for a long time especially if there are fun quests or some great special weapons or “exotics” to chase. A community can grow quickly when secrets are found or the best load-outs to defeat bosses are found.

Redfall’s weapons scale with your level and just pump out higher numbers of damage. Pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, UV lasers, stake launchers, snipers, and flare guns round out a fun and worthwhile experience. Unfortunately, as the game fleshes out you see how exploration is broken by other reward types. So build-crafting with the right perks and skill point selections doesn’t make much of a difference now.

Pistols are often one-shot minions, flare guns burn and stun lock vampires, and stake launchers massively chunk any boss or special vampire. It’s all amazing fun and the combo load-outs you run can really allow for great gameplay loops. Although the cultists are really bad enemies, they serve little to no threat until much later when their level just means their incredible accuracy can health-chunk you within a second or two if you get careless. I died a lot early being overrun in confined space by the fast vampire attacks as they surrounded me. Some enemy abilities can also one-shot you. This would not be much of an issue in multiplayer but it felt bad in single-player mode.

That said, you don’t have to worry about dying in a mission because no progress is lost and you have so much junk loot currency that you will likely never spend. You do not lose any progress from dying, any damage or defeated enemies stay dead, and your mission status is retained. Most of the world’s junk loot like bleach, toilet paper, water bottles, etc. that you pick up gets converted into a currency for purchases back at the home base.

Things like med kits, better guns, and lock picks can be purchased with converted drop currency. However, most of the rewire/hack kits just lead to more junk loot or heals, which enemies drop, and are strewn literally everywhere. Most of the lock picks do the same.

There was no master sword moment or a huge loot drop that I was super excited for. This is because they aren’t necessary because vampire nests and a later world event granted me the best loot in the game. Most of your old loot is junked as you move on to the next mission anyway.

The combos are fun though as you need to either stake, petrify, or burn vampires. You can mix using a UV gun to petrify groups of vampires and then shotgun them one by one to dispatch a large group easily. If you take too long as Jacob, you can just go invisible with no real danger. I did this for the first big boss and didn’t even lose 50% health because a large power weapon pumps out such large chunks of damage the boss gets health gated and frozen before they can even react. I broke the game rather easily. Balancing needs to occur and much more AI work is needed. There was a huge patch today that hopefully addresses some of these woes.

PC Performance

I am beginning to call DLSS 3 a godsend but it should not be necessary just to enjoy a major release. The industry has lately given PC gamers the short end of the stick, but that is a topic for another day. We started our playthrough with our Ryzen 7800x3D build with an RTX 4070 Ti and 32 GB of DDR5-6000mhz RAM on our TeamGroup 2TB NVMe drive. Ours is far beyond a typical system, but from the onset we had massive crashes, stuttering, bugs, and large frame dips. Microstutters and texture problems also occurred.

The latest Nvidia driver helped and DLSS 3 almost doubled our performance. This still did not address some areas of town where we would dip into the low teens. Entering the menu could often cause the game to crash. Glitches like this ruined some major moments of our playthrough but with patches this may be resolved soon.

DLSS looks incredible and is a must-have feature. It nearly doubled performance on the RTX 4090 which was already performing great except for the 1% lows. The same could be said for our RTX 4080 and 4070 Ti. The newly released RTX 4070 also performs well but the game really needs some serious performance improvements.

There was a large 69.4GB patch today so we redid our benchmarks. Here are our numbers using maxed/Epic settings:

Testbed 1:

Intel 13900KF/RTX 4090 FE/2x16GB DDR5 6400/Win 11 – 3840 x 2160

TAA high/No DLSS – 124.3 av /  42.1 1% low

Quality DLSS 3 – 178.0 av / 72.7 1% low

DLSS 3 in particular allows for stunning gameplay and steady framerates with comparable image quality to native. Unfortunately, Redfall is sadly locked at 30FPS for the console launch with 60 FPS mode coming soon but now we can understand why: It just needs more time in development.

Testbed 2:
Post-Day 1 Patch with AMD Ryzen 7800x3D, 2x16GB DDR6 6000, TeamGroup 2TB NVMe, Win 11.
3840×2160, Epic Preset DLSS comparison:

Conclusion – try if you have Game Pass

We can not recommend Redfall at launch. I was very excited for Arcane Austin’s Redfall, despite the console war chatter, the state of Xbox, and red flags coming out from the game development cycle. I still loved my time with it, and in many moments I was having a good deal of fun, but most of the time the world proved to be empty or uninteresting.

I would not have continued as far as I progressed if I did not enjoy some of the big set pieces so much. I believe anyone with Game Pass should play it, even at 30fps on console. However, it’s a messy mix of RPG, looter shooter, and a multiplayer game that lacks a cohesive and consistent presentation. Couple this with terrible AI and a plethora of bugs and there are very high highs and very, very low lows. 

Redfall can technically be played solo, but we recommend the experience with friends as it is much better. It is also not going to be the major release to start the Xbox renaissance that we so desperately need. This review score is going to be low, but I am still rooting for it. There is something there at the core that is clawing at the surface to come out and be enjoyed. It is your choice if you want to power through the mud to get to the meat of it.

If you can withstand some glitches, read the story in text form with barebones character development, and have friends to play with then you will have a decent time. That said, the world is already so empty that traversing its many roads with no vehicles or large enemy population it can feel lonely walking large swaths of areas as a solo player. At times, I grew so frustrated with the experience I found myself begging for a story, begging for those cool moments, and I often felt unrewarded and angry.

Redfall releases later today on Xbox Series consoles, PC, Game Pass, and is Steam Deck verified.

If you had a video game mixer and mashed Duke Nukem, Far Cry, and Bioshock together you would end up with Atomic Heart. This amalgamation results in a game filled with wondrous future tech and human augmentation coupled with gritty fun combat mixed with crass humor.

Beyond being Sci-Fi first-person shooters, these games depict their own versions of alternate universes or worlds in which technology meant to create a utopia goes sour. That is a tall order to fill and Atomic Heart does it very well – It’s fast-paced, fun to play and well-optimized. Atomic Heart is one of the weirdest and most fun games we have played so far this year and it wears its inspirations well.

Atomic Heart, is Mundfish’s debut title which started development 5 years ago. It places KGB agent “P-3” into an alternate future in which the Soviet Union has mastered robotics to defeat Nazi Germany and end to World War 2. Its singular focus is on the setting – a post-war Soviet retro-futuristic world where Russia has created augmentation and has made significant scientific leaps for “all mankind.”

Russian scientists have decided to share their creations for a better world where AI bots do things like bring you a soda, deliver packages, and take your group photos on a tour. They are primarily concerned with how the world views them while maintaining an aura of perfection. Their next advancement plans to combine human brain power and knowledge instantly while maintaining ones own personal experiences and memories. Their goal is to integrate all human collective intelligence into one so our advancements will skyrocket.

These Russian scientists have augmented humans’ entire life with these AI bots. However, a traitor makes the AI believe that every human is an invader and should be treated as a threat. A security hole in the software leads the AI to turn on humans and thus begins our journey.

Political concerns aside, when you play the game you quickly learn it ridicules the Soviet Union although it remains heavy on propaganda. This is barely distracting. This Bioshock-like Soviet shooter, Atomic Heart, is well worth your time and the positive hype is real. The 20+ hour campaign and 15+ hours of side quests are filled with memorable moments and great action set pieces using the backdrop of super-tech and beautiful graphics.

Gameplay -An Inspired False Utopia

A game that takes such obvious inspiration from other major franchises may have been bland and boring. Yet Mundfish hits the ball out of the park for most gamers. Atomic Heart is content to be a single-player experience filled to the brim with some of the most unique design elements of the last two decades.

The intricate detail in Atomic Heart is astounding although some environmental touches could have used more work. Gamers generally want to see fire hydrants fly violently across the room after shooting them or hitting them. Details like this are missing and environmental destruction is minimal at best. Your main weapon is an ax at the start of the game – you will want to whack everything but nothing happens most of the time.

Instead, the astounding visual and audio design was the obvious focus. A game can rest on its gameplay loop quite easily, but a game like Atomic Heart shines in its enemy and environmental design. The enemy robots that have suddenly turned on us vary from mustachioed robots to towering iron giants and giant destroyer Drioideka-like ball enemies that are terrifying to face. Combating them requires using Polymer which is the main source of Russian innovation and also P-3’s power. This substance allows you to use Doom-like future weaponry in your right hand while having Char-Les your buddy AI and augmentation on your left. Your left hand acquires additional powers that you can add like an electric shock, freezing enemies, or covering them in polymer to make them susceptible to the elements.

Mix in some stealth, great movement, and upgrade paths and the game is a blast to play. The issues come in with some of the acting and generic American leads. The game features 9 voice-overs and 13 subs with around 1.5 hours of cinematics. Contrary to recent rumors, there is no 6 hour robot sex scene. The game set in old Soviet Russia has the iconic look and feel of the time but it quickly turns into cookie-cutter territory after you hear the main character’s voice.

We needed an English voice over for obvious reasons, but the audio tracks sometimes feel like they weren’t being spoken live by our character, and an audio track was just played in our ear. Many voices feel this way but our main character, P-3 is often making Duke Nukem-like jokes while robots offer sexual innuendos or funny responses. At times the moments were great and at other times the voice acting took away from the game’s unique settings and turned it into a generic comedy.

A game that borrows from others but is a master of none describes Atomic Heart. The story often feels bigger than what the game can deliver. It had the potential to do a lot more with the environment or platforming but instead, it felt lacking the deep complexities of the greatest games preceding it. Some of the puzzles and boss fights are memorable while others are easily forgotten as mere blockades to the story’s advancement.

It’s possible to look perfect yet still need work.

2023 already delivered us a Game of the Year contender in Hogwarts Legacy, and while Atomic Heart does so many things well, its many limitations hold the game back. Atomic Heart has one of the best openings in recent memory that is as breathtaking as the descent into Rapture in Bioshock.

This backdrop is so strangely good it baffled our mind by its poor scripting at times. We will probably see review scores varying from nearly perfect to low because of the writing and poor English voice acting. The classic games we know stay in our minds forever because of their extreme attention to details demonstrating that small things matter. Doom, Halo, and Deus-Ex, all immerse you into their world and make you want to live there and feel a part of it. Unfortunately, Atomic Heart lacks that deep immersion despite its ambitious design and great ideas. Without spoilers, it is difficult to explain but its mix of great beauty combined with bad writing and poor voice acting may become cumbersome during its 20 hours campaign.

Agent P-3 is the epitome of toxic masculinity in an awesome background, much like inserting Duke Nukem into Bioshock’s Rapture. Skills, crafting, upgrades, and the combat formula work so well together that it becomes frustrating to have to deal with cumbersome looting. A sleazy kiosk that offers sexual advances will either be hilarious to you or make the game fall flat. Atomic Heart has sexy robots, visceral combat, plus unique and massive bosses, but they can feel like bullet sponge hell with endless enemies and overlong sections.

