Stalker 2 PC performance testing and settings analysis — another demanding game that uses frame generation and upscaling as a crutch

[Admin]

Stalker 2 arrives with steep PC system requirements and an assumption that everyone should be using some form of frame generation, or at least that seems to be the takeaway from the benchmarks we've conducted. The game looks good, but Unreal Engine 5 proves to be very demanding yet again.

Stalker 2 PC performance testing and settings analysis — another demanding game that uses frame generation and upscaling as a crutch : Read more

 

[Gururu]

Interesting to see the 4090 brought to its knees and AMD crush with upscaling and frame gen.

 

[80251]

It'll be interesting to see if the AMD 7900XTX retains its lead over the 4090 when using more powerful, late model CPUs.
I've wanted this game for a while, but now I might end up waiting for it because it'll bring my 9700k to its knees.

 

[FunSurfer]

"4090 still only pulls 346W, so something is