There is so much junk in every room that you require for crafting that Mundfish built in a single key press function to suck all the junk out of every drawer. If this feature did not exist and we had to check each drawer on its own, our review score would plummet. This open world can often feel like it isn’t open. Bioshock’s Rapture worked because it was one large setting filled with excitement around every corner. Facility 3826 is similar as it felt amazing to discover what was happening inside, but the issues arise when you travel outside to new locations offering little discoverability in between quest-gathering. We also had many many crashes and bugs in our playthrough, with most of them coming while interacting with the upgrade bot or during combat. Most of this may be fixed with future patches, but for gameplay’s sake, we suggest running the Russian voiceover with English subtitles.

The Atomic Heart open-world segments are best to run past. There are no immersive sim elements. Instead, you just zap or freeze NPCs and engage in combat with large enemy groups. The problem is that this open world is littered with endlessly respawning enemies that make it oppressive and not fun to engage. You can waste all your ammo for no reward. Camera systems that have worked in previous games to alert enemies of your presence could have been used to create cool set pieces and memorable intense battles.

In game, the enemy density is so high that stealth is rarely an option, and if you destroy a camera or enemy – no matter if it took you seven or more bullets to destroy – a repair drone is dispatched to bring it right back to life. The only way to stop this is to find the security system which will only temporarily disable it. The game is best enjoyed driving or running past most of the open world to the next objective. This means that the open world simply does not work. Couple this with awkward writing and poor voice acting, along with endless juvenile interactions and Atomic Heart never realizes its game-of-the-year potential. I am not sure this can be patched and it stops me from scoring it higher.

Steam Deck with FSR / DLSS 3 Shines Bright

So how does it run? Amazingly well and something I am ecstatic to experience after the recent rash of stutter-ridden and clunkly PC ports. Atomic Heart takes advantage of Nvidia DLSS 3 which is the next revolution in graphics that are only available in the 40xx series of RTX cards. By using “Frame Generation,” DLSS 3 increases performance while maintaining almost perfect image quality. This salvaged our framerates at Hogwarts Legacy and DLSS is also proving it is worth the price of admission for Atomic Heart.

The best way to enjoy the game is by enabling DLSS 3, which gives you comparable image quality to native while supercharging performance. Enabling Nvidia Reflex also gives you the lowest latency. Each technology can be enabled or disabled separately, but the best way to play Atomic Heart is with both of them working simultaneously.

Reflex is automatically applied when DLSS 3 is enabled to make sure latency is minimized, and in many cases, latency is lower than native with DLSS 3. They work together very well. At 3440×1440 and 165hz, I had a well-polished graphical experience that ran smoothly with only some occasional crashes with environmental bugs or by trying to access menus. The game runs nearly double its performance at all Ultra settings averaging 80~FPS with DLSS 3 off and about ~144 with DLSS 3 on.

3440×1440 Gaming Performance with Atomic Preset
Test bed: Intel i7-12700K and 32 GB DDR4-3200mhz on Windows 11 using the latest Nvidia Drivers 528.49

Here are Nvidia’s test results featuring a wider range of cards:

Steam Deck users can also rejoice. This is another well-optimized game that runs at a steady locked 30fps or can run in the medium to high 50s steady and even higher with unlocked FPS plus FSR. However, some menu systems are unreadable when everything is set to low with FSR on. There is an image sharpening setting that should be increased to at least 2 if you plan to playing with low settings.

We do not recommend playing on low – the FPS gains are not worth it. You can freely enjoy the graphics and combat at medium settings with a very playable performance at 30 FPS. But the High preset was a struggle with dips well below 30 FPS. I was able to run everything using the Medium preset with Fidelity FX super-resolution set to quality with 30 FPS locked with only rare dips. I play at this level to increase battery life, but if you are plugged in – uncap your FPS and enjoy a well-polished experience for your Steam Deck. The PS5 and Xbox Series X can run this game at 4K/60 FPS with dynamic resolution so that should be a delightful experience as well.

One of the most egregious omissions is a lack of a FOV slider. This is common on consoles but it’s sorely missing here I often felt the default FOV was way too narrow for my liking and my wife felt motion sickness and vertigo while watching me play. A simple slider would have been great. This is, however, a PC port that runs amazingly well, and doesn’t even need FSR or DLSS 3. This is something that should be celebrated in a world where PC ports are often seen as afterthoughts with little care compared with their console brethren.

Atomic Heart sadly does not have ray tracing on any platform at launch. This is strange as Nvidia and Mundfish heavily advertised ray tracing and it looked amazing when it was shown. Our only hope is that its last minute removal was due to a bug that can be easily fixed and not because it would cause crippling performance on older cards. There’s no way to turn raytracing on in the settings on PC, PS5, or Xbox Series X|S so we will have to wait and see.

Final Thoughts:

The dark undertones of Atomic Heart exist and are a setting I was extremely excited to visit. It’s truly wonderful experiencing some gaming moments on modern technology. Some scripted introduction scenes felt exactly like that – the grand introduction to this game in particular lets intense moments sink in and it’s extremely beautiful. If anything I would recommend trying this game out just for those sequences alone.

There are many things that work well for Atomic Heart that are completely worth the price of admission. Anyone with GamePass should try it for themselves and enjoy a potentially great game. After some patches and desperately needed repair bot and enemy density balancing, this could be a real gem. Despite a promising setting and inspiration, its writing may be off-putting especially if one is easily offended. Tightening up these sequences and fixing some audio issues will make this game infinitely better.

Did I have fun? Hell yes! Will I recommend Atomic Heart as a GOTY contender for 2023? No. Those looking for an interesting game that wears its heart on its sleeve will be heavily rewarded. It is an odd and enjoyable retro blast precisely because it was reminiscent of some of the great classic games of our past. Atomic Heart continues to grow on you even if it’s not an entirely cohesive or balanced experience.

Atomic Heart releases tomorrow, Feb 21st, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S February 21, 2023. Nvidia provided this review copy for BTR.

We score Atomic Heart at a solid 6.5/10.

Hogwarts Legacy launched last week on PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC and will be available on last gen consoles and Switch later this year.

Lumos! The wizarding game we always wanted.

It is hard to put into words the impact the Harry Potter franchise has had on me. The books were a cultural phenomenon and the Deathly Hallows in particular is one of my favorite books of all time. By going back in time, Warner Bros. Games, PortkeyGames and Avalanche software were left with a clean slate to introduce you to a brand new and exciting world filled to the brim with magic, exploration, and wonder. Erroneously, not much confidence was originally placed in the developer because of their previous games, but they pulled it off brilliantly. Hogwarts Legacy is always showing you something new or offering an upgrade or a place that you actually want to explore. Open-world games often feel like they suffer from tedious map clutter and side quests that are just boxes to check off for completion. Every nook and cranny here is alive and fun to explore.

Some moments felt the same way that I felt walking into Disneyland as a young kid. The castle is ornate with decorations and endless halls to explore. I spent hours just walking around the castle grounds truly feeling like a wizard attending Hogwarts. This is where Legacy succeeds most – it’s the most complete Wizarding World role-playing experience. Everything in the world feels connected, and consistently traveling the world rewards you with upgrades and quests to complete and interesting dungeons to explore. The game is incredibly rewarding and respects the world while at the same time expanding on it.

Legacy does a great job of making you feel like you are a young 5th year student learning about its world and magic. The professors and students have great personalities, and side-characters hold their own in a franchise filled with iconic characters. Many do a great job of standing out from the primary teachers in the Potter universe. The music also works very well and feels very Harry Potter-like. I especially loved gaining experience while completing tasks as the reward sound is fantastic.

I would have loved to have more choices and not just “good or bad” responses to quests and stories. There is no dark or light journey to take, and often even using unforgivable curses or “unknown to the modern world” ancient magic had little reaction from others around you. However, while the story is one of the best we have played, it lacks any real punishment or rewards for decisions, and the PC performance can often frustrate the player.

The game moves you forward regardless of how you actually treat the world around you. A perfect, non-spoiler example is how much characters badger you that poachers have been destroying many beautiful beasts and it’s purely evil – then the economy in the game is so lopsided the best way to make money is to gather beasts and sell them for profit although you sell them to people who will care for them and re-home them. Before you dispatch poachers you can often here them having the same dialogue – they are doing this for money and just need to survive. Still – we were glad to rid the world of poachers and just wish the game explored decisions in more thoughtful and impactful ways.

The journey to unlock the potential of your talent and spells is perfectly balanced. Unlocking new spells as part of character developing side-quests and expanding your unique control of this ancient magic only a select-few can see and use is strong and bolstered by a great supporting cast. From the beginning, however, I felt the character creation voice options didn’t really work – you can only change the pitch of the original actor’s voice and this results in a weird modular sound or deep voice that does not translate well to cutscenes. The Mass Effect: Andromeda “cardboard” lip syncing issues that plagued that game has a similar effect here. It distracted me in a lot of cutscenes and some characters can often feel strange to interact with.

Combat, Exploration, and performance

Hogwarts Legacy surprised me with some difficult areas and it gave me a great feeling that it respected my time at nearly every turn. From the story to combat, it does the best job to make you feel like you are there. You eventually can unlock 4 “diamonds” of spell combos you can easily swap around. Spells have cool-downs, and as you level up, special talent trees open up to make your spells more effective. Talent trees are fun to unlock – such as making generic spells curse enemies or making stealth a lethal and viable option.

Unlockable gear is automatically turned into a transmog piece of gear that you can swap out at any time which is something that took Destiny 2 two games and many years to implement! Combat difficulty can be changed to “story” mode at any time and the AI becomes easily dispatchable. You can also take potions like the Maxima potion to make your spells extremely powerful. Its a fun combat experience although the enemy AI could have used more varied voice acting; you often run into the same enemy voice over-and-over.

Combat was never an issue; however, on PC, the performance – even on my RTX 3080 with DLSS – was often extremely poor and inconsistent. I had many crashes, pop-in, weird fog issues – and especially at night – the performance dropped to below 20 FPS; and even a RTX 4090 would drop to shockingly low numbers. I found myself constantly tweaking settings that never stuck. Often we had to turn on Frame Generation. Restart. Turn off Frame Generation. Restart. And we could not get the game to change from “recommended” settings to Ultra or even to truly turn off Frame Generation without jumping through hoops

I was so plagued by a wide variety of issues that we doubt that many current benchmarks can be trusted to truly represent the playing experience. Performance can wildly change just walking from hall in the castle to another or opening a door at night. This should be fixed with patches, but for now the PC version is a broken port and the best experience is on the PS5. The Xbox Series X is great as well, but the PS5 has a year-long exclusive dungeon that unlocks some of the best spells in the game early and provides discounts at shops.

I swapped my 3080 for a 4080 FE and frame generation and DLSS set to Quality in 4k. The difference is astounding and I got nearly double the performance in most areas. The best PC performance is with DLSS 3.0 and the RTX 4000 series. We were unable to test AMD’s offerings but the game features FSR 2.0 and will be great for owners with those systems.

There are more demanding scenarios (with much lower lows), but they are not very repeatable (variance above 3%) because of the way the game loads, fog, weather/light variations on the same run. My runs were within 1%-2% of each other. Other times they were wildly different and inconsistent. On our 4090 PC we often would see 45 FPS with 1% lows at 34. It desperately needs patching with optimization by Nvidia and AMD. View distance affects the FPS significantly, and this game is very CPU-limited which kills framerates without Frame Generation.

Even a struggling port at launch is lifted by the next generation of graphics cards. DLSS 3.0 saved our RTX 4080 gameplay and let us enjoy many sections with Ultra settings we would have otherwise struggled with using DLSS 2.0. And turning off DLSS 2.0 on a RTX 3080 resulted in an unplayable experience in many areas.

None of that took away from my joy. The backdrop of the beautiful Hogwarts castle on the world around is not perfect but often can take your breath away. The open-world contrasts with the school offering beautiful beasts and varied areas to explore. Perhaps the best part of the game mechanics are simple to learn puzzles mixed with difficult challenges and dungeons.

The Hogwarts fiction can get you lost in its world with a truly engrossing feeling of power once you string dodging together with combinations of spells to destroy large groups of enemies. It never gets dull, and once you learn to fly or use “Revelio” (reveal), it will begin to show how much you can really do in the world.

Conclusion: A mystifying journey currently held back by poor PC performance.

Hogwarts Legacy is easily a 9/10 with one of the best stories in recent memory. Non-fans of the Harry Potter universe looking for a great open-world wizard and witch game will have fun, but fans of the series will enjoy it the most. Hogwarts Castle itself is meticulously designed and intricate. All its secrets and layers beg to be explored and you can spend an entire play session just roaming the halls. The combat is a little repetitive but allows you to combine spells and move fluidly with a variety of movement and stealth options. Like most games these days, it might feel bloated for those that want a more traditional journey but for this fan of the series, it felt rewarding to explore. Some moments in the game, like using the broom for the 1st time, took our breath away.

Hardcore Harry Potter fans will enjoy Hogwarts Legacy – it is the best game entry in the series by far. It provides a true wizarding world experience from beginning to end. The conclusion has a variety of endings; however, the developer made it clear if you want to be evil – you can be evil with little consequence or admonishment from the world. This lack of character depth may leave some wanting but the writing and story itself is enough to make it a small nitpick in comparison. We highly suggest non-fans of the series give it a chance just for its story and its sense of wonder.

Unfortunately, the PC port needs serious work and optimization so you may want to wait a bit if you plan on playing at 4K with anything lower than a RTX 3080 and a high-end CPU. Currently for 1440p and 1080p gamers, it is best played on Next-Gen consoles.

Hogwarts Legacy is the best entry in the series by far and this is a great restart for the franchise We look forward to more and we wholeheartedly recommend the game to everyone.

Our testing platform is a recent install of Windows 11 64-bit Pro Edition, an i9-12900K with stock clocks, an ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE DDR4 3600MHz. The games tested, settings and hardware are identical except for the GPUs and the drivers we compare.

Benching Methodology

Test Configuration – Hardware

• 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K (Hyper-Threading/Turbo boost on; stock settings)
• ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, v.2212 BIOS)
• T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE 32GB DDR4 (2×16GB, dual-channel at 3600 MHz CL14 XMP), supplied by TeamGroup
• ASUS TUF GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC EDITION 12GB, stock clocks
• Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 MASTER 10GB (rev. 1.0); v.F4 VBIOS, stock clocks
• 1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 960 EVO NVMe M.2
• 2 x WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD
• 1 x TeamGroup MP33 M.2 PCIe 1TB SSD
• Corsair RM850x, 850W 80PLUS Gold power supply unit
• ASUS TUF Gaming VG289Q 28″ IPS UltraHD (3840×2160) 60Hz 5ms FreeSync Monitor for testing games at 2160p resolution.
• ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27″ IPS QuadHD (2560 x 1440) 165Hz 4ms G-Sync Monitor for testing games at 1440p resolution.

Test Configuration – Software

• Nvidia GeForce 528.02 and 528.24 drivers; ‘Prefer maximum performance’ (on a per-game profile basis); Shader Cache Size ‘Unlimited’ (globally); fixed refresh rate (globally).
• We enable Resizable BAR.
• ‘V-Sync application controlled’ in the control panel; V-Sync off in-game.
• We note and specify the display resolution and the main in-game display, graphics, AA, and scaling settings in the performance summary charts.
• Windows 11 64-bit Pro edition, latest updates v22H2, High-performance power plan, HAGS & Game Mode are enabled, Game DVR & Game Bar features off, Control Flow Guard (CFG) off on a per-game basis, Hypervisor and Virtualization-based security are disabled.
• We do not install GIGABYTE or ASUS tools.
• Latest DirectX
• All 17 games are patched to their latest versions at the time of publication.
• 3DMark suite and UNIGINE Superposition benchmark, the latest version
• Basemark GPU benchmark, v.1.2.3
• UNIGINE Superposition, v.1.1
• CapFrameX (CX); the latest version
• RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS); the latest version
• FrameView; the latest version
• Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), the latest version; always uninstall drivers using DDU in safe mode, clean, and restart.

• ISLC (Purge Standby List) before each benchmark.

GeForce Driver Suite-related

• We use DCH Game Ready drivers.
• The display driver is installed.
• We install the latest version of PhysX.

Hybrid & Non-Synthetic Tests-related

• Single run per test.

Game Benchmarks-related

• We use the corresponding built-in or custom benchmark sequence.

Frametimes Capture & Analysis tool-related

• We use CapFrameX for capturing frametimes and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from each recorded built-in or custom benchmark sequence.
• We use FrameView for capturing purposes only when DLSS 3 is enabled for maximum reliability.
• We always perform consecutive runs until detecting three usable runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:
  • Aggregate excluding outliers:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).
• We compare and evaluate the results and aggregated records in terms of percentages of gain/loss and set the following thresholds to consider a % value as significant (not within the margin of error) for our benchmarking purposes:
  • Score/FPS Avg > 3% when valuing hybrid and non-synthetic benchmarks;
  • FPS Avg > 3% when evaluating raw performance;
  • P1 > 3% when evaluating frame time consistency; after applying our custom formula

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

Benchmark Suite: 17 PC Games, 4 Hybrid & 3 Non-Synthetic Tests

PC Games

DX11 Games

• Days Gone (DX11)
• God of War (DX11)
• Total War: Warhammer III (DX11)

DX12 Games

• A Plague Tale: Requiem (DX12)
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (DX12)
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 v.1.61 (DX12)
• F1 2021 (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• Hitman 3 (DX12)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DX12)
• The Callisto Protocol (DX12)

Vulkan Games

• DOOM Eternal (VK)
• Quake 2 RTX (VK; v.1.6.0)
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood (VK)

Hybrid Tests (3DMark)

• DirectX Raytracing feature test
• Fire Strike Ultra
• Port Royal
• Time Spy Extreme

Non-Synthetic Tests

• Basemark GPU
• GPUScore: Relic of Life
• UNIGINE Superposition

Nvidia Control Panel settings

Here are the global Nvidia Control Panel settings:

The value ‘Prefer maximum performance’ for the power management mode setting is set on a per-game or program profile basis via Manage 3D Settings > Program settings tab.

GeForce 528.24 Game Ready WHQL Drivers

This latest GeForce Game Ready 528.24 driver was released on January 24 primarily for the release of Dead Space (Remake) and Forspoken, which feature Nvidia DLSS technology. It also brings optimized support for the new DLSS 3 games, including Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Hitman 3, and Deliver Us Mars.

The download links for the latest GeForce 528.24 drivers can be found here. The release notes are here as a downloadable pdf file. Here are the release highlights from Nvidia’s website:

This new Game Ready Driver provides the best day-0 gaming experience for the latest new games supporting NVIDIA DLSS 3 technology including Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Hitman 3, and Deliver Us Mars. Additionally, this Game Ready Driver supports the launch of titles supporting NVIDIA DLSS technology including Dead Space and Forspoken.

Fixed Bugs

• • Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Lightroom instability with 528.02 [3940086]
  • Adobe Photoshop 24.1 application instability with 528.02 when using GeForce Experience [3940488]
  • Adobe Premiere Pro: ProRes RAW files appear completely black when previewing [3924753]
  • Autodesk Alias: Expected transparent window appears opaque [3891620]
  • OctaneBench 2020 fails intermittently due to render engine failure [3880988]

The GeForce 528.24 Driver Performance – Summary Charts with 17 Games

Below are the summary charts of our selection of 17 games plus four hybrid and three non-synthetic benchmarks. We chart our games’ driver performance progression from version 528.02 to 528.24 using the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER and the TUF RTX 4070 Ti OC.

You can see the list of graphics settings on the performance data tables, and we run each built-in or custom game benchmark’s sequence at 3840×2160 or 2560×1440, as specified on the charts.

Results give average framerates, and higher is better. We display the low FPS percentile (P1) below the corresponding averages in italics and a slightly smaller font. We use CapFrameX to record frametimes over time and to visualize and convert them into their corresponding average FPS and P1 FPS percentiles values.

There are also columns showing percentages of gain/loss in raw performance (average FPS) and, when applicable, in frame time consistency or stability between the different driver versions. We applied the following custom formula to calculate the stability gains or losses:

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

We mark significant performance changes (higher than 3%) in bold and use purple for the significant improvements or orange font for regressions.

GeForce 528.24 Driver Performance Charts

Notes on GeForce 528.24 Driver Performance

From the charts, we see no significant differences in graphics performance between drivers for the hybrid and non-synthetic tests using our RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 3080.

For the game benchmarks, although most games show no significant differences when we move to 528.24 drivers from the 528.02 driver version using both GPUs, we see a noteworthy improvement in Doom Eternal (Vulkan Ray Pipeline API) in terms of raw performance.

Also, based on our testing, we found that the significant performance differences in Hitman 3 (DX12 & DXR) and The Callisto Protocol (DX12 & DXR) are not driver-related but game-related due to their latest title updates.

Disclaimer

Please be aware that the following results, notes, and the corresponding driver recommendation are valid for similar Ada Lovelace and Ampere gaming rigs on Windows 11 v22H2. Although our GeForce driver recommendation can still be handy or suitable for Turing gamers, their representativeness, applicability, and usefulness on different NVIDIA GPU architectures, testing benches, and MS Windows versions may vary.

Conclusion

Based on our previous results and findings, we recommend Ada Lovelace and Ampere users update to 528.24 drivers. Overall, although its raw performance and smoothness or frametimes consistency are on par with our previously recommended driver 528.02 using both Nvidia GPU architectures, we see a significant gain in raw performance in Doom Eternal (Vulkan Ray Pipeline API) using both Nvidia GPU architectures.

From a qualitative point of view, there are also important reasons that make it advisable to upgrade to version 528.24. These reasons include its higher level of driver bug fixes, the optimizations for the latest games, and support for the latest Nvidia technologies.

Let’s Play!

***

Rodrigo González (aka RodroG) is the current BTR lead reviewer and an enthusiast gamer. He is especially interested in shooter games, open-world role-playing games, and software and hardware benchmarking. He is the author of the Nvidia WHQL Driver Performance Benchmarks Series and founder and moderator of the r/allbenchmarks community on Reddit.

This driver performance analysis showcases the performance of an ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4070 Ti OC EDITION (Ada Lovelace architecture) and a Gigabyte AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER (Ampere architecture) with 17 PC games using the latest GeForce 528.02 Game Ready driver. This time, we can only compare this GeForce driver versus the previous Game Ready driver 527.56 with the RTX 3080 and set our RTX 4070 Ti performance baseline using the latest driver for future analyses. We perform all tests on the same game version & OS build.

Our testing platform is a recent install of Windows 11 64-bit Pro Edition, an i9-12900K with stock clocks, an ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE DDR4 3600MHz. The games tested, settings and hardware are identical except for the GPUs and the drivers we compare.

Benching Methodology

Test Configuration – Hardware

• 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K (Hyper-Threading/Turbo boost on; stock settings)
• ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, v.1008 BIOS)
• T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE 32GB DDR4 (2×16GB, dual-channel at 3600 MHz CL14 XMP), supplied by TeamGroup
• ASUS TUF GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC EDITION 12GB, stock clocks
• Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 MASTER 10GB (rev. 1.0); v.F4 VBIOS, stock clocks
• 1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 960 EVO NVMe M.2
• 2 x WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD
• 1 x TeamGroup MP33 M.2 PCIe 1TB SSD
• Corsair RM850x, 850W 80PLUS Gold power supply unit
• ASUS TUF Gaming VG289Q 28? IPS UltraHD (3840×2160) 60Hz 5ms FreeSync Monitor for testing games at 2160p resolution.
• ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27? IPS QuadHD (2560 x 1440) 165Hz 4ms G-Sync Monitor for testing games at 1440p resolution.

Test Configuration – Software

• Nvidia GeForce 527.56 and 528.02 drivers; ‘Prefer maximum performance’ (on a per-game profile basis); Shader Cache Size ‘Unlimited’ (globally); fixed refresh rate (globally).
• We enable Resizable BAR.
• ‘V-Sync application controlled’ in the control panel; V-Sync off in-game.
• We note and specify the display resolution and the main in-game display, graphics, AA, and scaling settings in the performance summary charts.
• Windows 11 64-bit Pro edition, latest updates v22H2, High-performance power plan, HAGS & Game Mode are enabled, Game DVR & Game Bar features off, Control Flow Guard (CFG) off on a per-game basis, Hypervisor and Virtualization-based security are disabled.
• We do not install GIGABYTE or ASUS tools.
• Latest DirectX
• All 17 games are patched to their latest versions at the time of publication.
• 3DMark suite and UNIGINE Superposition benchmark, the latest version
• Basemark GPU benchmark, v.1.2.3
• UNIGINE Superposition, v.1.1
• CapFrameX (CX); the latest version
• RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS); the latest version
• FrameView; the latest version
• Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), the latest version; always uninstall drivers using DDU in safe mode, clean, and restart.

• ISLC (Purge Standby List) before each benchmark.

GeForce Driver Suite-related

• We use DCH Game Ready drivers.
• The display driver is installed.
• We install the latest version of PhysX.

Hybrid & Non-Synthetic Tests-related

• Single run per test.

Game Benchmarks-related

• We use the corresponding built-in or custom benchmark sequence.

Frametimes Capture & Analysis tool-related

• We use CapFrameX for capturing frametimes and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from each recorded built-in or custom benchmark sequence.
• We use FrameView for capturing purposes only when DLSS 3 is enabled for maximum reliability.
• We always perform consecutive runs until detecting three usable runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:
  • Aggregate excluding outliers:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).
• We compare and evaluate the results and aggregated records in terms of percentages of gain/loss and set the following thresholds to consider a % value as significant (not within the margin of error) for our benchmarking purposes:
  • • Score/FPS Avg > 3% when valuing hybrid and non-synthetic benchmarks;
    • FPS Avg > 3% when evaluating raw performance;
    • P1 > 3% when evaluating frame time consistency; after applying our custom formula

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

Benchmark Suite: 17 PC Games, 4 Hybrid & 3 Non-Synthetic Tests

PC Games

DX11 Games

• Days Gone (DX11)
• God of War (DX11)
• Total War: Warhammer III (DX11)

DX12 Games

• A Plague Tale: Requiem (DX12)
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (DX12)
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 v.1.61 (DX12)
• F1 2021 (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• Hitman 3 (DX12)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DX12)
• The Callisto Protocol (DX12)

Vulkan Games

• DOOM Eternal (VK)
• Quake 2 RTX (VK; v.1.6.0)
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood (VK)

Hybrid Tests (3DMark)

• DirectX Raytracing feature test
• Fire Strike Ultra
• Port Royal
• Time Spy Extreme

Non-Synthetic Tests

• Basemark GPU
• GPUScore: Relic of Life
• UNIGINE Superposition

Nvidia Control Panel settings

Here are the global Nvidia Control Panel settings:

The value ‘Prefer maximum performance’ for the power management mode setting is set on a per-game or program profile basis via Manage 3D Settings > Program settings tab.

GeForce 528.02 Game Ready WHQL Drivers

This latest GeForce Game Ready 528.02 driver was released on January 5 primarily for the launch of RTX 4070 Ti GPUs. It also brings optimized support for Nvidia DLSS 3 technology in Conqueror’s Blade and Dakar Desert Rally.

The download links for the latest GeForce 528.02 drivers can be found here. The release notes are here as a downloadable pdf file. Here are the release highlights from Nvidia’s website:

This new Game Ready Driver provides the best day-0 gaming experience for the latest new games supporting NVIDIA DLSS 3 technology, including Conqueror’s Blade and Dakar Desert Rally.

Gaming Technology

• • • Introduces support for the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

The GeForce 528.02 Driver Performance – Summary Charts with 17 Games

Below are the summary charts of our selection of 17 games plus four hybrid and three non-synthetic benchmarks. We chart our games’ driver performance progression from version 527.56 to 528.02 using the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER and our gaming driver performance baseline for the RTX 4070 Ti GPU.

You can see the list of graphics settings on the performance data tables, and we run each built-in or custom game benchmark’s sequence at 3840×2160 or 2560×1440, as specified on the charts.

Results give average framerates, and higher is better. We display the low FPS percentile (P1) below the corresponding averages in italics and a slightly smaller font. We use CapFrameX to record frametimes over time and to visualize and convert them into their corresponding average FPS and P1 FPS percentiles values.

There are also columns showing percentages of gain/loss in raw performance (average FPS) and, when applicable, in frame time consistency or stability between the different driver versions. We applied the following custom formula to calculate the stability gains or losses:

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

We mark significant performance changes (higher than 3%) in bold and use purple for the significant improvements or orange font for regressions.

GeForce 528.02 Driver Performance Charts

Notes on GeForce 528.02 Driver Performance

From the charts, we see no significant differences in graphics performance between drivers for the hybrid and non-synthetic tests using our RTX 3080.

For the game benchmarks, although most games show no significant differences when we move to 528.02 drivers from the 527.56 driver version using our RTX 3080 GPU, we see a notable improvement (approximately a +8%) in The Callisto Protocol (DX12, no ray tracing) in terms of frame time consistency.

Our testing also shows that the 528.02 driver delivers approximately the same performance as the pre-RTX 4070 Ti launch 527.62 press drivers, including the significant frametime stability gain in The Callisto Protocol (DX12, no ray tracing). So, we also consider it would probably be a recommended GeForce Game-Ready driver version for Ada Lovelace users.

Disclaimer

Please be aware that the following results, notes, and the corresponding driver recommendation are valid for similar Ada Lovelace and Ampere gaming rigs on Windows 11 v22H2. Although our GeForce driver recommendation can still be handy or suitable for Turing gamers, their representativeness, applicability, and usefulness on different NVIDIA GPU architectures, testing benches, and MS Windows versions may vary.

Conclusion

Based on our previous results and findings, we recommend Ada Lovelace and Ampere users update to 528.02 drivers. Overall, although its raw performance and smoothness or frametimes consistency are on par with both the previous driver 527.56 using our RTX 3080 and press driver 527.62 with the RTX 4070 Ti, we see a substantial performance gain in frame time stability in The Callisto Protocol (DX12, no ray tracing) using both NVIDIA GPU architectures.

From a qualitative point of view, there are also important reasons that make it advisable to upgrade to version 528.02. These reasons include its higher level of driver bug fixes, optimized support for the latest Nvidia technologies, and support for the RTX 4070 Ti GPU.

Let’s Play!

***

Rodrigo González (aka RodroG) is the current BTR lead reviewer and an enthusiast gamer. He is especially interested in shooter games, open-world role-playing games, and software and hardware benchmarking. He is the author of the Nvidia WHQL Driver Performance Benchmarks Series and founder and moderator of the r/allbenchmarks community on Reddit.

This driver performance analysis showcases the performance of a Gigabyte AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER (Ampere architecture) and an EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK (Turing architecture) with 20 PC games using the latest GeForce 522.25 Game Ready driver. We compare this GeForce driver versus our previously recommended driver 517.48 with both cards, and we perform all tests on the same game version and OS build.

Our testing platform is a recent install of Windows 11 64-bit Pro Edition, an i9-12900K with stock clocks, an ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE DDR4 3600MHz. The games tested, settings and hardware are identical except for the GPUs and the drivers we compare.

Benching Methodology

Test Configuration – Hardware

• 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K (Hyper-Threading/Turbo boost on; stock settings)
• ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, v.1008 BIOS)
• T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE 32GB DDR4 (2×16GB, dual-channel at 3600 MHz CL14 XMP), supplied by TeamGroup
• Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 MASTER 10GB (rev. 1.0); v.F4 VBIOS, stock clocks
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti BLACK EDITION GAMING 11GB, stock clocks
• 1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 960 EVO NVMe M.2
• 2 x WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD
• 1 x TeamGroup MP33 M.2 PCIe 1TB SSD
• Corsair RM850x, 850W 80PLUS Gold power supply unit
• ASUS TUF Gaming VG289Q 28? IPS UltraHD (3840×2160) 60Hz 5ms FreeSync Monitor for testing games at 2160p resolution.
• ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27? IPS QuadHD (2560 x 1440) 165Hz 4ms G-Sync Monitor for testing games at 1440p or (DL)DSR resolution.

Test Configuration – Software

• NVIDIA GeForce 517.48 and 522.25 drivers; ‘High Quality’ and ‘prefer maximum performance’ (on a per-game profile-basis); Shader Cache Size ‘Unlimited’ (globally); fixed refresh rate (globally).
• We enable Resizable BAR.
• ‘V-Sync application controlled’ in the control panel; V-Sync off in-game.
• AA and AF as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified.
• Windows 11 64-bit Pro edition, latest updates v22H2, High-performance power plan, HAGS & Game Mode are enabled, Game DVR & Game Bar features off, Control Flow Guard (CFG) off on a per-game basis, Hypervisor and Virtualization-based security are disabled.
• We do not install GIGABYTE or ASUS tools.
• Latest DirectX
• All 20 games are patched to their latest versions at the time of publication.
• 3DMark suite and UNIGINE Superposition benchmark, the latest version
• Basemark GPU benchmark, v.1.2.3
• UNIGINE Superposition, v.1.1
• CapFrameX (CX), the latest version
• RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), the latest version
• Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), the latest version; always uninstall old driver using DDU in safe mode, clean, and restart.

• ISLC (Purge Standby List) before each benchmark.

GeForce Driver Suite-related

• We use DCH Game Ready drivers.
• The display driver is installed.
• We install the latest version of PhysX.

Hybrid & Non-Synthetic Tests-related

• Single run per test.

Game Benchmarks-related

• We use the corresponding built-in or custom benchmark sequence.

Frametimes Capture & Analysis tool-related

• We use CapFrameX for capturing and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from each recorded built-in or custom benchmark sequence.
• We always perform consecutive runs until detecting three valid runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:
  • Aggregate excluding outliers:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).
• We compare and evaluate the results and aggregated records in terms of percentages of gain/loss and set the following thresholds to consider a % value as significant (not within the margin of error) for our benchmarking purposes:
  • Score/FPS Avg > 3% when valuing hybrid and non-synthetic benchmarks;
  • FPS Avg > 3% when evaluating raw performance;
  • P1/P0.2 > 3% when evaluating frame time consistency; after applying our custom formula

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

Benchmark Suite: 20 PC Games, 4 Hybrid & 5 Non-Synthetic Tests

Hybrid Tests (3DMark)

• DirectX Raytracing feature test
• Fire Strike Ultra
• Port Royal
• Time Spy Extreme

Non-Synthetic Tests

• Basemark GPU
• Boundary: Raytracing Benchmark
• GPUScore: Relic of Life
• Neon Noir (Benchmark)
• UNIGINE Superposition

DX11 Games

• Chernobylite (DX11)
• Days Gone (DX11)
• God of War (DX11)

DX12 Games

• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (DX12)
• Borderlands 3 (DX12)
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12)
• DIRT 5 (DX12)
• F1 2021 (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• Ghostwire: Tokyo (DX12)
• Hitman 3 (DX12)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DX12)
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
• Watch Dogs: Legion (DX12)

Vulkan Games

• DOOM Eternal (VK)
• Quake 2 RTX (VK; v.1.6.0)
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood (VK)

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the global NVIDIA Control Panel settings:

Both ‘High-Quality’ values for texture filtering-quality setting and ‘Prefer maximum performance’ for power management mode are set on a per-game or program profile basis via Manage 3D Settings > Program settings tab.

GeForce 522.25 Game Ready WHQL Drivers

This latest GeForce Game Ready 522.25 driver was released on October 12 primarily for the release of Gotham Knights, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, and Dakar Desert Rally, which feature NVIDIA DLSS technology. It also brings optimized support for the first new DLSS 3 games including A Plague Tale: Requiem, Justice, Loopmancer, F1 22, Bright Memory: Infinite, SUPER PEOPLE, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered.

This new driver adds support for the GeForce RTX 4090 GPU (Ada Lovelace GPU micro-architecture) and brings significant DirectX 12 performance improvements for GeForce RTX GPUs:

These improvements include shader compilation optimization, reduced CPU overhead, and Resizable BAR profiles for Forza Horizon 5 and F1 22. Many of these optimizations are most beneficial in CPU-bound scenarios, enabling your graphics card to be utilized to a greater degree. […] Our DirectX 12 optimizations apply to GeForce RTX graphics cards and laptops, though improvements will vary based on your specific system setup, and the game settings used. (Source: NVIDIA)

The download links for the latest GeForce 522.25 drivers can be found starting here. The release notes are found here as a downloadable pdf file. Here are the release highlights from NVIDIA’s website:

Game Ready Drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1.

Game Ready

This new Game Ready Driver provides the best day-0 gaming experience for the latest new DLSS titles including Gotham Knights, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, and Dakar Desert Rally. In addition, this Game Ready Driver supports the first new DLSS 3 titles including A Plague Tale: Requiem, Justice, Loopmancer, F1 22, Bright Memory: Infinite, SUPER PEOPLE, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. This Game Ready Driver also includes significant DirectX 12 performance optimizations which can dramatically improve performance for GeForce 30 Series GPUs.

Gaming Technology

Includes support for the GeForce RTX 4090.

The GeForce 522.25 Driver Performance – Summary Charts with 20 Games

Below you can find the summary charts of our representative selection of 20 games plus 4 hybrid and 5 non-synthetic benchmarks. We chart our games’ driver performance progression from version 517.48 to 522.25 using the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER and the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK.

You can see the list of graphics settings on the charts, and we run each built-in or custom game benchmark’s sequence at 2560×1440, except for Days Gone and Far Cry 6 tested at 3840×2160 resolution. You may click each chart to open a pop-up for the best viewing.

Results give average framerates, and higher is better. We display the low FPS percentiles (P1 and P0.2) below the corresponding averages. We use CapFrameX to record frametimes over time and to visualize and convert them into their corresponding average FPS and P1 and P0.2 FPS percentiles values.

There are also columns showing percentages of gain/loss in both raw performance (average FPS) and, when applicable, in frame time consistency or stability between the different driver versions. We applied the following custom formula to calculate the stability gains or losses:

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

We mark significant performance changes (higher than 3%) in bold and use purple for the significant improvements or orange font for regressions.

GeForce 522.25 Driver Performance Charts

Notes on GeForce 522.25 Driver Performance

From the charts, although we see no significant differences in graphics performance between drivers for the hybrid tests using our RTX 3080 and RTX 2080 Ti, we see a significant raw performance regression in the GPUScore: Relic of Life (Vulkan Ray Pipeline API) non-synthetic test.

For the game benchmarks, although most games show no significant differences when we move to 522.25 drivers from the 517.48 driver version using both GPUs, we see a significant performance regression in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (DX12) in terms of frametime consistency; but substantial improvements in raw performance in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (DX12), Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12), Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12 & RTX), DIRT 5 (DXR), Forza Horizon 5 (DX12), Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12), and Watch Dogs: Legion (DX12 & DXR).

This time, we also believe that the substantial average FPS improvement we saw in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, using both RTX graphics cards, may offset the regression in frame time stability.

Conclusion

Based on our previous results and findings, we recommend Ampere and Turing users update to the latest GeForce 522.25 driver. Although its raw performance and smoothness or frametimes consistency are overall on par with our previously recommended driver 517.48, we see substantial performance gains in many DX12 games using both NVIDIA GPU architectures.

From a qualitative point of view, there are also important reasons that make it advisable to upgrade to version 522.25. These reasons include its higher level of driver bug fixes, the optimizations for the latest games, and support for the RTX 4090 GPU and latest NVIDIA technologies.

We hope to be able to compare GeForce drivers under the Ada Lovelace architecture in November, as soon as we can get our hands on a GeForce RTX 4080 16GB graphics card.

Let’s Play!

***

Rodrigo González (aka RodroG) is an enthusiast gamer and tech reviewer interested especially in shooter games, open-world role-playing games, and software and hardware benchmarking. He is the author of the NVIDIA WHQL Driver Performance Benchmarks Series and founder and moderator of the r/allbenchmarks community on Reddit.

This driver performance analysis showcases the performance of a Gigabyte AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER (Ampere architecture) and an EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK (Turing architecture) with 20 PC games using the latest GeForce 517.48 Game Ready driver. We compare this GeForce driver versus our previously recommended driver 516.94 with both cards, and we perform all tests on the same game version and OS build.

Our testing platform is a recent install of Windows 11 64-bit Pro Edition, an i9-12900K with stock clocks, an ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE DDR4 3600MHz. The games tested, settings and hardware are identical except for the GPUs and the drivers we compare.

Benching Methodology

Test Configuration – Hardware

• 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K (Hyper-Threading/Turbo boost on; stock settings)
• ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, v.1008 BIOS)
• T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE 32GB DDR4 (2×16GB, dual-channel at 3600 MHz CL14 XMP), supplied by TeamGroup
• Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 MASTER 10GB (rev. 1.0); v.F4 VBIOS, stock clocks
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti BLACK EDITION GAMING 11GB, stock clocks
• 1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 960 EVO NVMe M.2
• 2 x WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD
• 1 x TeamGroup MP33 M.2 PCIe 1TB SSD
• Corsair RM850x, 850W 80PLUS Gold power supply unit
• ASUS TUF Gaming VG289Q 28? IPS UltraHD (3840×2160) 60Hz 5ms FreeSync Monitor for testing games at 2160p resolution.
• ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27? IPS QuadHD (2560 x 1440) 165Hz 4ms G-Sync Monitor for testing games at 1440p or (DL)DSR resolution.

Test Configuration – Software

• NVIDIA GeForce 516.94 and 517.48 drivers; ‘High Quality’ and ‘prefer maximum performance’ (on a per-game profile-basis); Shader Cache Size ‘Unlimited’ (globally); fixed refresh rate (globally).
• We enable Resizable BAR.
• ‘V-Sync application controlled’ in the control panel; V-Sync off in-game.
• AA and AF as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified.
• Windows 11 64-bit Pro edition, latest updates v22H2, High-performance power plan, HAGS & Game Mode are enabled, Game DVR & Game Bar features off, Control Flow Guard (CFG) off on a per-game basis, Hypervisor and Virtualization-based security are disabled.
• We do not install GIGABYTE or ASUS tools.
• Latest DirectX
• All 20 games are patched to their latest versions at the time of publication.
• 3DMark suite and UNIGINE Superposition benchmark, the latest version
• Basemark GPU benchmark, v.1.2.3
• UNIGINE Superposition, v.1.1
• CapFrameX (CX), the latest version
• RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), the latest version
• Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), the latest version; always uninstall old driver using DDU in safe mode, clean, and restart.

• ISLC (Purge Standby List) before each benchmark.

GeForce Driver Suite-related

• We use DCH Game Ready drivers.
• The display driver is installed.
• We install the latest version of PhysX.

Hybrid & Non-Synthetic Tests-related

• Single run per test.

Game Benchmarks-related

• We use the corresponding built-in or custom benchmark sequence.

Frametimes Capture & Analysis tool-related

• We use CapFrameX for capturing and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from each recorded built-in or custom benchmark sequence.
• We always perform consecutive runs until detecting three valid runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:
  • Aggregate excluding outliers:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).
• We compare and evaluate the results and aggregated records in terms of percentages of gain/loss and set the following thresholds to consider a % value as significant (not within the margin of error) for our benchmarking purposes:
  • Score/FPS Avg > 3% when valuing hybrid and non-synthetic benchmarks;
  • FPS Avg > 3% when evaluating raw performance;
  • P1/P0.2 > 3% when evaluating frame time consistency; after applying our custom formula

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

Benchmark Suite: 20 PC Games, 4 Hybrid & 5 Non-Synthetic Tests

Hybrid Tests (3DMark)

• DirectX Raytracing feature test
• Fire Strike Ultra
• Port Royal
• Time Spy Extreme

Non-Synthetic Tests

• Basemark GPU
• Boundary: Raytracing Benchmark
• GPUScore: Relic of Life
• Neon Noir (Benchmark)
• UNIGINE Superposition

DX11 Games

• Chernobylite (DX11)
• Days Gone (DX11)
• God of War (DX11)

DX12 Games

• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (DX12)
• Borderlands 3 (DX12)
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12)
• DIRT 5 (DX12)
• F1 2021 (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• Ghostwire: Tokyo (DX12)
• Hitman 3 (DX12)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DX12)
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
• Watch Dogs: Legion (DX12)

Vulkan Games

• DOOM Eternal (VK)
• Quake 2 RTX (VK; v.1.6.0)
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood (VK)

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the global NVIDIA Control Panel settings:

Both ‘High-Quality’ values for texture filtering-quality setting and ‘Prefer maximum performance’ for power management mode are set on a per-game or program profile basis via Manage 3D Settings > Program settings tab.

GeForce 517.48 Game Ready WHQL Drivers

This latest GeForce Game Ready 517.48 driver was released on September 27 primarily for the release of Overwatch 2, which features NVIDIA Reflex technology. It also brings optimized support for Microsoft Flight Simulator’s DLSS 2 Update.

This new driver adds support for 4 more displays to the G-SYNC compatible list, bringing the total to 237 (HP HyperX Armada 27 and HyperX Armada 25; and Sony INZONE M9 and INZONE M3).

The download links for the latest GeForce 517.48 drivers can be found starting here. The release notes are found here as a downloadable pdf file. Here are the release highlights from NVIDIA’s website:

Game Ready Drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1.

Game Ready for Overwatch 2

This new Game Ready Driver provides the best day-0 gaming experience for Overwatch 2. In addition, this new Game Ready Driver offers support for the latest releases and updates including the addition of NVIDIA DLSS technology to Microsoft Flight Simulator.

The GeForce 517.48 Driver Performance – Summary Charts with 20 Games

Below you can find the summary charts of our representative selection of 20 games plus 4 hybrid and 5 non-synthetic benchmarks. We chart our games’ driver performance progression from version 516.94 to 517.48 using the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER and the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK.

You can see the list of graphics settings on the charts, and we run each built-in or custom game benchmark’s sequence at 2560×1440, except for Days Gone and Far Cry 6 tested at 3840×2160 resolution. You may click each chart to open a pop-up for the best viewing.

Results give average framerates, and higher is better. We display the low FPS percentiles (P1 and P0.2) below the corresponding averages. We use CapFrameX to record frametimes over time and to visualize and convert them into their corresponding average FPS and P1 and P0.2 FPS percentiles values.

There are also columns showing percentages of gain/loss in both raw performance (average FPS) and, when applicable, in frame time consistency or stability between the different driver versions. We applied the following custom formula to calculate the stability gains or losses:

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

We mark significant performance changes (higher than 3%) in bold and use purple for the significant improvements or orange font for regressions.

GeForce 517.48 Driver Performance Charts

Notes on GeForce 517.48 Driver Performance

From the charts, although we see no significant differences in graphics performance between drivers for the hybrid tests using our RTX 3080 and RTX 2080 Ti, we see significant performance improvements in BasemarkGPU (Vulkan & DX12) non-synthetic tests.

For the game benchmarks, although most games show no significant differences when we move to 517.48 drivers from the 516.94 driver version using both GPUs, we see a significant performance improvement in frametime stability in Far Cry 6 (DXR).

Disclaimer

Please be aware that the following results, notes, and the corresponding driver recommendation are valid for similar Ampere and Turing gaming rigs on Windows 11 v22H2. Their representativeness, applicability, and usefulness on different NVIDIA GPU architectures, testing benches, and MS Windows versions may vary.

Conclusion

Based on our previous results and findings, we recommend Ampere and Turing users update to the latest GeForce 517.48 driver. Its raw performance and smoothness or frametimes consistency level are overall on par with our previously recommended driver 516.94, using both NVIDIA GPU architectures.

From a qualitative point of view, there are also important reasons that make it advisable to upgrade to version 517.48. These reasons include its higher level of driver bug fixes, the optimizations for the latest games, and support for the latest NVIDIA technologies.

We also want to let you know that we hope to be able to compare GeForce drivers under the Ada Lovelace architecture sometime next November, as soon as we manage to get our hands on a GeForce RTX 4080 16GB graphics card.

Let’s Play!

***

Rodrigo González (aka RodroG) is an enthusiast gamer and tech reviewer interested especially in shooter games, open-world role-playing games, and software and hardware benchmarking. He is the author of the NVIDIA WHQL Driver Performance Benchmarks Series and founder and moderator of the r/allbenchmarks community on Reddit.

After spending many hours completing the Spider-Man Remastered main story, and being unable to tear ourselves away from the screen, BTR’s editors recommend it as a great game with a few flaws. Rodrigo, Mark, and Mario have collaborated to produce this review, each of us playing it for 20 or more hours. We cover the gameplay, updated performance with Thursday’s patch, and IQ (image quality) which includes ray tracing and testing AMD’s and NVIDIA’s upscaling solutions.

Spider-Man Remastered was released originally as a PS4 exclusive in 2018 and two years later remastered for PS5. Sony then gave it a complete makeover when they ported it to PC complete with ray traced reflections, and together with all the DLC, it was released ten days ago on August 12, 2022. Sony worked quickly to patch the game six days later, significantly improving ray traced performance while addressing bugs. We have tested the performance of 11 ray tracing capable NVIDIA and AMD cards because reflections add a lot of value to playing the game much like Control does. Since Spider-Man: Remastered is a fast-paced game, it’s important to keep framerates high.

Upscaling, Image Quality, and Performance

Spider-Man: Remastered features anti-aliasing solutions, SMAA, TAA, and NVIDIA’s DLAA as well as DLSS and AMD’s FSR 2.0 as upscaling solutions to improve framerates while maintaining image quality (IQ). DLAA is an NVIDIA-developed superior AI-enhanced form of TAA which has the best native render/display resolution visuals and is the best way to play on very powerful top RTX-powered PCs. As upscaling solutions, the Quality DLSS images are better than Quality FSR 2.0 with the camera in motion and with DLSS Quality being as good as the native 4K visuals and slightly sharper. Unfortunately, there is no sharpening slider and the overall images are too sharp.

FSR 2.0 is AMD’s latest iteration of FidelityFX Super Resolution. FSR improves performance by first rendering frames at a lower resolution and then by using an open-source spatial upscaling algorithm with a sharpening filter in an attempt to make the game look nearly as good as at native resolution. So far, there are 110+ available and upcoming games supporting FSR 1.0 and FSR 2.0. Although FSR 2.0 is a solid improvement over 1.0, it is still outclassed by DLSS, especially with the camera in motion.

More than three years ago, NVIDIA introduced real-time RTX ray tracing together with AI-powered Deep Learning Supersampling (DLSS). To play at high settings requires the use of AI super-resolution or DLSS which provides better than a game’s postprocessing AA together with improved performance. Spider-Man: Remastered uses ray tracing with DLSS or FSR 2.0 to improve performance, and we will compare the current performance and IQ of eleven AMD and NVIDIA ray tracing capable cards using the latest 516.94 GeForce and 22.8.1 Adrenalin drivers.

Performance Options and Test bed

Mark’s testing platform is an Intel Core i9-12900K, an ASUS ROG Maximus Apex Z690 motherboard, and 32 GB of T-Force DDR5 at 6400MHz on a recent clean install of Windows 11 Pro Edition. He compares image quality using DLSS versus FSR 2.0 and also using native TAA (and also DLAA for RTX cards), and we chart the performance of eleven current NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon ray tracing capable cards:

• RTX 3090
• RTX 3080 Ti
• RTX 3080
• RTX 3070 Ti
• RTX 2080 Ti
• RTX 3070
• RTX 3060 Ti
• RTX 3060
• RX 6800 XT
• RX 6800
• RX 6700 XT

First, are compared ray traced reflections On versus Off in an indoor scene using completely maxed out settings and the very highest ray tracing options.

Ray Tracing On versus Off (Native 4/Maxed settings)

[twenty20 img1=”28514″ img2=”28513″ offset=”0.5″ before=”Ray traced reflections On” after=”Ray traced reflections Off”]

All of our images use maxed-out 4K settings with Very High ray tracing.

TAA vs. DLSS

Here are mostly uncompressed JPEG 4K images comparing No DLSS/Native/TAA (left) with Quality DLSS (right) using a slider.

[twenty20 img1=”28517″ img2=”28518″ offset=”0.5″ before=”Native/TAA 4K” after=”Quality DLSS 4K”]

We don’t recommend that RTX gamers play without DLSS at 4K. The DLSS image quality is equal or better/sharper than native/TAA – and especially with the camera in motion – although there are some very slight differences that can be seen with some minor DLSS specular aliasing issues visible on some surfaces and on rain drops. DLSS is perfect for 4K, but DLSS settings don’t scale well on 1440p and lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitation when using it.

TAA vs. DLAA

DLAA is an NVIDIA-developed superior IA-enhanced form of TAA which keeps native render/display resolution that only works on GeForce. However, DLAA comes with a small FPS cost, but the image quality is better than native 4K + TAA.

[twenty20 img1=”28518″ img2=”28519″ offset=”0.5″ before=”TAA ” after=”DLAA”]

If you have a powerful enough RTX-powered PC to run it, DLAA is the best choice for the ultimate image quality, especially at 1440p and 1080P.

DLSS vs. FSR 2.0

FSR 2.0 is AMD’s latest iteration of FidelityFX Super Resolution. FSR improves performance by first rendering frames at a lower resolution and then by using an open-source spatial upscaling algorithm with a sharpening filter. Its advantage is that it works on all cards, not just Radeons. Its disadvantage is that even the highest Quality FSR 2.0 setting does not maintain the high visual fidelity that Quality DLSS does, especially with the camera in motion.

[twenty20 img1=”28520″ img2=”28517″ offset=”0.5″ before=”4K Quality FSR 2.0″ after=”Quality DLSS 4K”]

FSR 2.0 is perfect for Radeons playing at 4K, but it doesn’t scale well on 1440p and lower resolutions due to Spider-Man: Remastered’s low GPU usage and high CPU limitation when using it.

There isn’t really a lot of visual difference that can be shown by screenshots.

Next, we check out the performance of eleven RTX cards using 3840×2160, 2560×1440, and 1920×1080 resolutions using up to three levels of DLSS with the goal of averaging close to 60 FPS while still using completely maxed-out settings.

Eleven Video Cards’ Performance Compared Using Maxed-out or the Very High Preset

First of all, no video card can play with fully maxed out settings at native 4K with TAA (or DLAA) and keep framerates above 60 FPS. The RTX 3090 cannot manage it, and most likely, neither can the RTX 3090 Ti. Here are the fully maxed-out settings (left) compared with the Very High Preset (right).

The Very High Preset uses High Reflections and Geometry details but using fully maxed-out settings they are set to Very High. In addition, the Object range increases from 6 to 10, and we also increased the Field of View. However, please note that we also increased the Anisotropic Filtering from 8X to 16X for all of our benching.

Let’s look at the performance of our 11 tested ray tracing capable video cards. All of the following charts show average framerates (FPS) in Bold and 1% FPS percentile minimums next to them in slightly smaller italized font.

4K Highest Setting Video cards – RTX 3080 Ti & RTX 3090

Only three cards can generally play at maximum settings at native 4K with TAA or DLAA.

The RTX 3090 and 3080 Ti are no-compromise video cards (together with the RTX 3090 Ti which we don’t have) that provide the best 4K Spider-Man Remastered experience. But none of them can handle fully maxed-out 4K settings without using DLSS. Quality DLSS provides an image quality experience that is arguably as good as native 4K with DLAA and better than native 4K with TAA.

We managed to play using native 4K and DLAA playing on an LG C1 120Hz G-SYNC OLED display with drops to the mid-50 FPS that did not impact our gameplay fluidity too badly. However, using Quality DLSS significantly improved the fluidity of the gameplay and did not impact the visuals during play. There is no reason to use FSR 2.0 even on its highest Quality setting with RTX cards as DLSS has better image quality with the camera in motion and the DLSS performance is a bit higher.

At maxed-out 4K, the RTX 3080 Ti also averages above 60 FPS with DLSS Performance but it drops into the lower 50s FPS for the 1% minimum lows. Dropping the settings from maximum to use the Very High preset allows RTX 3080 Ti players to enjoy framerates above 60 FPS even with native 4K/DLAA, but Quality DLSS provides a better and more fluid experience without compromising image quality.

1440p allows RTX 3090/3080 Ti gamers to enjoy even higher framerates and take advantage of 120Hz displays.

Other 4K video cards

The RTX 3080, RTX 3070 Ti, the RX 6900 XT, the RX 6800, and the RX 6800 are also able to play using the Very High preset by using DLSS or FSR 2.0. Unfortunately, we don’t have an RX 6900 XT to test.

The RTX 3080 can just manage 4K with TAA but not with DLAA which provides a superior image. It is far better to use Quality DLSS to not only enjoy superior visuals to TAA but to experience fluid framerates.

The RX 6800 XT requires Quality FSR 2.0 to achieve fluid framerates at 4K.

The RX 6800 performs similarly to the RX 6800 XT and can manage 4K/Very High above 60 FPS using FSR 2.0.

The following video cards perform well at 1440p.

1440P Video Car ds

The RTX 3070 Ti cannot play at Very High 4K without Balanced DLSS. It is best suited for 1440p since DLSS settings don’t scale well on 1440p and lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitations.

The RTX 3070 performs just below the RTX 3070 Ti in Spider-Man Remastered, and although it cannot play at all well at 4K/maxed, the same recommendations for 1440P apply as above.

The last generation flagship RTX 2080 Ti also can easily manage 1440P with native DLAA but it may be better to use DLSS Quality for much higher framerates and better fluidity while swinging through the city

The RTX 3060 Ti can handle native 1440p although Quality DLSS provides an IQ alternative that is equal but with more fluid framerates.

The RX 6700 XT can manage native 1440p/Very High but using Quality FSR 2.0 allows for higher framerates. It is also an excellent 1080P card since FSR 2.0 settings don’t scale well on 1440p and lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitations.

The RTX 3060 requires Quality DLSS to play at 2560×1440, but it is also well-suited as a 1080P card because of the same DLSS issues at lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitations.

DLSS and FSR 2.0 make a huge difference to the playability of Spider-Man: Remastered at either the highest visual quality settings or using the Very High preset at 4K. DLSS Quality has no IQ disadvantages whatsoever while FSR 2.0 makes minor visual differences while gaming. Both upscaling methods are highly recommended at 4K over using TAA except at 1440p and lower resolutions due to low GPU usage and high CPU limitation when using them, especially while swinging through the city.

Now let’s look at Rodrigo’s deep dive using the RTX 3080 and RX 6700 XT. The following is again in his words.

Rodrigo’s Deep Dive using the RTX 3080 and RX 6700 XT

Mark benchmarked the cards at “maxed-out” 4K and Very High 4K while I concentrated on 1440p “maxed-out” settings using an AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER, and on 1080P ‘”Very High (16xAF)” settings with a reference AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT.

My testing platform is a recent install of Windows 11 64-bit Pro Edition, an i9-12900K with stock clocks, an ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE DDR4 3600MHz CL14.

I use CapFrameX for capturing and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from our custom benchmark sequence. I always perform consecutive runs until detecting three valid runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:

• • Aggregate excluding outliers:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).

WQHD (1440p) Performance Analysis Using an RTX 3080

We showcase Spider-Man: Remastered performance at 2560×1440 (1440p) or WQHD display resolution using an AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER graphics card at stock clocks.

In this section our “Maxed-out” graphics settings are as follows:

When needed for testing, we set ray-tracing reflection resolution and geometry detail settings in tandem and independently of any graphics quality preset or settings.

Graphics Quality Presets – Performance scaling

The charts below show the performance of each of the game’s graphics presets in terms of average FPS numbers for the raw performance, P1 and P0.2 metrics for frametimes consistency, and the corresponding performance scaling progression when we move between presets.

The above results showed how well and progressively the game scales performance on 1440p resolution when going from “Very High” preset to “Very Low” in terms of both IQ and GPU workload levels. Although we saw significant raw performance improvements when moving from the “Very High” preset to the “Very Low” preset, the frametime consistency or stability kept similar across all graphics presets. Also, moving from the “Very High” to “High” preset gives you the highest FPS avg gain.

The following charts support these findings and show that the graphics preset with the worst frametime stability and frame-pacing is the “Very High” preset, comparatively.

We next present our ray-tracing and NVIDIA DLAA vs. TAA results using an RTX 3080 at 1440p resolution.

Ray-Tracing Performance – Settings & DLAA vs. TAA

Here we see the high FPS cost of enabling real-time ray traced reflections in Spider-Man Remastered, up to about 42% less raw performance. We also see that, while the difference when using DLAA or TAA is relatively minor when using “Maxed” settings and “Very High” ray-tracing settings, this difference increases significantly with “High” ray-tracing settings and notably when ray-tracing is off.

The charts above show that while the ray-tracing “Very High” scenarios showed the worst frametime consistency or stability, the ray-tracing “High” settings scenarios were the most consistent or stable. Besides, although the differences in frametime variances were minor, we saw that the “High” ray-tracing scenario with DLAA had overall the best frame-pacing and “very high” ray-tracing with TAA the worst.

Our NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR 2.0 results using an RTX 3080 at 1440p resolution are next.

NVIDIA DLSS Performance – Settings

We see that while the performance gain is notable when we turn on DLSS scaling (up to about 21%), the relative raw performance gains are smaller overall when we move from the “DLSS Quality” setting to “DLSS Balanced” and from “DLSS Balanced” to “DLSS Performance” mode. That’s why we consider that in terms of performance and image quality, it makes little sense to use a setting other than DLSS Quality when you play at 1440p resolution.

In this regard, our tests also showed that using any DLSS setting is consistently associated with low GPU usage and CPU-boundedness. This situation is especially noticeable when our Spider-Man is outdoors and swinging between buildings.

Based on the charts above, we also see that using DLSS with ray-tracing gives significant performance gains in frametime consistency or stability and frame-pacing.

AMD FSR 2.0 Performance – Settings

The charts above show a similar performance scaling trend as we saw with DLSS settings. While we see a notable performance boost as soon as we enable AMD FSR 2.0 scaling (up to about a 20% gain), we found minor performance changes when swapping between FSR 2.0 modes. Also, the frametime consistency or stability was better using the AMD FSR 2.0 scaling method.

The next charts support these findings and show that you get a better frame-pacing when using AMD FSR 2.0 scaling settings.

Therefore, DLSS and FSR 2.0 scaling methods can also help smooth out your gaming experience in this game.

Below are our DLSS vs. FSR 2.0 performance comparisons

DLSS vs FSR 2.0 Performance

Although the game’s performance scaling behavior is overall the same using NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR 2.0 technologies, we consider NVIDIA DLSS the best AI-enhanced scaling method in terms of IQ when using an RTX graphics card.

We also don’t see significant performance differences in frametime consistency or frame-pacing between DLSS and AMD FSR 2.0 settings.

Full HD (1080p) Performance Analysis Using a Reference RX 6700 XT

Next is our in-depth Spider-Man: Remastered performance analysis at 1080p or Full HD display resolution using a reference AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT card with stock clocks.

In this section our “Very High (16xAF)” graphics settings are as follows:

When needed for testing, we set ray-tracing reflection resolution and geometry detail settings in tandem and independently of any graphics quality preset or settings.

Graphics Quality Presets – Performance scaling

Using our reference RX 6700 XT graphics card at 1080p resolution, we see overall the same performance scaling trend as we found with our AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER. That is, a higher performance improvement when we move from the “Very High” to “High” preset, but lower average FPS gains when we move to the rest of the graphics quality presets.

“High” is the steadiest graphics quality preset, and “Very High” is the less smooth one using our reference RX 6700 XT at 1080p resolution. Also, all presets show an overall similar frame-pacing.

We next present our ray-tracing performance charts using a reference RX 6700 XT at 1080p resolution.

Ray-Tracing Performance – Settings

Here we see again the high FPS cost of enabling ray traced reflections in Spider-Man Remastered, up to about 44% less raw performance at 1080 resolution using our reference RX 6700 XT. Going from ray-tracing “High” settings to ray-tracing “Very High” shows a 17% loss in FPS avg, a 32% FPS avg decrease going from no ray-tracing to “High” ray-tracing settings, and a 44% reduction going from no ray-tracing to “Very High”ray-tracing settings.

From the charts, we also see that “High” ray-tracing is overall the steadiest testing scenario. Here the frame-pacing was similar in all tested configs.

AMD FSR 2.0 Performance – Settings

Again, the FSR 2.0 Quality setting provides the best performance and image quality benefits. Our tests using any FSR 2.0 scaling setting also showed low GPU usage and CPU-boundedness, consistently. This situation is especially noticeable when our Spider-Man is outdoors and swinging between buildings.

Here we see that using any FSR 2.0 scaling setting helps us significantly improve frametime consistency or stability and frame pacing slightly.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Conclusion

Spider-Man: Remastered is an immersive, outstanding, and really fun game that gives a great cinematic experience while telling an extraordinary story. We are especially impressed by its visuals coupled with the large free performance increase that DLSS and FSR 2.0 brings for PC gamers.

If you like Spider-Man movies and/or the comics, Remastered is a must-play game that is better than the films. And if you are looking to play the game with the best framerates and the very highest image fidelity, then choose DLSS or FSR 2.0 depending if you are a GeForce or Radeon gamer. Spider-Man: Remastered is the kind of deeply immersive game that makes a player forget everything – food, chores, work, and even pain.

All of BTR’s three editors agree that Spider-Man: Remastered is a very good game that deserves at least an 8.0/10. Recommended!

Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy Gaming!

This driver performance analysis showcases the performance of a Gigabyte AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER (Ampere architecture) and an EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK (Turing architecture) with 20 PC games using the latest GeForce 516.94 Game Ready driver. We compare this GeForce driver versus our previously recommended driver 516.79 with both cards, and we perform all tests on the same game version and OS build.

Our testing platform is a recent install of Windows 11 64-bit Pro Edition, an i9-12900K with stock clocks, an ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard, and 32GB of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE DDR4 3600MHz. The games tested, settings and hardware are identical except for the GPUs and the drivers we compare.

Benching Methodology

Test Configuration – Hardware

• 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K (Hyper-Threading/Turbo boost on; stock settings)
• ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, v.1008 BIOS)
• T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB WHITE 32GB DDR4 (2×16GB, dual-channel at 3600 MHz CL14 XMP), supplied by TeamGroup
• Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 MASTER 10GB (rev. 1.0); v.F4 VBIOS, stock clocks
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti BLACK EDITION GAMING 11GB, stock clocks
• 1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 960 EVO NVMe M.2
• 2 x WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD
• 1 x TeamGroup MP33 M.2 PCIe 1TB SSD
• Corsair RM850x, 850W 80PLUS Gold power supply unit
• ASUS TUF Gaming VG289Q 28? IPS UltraHD (3840×2160) 60Hz 5ms FreeSync Monitor for testing games at 2160p resolution.
• ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27? IPS QuadHD (2560 x 1440) 165Hz 4ms G-Sync Monitor for testing games at 1440p or (DL)DSR resolution.

Test Configuration – Software

• NVIDIA GeForce 516.79 and 516.94 drivers; ‘High Quality’ and ‘prefer maximum performance’ (on a per-game profile-basis); Shader Cache Size ‘Unlimited’ (globally); fixed refresh rate (globally).
• We enable Resizable BAR (why?).
• ‘V-Sync application controlled’ in the control panel; V-Sync off in-game.
• AA and AF as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified.
• Windows 11 64-bit Pro edition, latest updates v21H2, High-performance power plan, HAGS off (why?), Game Mode, Game DVR & Game Bar features off, Control Flow Guard (CFG) off on a per-game basis, Hypervisor and Virtualization-based security are disabled.
• We disable hidden Xbox’s Xvdd SCSI Miniport storage controller to work around a possible hitching/stuttering/freezing when testing non-Xbox Play Anywhere games (source), except for test Xbox Play Anywhere games.
• We do not install GIGABYTE and ASUS tools.
• Latest DirectX
• All 20 games are patched to their latest versions at the time of publication.
• 3DMark suite and UNIGINE Superposition benchmark, the latest version
• Basemark GPU benchmark, v.1.2.3
• UNIGINE Superposition, v.1.1
• CapFrameX (CX), the latest version
• RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), the latest version
• Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), the latest version; always uninstall old driver using DDU in safe mode, clean, and restart.

• ISLC (Purge Standby List) before each benchmark.

GeForce Driver Suite-related

• We use DCH Game Ready drivers.
• The display driver is installed.
• We install the latest version of PhysX.

Hybrid & Non-Synthetic Tests-related

• Single run per test.

Game Benchmarks-related

• We use the corresponding built-in or custom benchmark sequence.

Frametimes Capture & Analysis tool-related

• We use CapFrameX for capturing and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from each recorded built-in or custom benchmark sequence.
• We always perform consecutive runs until detecting three valid runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:
  • Aggregate excluding outliers:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).
• We compare and evaluate the results and aggregated records in terms of percentages of gain/loss and set the following thresholds to consider a % value as significant (not within the margin of error) for our benchmarking purposes:
  • Score/FPS Avg > 3% when valuing hybrid and non-synthetic benchmarks;
  • FPS Avg > 3% when evaluating raw performance;
  • P1/P0.2 > 3% when evaluating frame time consistency; after applying our custom formula

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

Benchmark Suite: 20 PC Games, 4 Hybrid & 5 Non-Synthetic Tests

Hybrid Tests (3DMark)

• DirectX Raytracing feature test
• Fire Strike Ultra
• Port Royal
• Time Spy Extreme

Non-Synthetic Tests

• Basemark GPU
• Boundary: Raytracing Benchmark
• GPUScore: Relic of Life
• Neon Noir (Benchmark)
• UNIGINE Superposition

DX11 Games

• Chernobylite (DX11)
• Days Gone (DX11)
• God of War (DX11)

DX12 Games

• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (DX12)
• Borderlands 3 (DX12)
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12)
• DIRT 5 (DX12)
• F1 2021 (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• Ghostwire: Tokyo (DX12)
• Hitman 3 (DX12)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition (DX12)
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
• Watch Dogs: Legion (DX12)

Vulkan Games

• DOOM Eternal (VK)
• Quake 2 RTX (VK; v.1.5.0)
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood (VK)

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the global NVIDIA Control Panel settings:

Both ‘High-Quality’ values for texture filtering-quality setting and ‘Prefer maximum performance’ for power management mode are set on a per-game or program profile basis via Manage 3D Settings > Program settings tab.

GeForce 516.94 Game Ready WHQL Drivers

This latest GeForce Game Ready 516.94 driver was released on August 9 primarily for the release of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, which features NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA DLAA, NVIDIA HBAO+, and real-time ray tracing effects. It also brings optimized support for Madden NFL 23 and the upcoming SUPER PEOPLE beta.

This new driver adds support for 18 more monitors to the G-SYNC compatible list, bringing the total to 233 (ACER XB273U Z; ASUS XG256Q, XG276Q, PG48UQ; AOC Q24G2; Corsair 32UHD144; LG 32GQ850, 32GQ950,48GQ900, 49WQ95C; LG TV LX1Q; and Philips 27M1N5200PA, 27M1N5500ZA, 77OLED807/12, PHL24M1N5500Z, PHL252M1RPE, PHL27M1N3200Z, and PHL27M1N5200P).

The download links for the latest GeForce 516.94 drivers can be found starting here. The release notes are found here as a downloadable pdf file. Here are the release highlights from NVIDIA’s website:

Game Ready Drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1.

Game Ready for Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered

This new Game Ready Driver provides the best day-0 gaming experience for Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered which includes support for the latest gaming technologies including NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA DLAA, NVIDIA HBAO+, and upgraded ray-tracing effects. In addition, this new Game Ready Driver offers support for the latest releases and updates including Madden NFL 23 and the beta for SUPER PEOPLE.

The GeForce 516.94 Driver Performance – Summary Charts with 20 Games

Below you can find the summary charts of our representative selection of 20 games plus 4 hybrid and 5 non-synthetic benchmarks. We chart our games’ driver performance progression from version 516.79 to 516.94 using the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER and the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti BLACK.

You can see the list of graphics settings on the charts, and we run each built-in or custom game benchmark’s sequence at 2560×1440, except for Days Gone and Far Cry 6 tested at 3840×2160 resolution. You may click each chart to open a pop-up for the best viewing.

Results give average framerates, and higher is better. We display the low FPS percentiles (P1 and P0.2) below the corresponding averages. We use CapFrameX to record frametimes over time and to visualize and convert them into their corresponding average FPS and P1 and P0.2 FPS percentiles values.

There are also columns showing percentages of gain/loss in both raw performance (average FPS) and, when applicable, in frame time consistency or stability between the different driver versions. We applied the following custom formula to calculate the stability gains or losses:

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

We mark significant performance changes (higher than 3%) in bold and use purple for the significant improvements or orange font for regressions.

GeForce 516.94 Driver Performance Charts

Notes on GeForce 516.94 Driver Performance

From the charts, we see no significant differences in graphics performance between drivers for both the hybrid and non-synthetic tests using our RTX 3080 and RTX 2080 Ti.

For the game benchmarks, most games show no significant differences when we move to 516.94 drivers from the 516.79 driver version using both GPUs.

Disclaimer

Please be aware that the following results, notes, and the corresponding driver recommendation are valid for similar Ampere and Turing gaming rigs on Windows 11 v21H2. Their representativeness, applicability, and usefulness on different NVIDIA GPU architectures, testing benches, and MS Windows versions may vary.

Conclusion

Based on our previous results and findings, we recommend Ampere and Turing users upgrade to the latest GeForce 516.94 driver. Overall, its raw performance and smoothness or frametimes consistency level are on par with our previously recommended driver 516.79 using both NVIDIA GPU architectures.

From a qualitative point of view, there are also important reasons that make it advisable to upgrade to version 516.94. These reasons include its higher level of security and driver bug fixes, the optimizations for the latest games, such as Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, and support for the latest NVIDIA technologies.

Let’s Play!

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Rodrigo González (aka RodroG) is an enthusiast gamer and tech reviewer interested especially in shooter games, open-world role-playing games, and software and hardware benchmarking. He is the author of the NVIDIA WHQL Driver Performance Benchmarks Series and founder and moderator of the r/allbenchmarks community on Reddit.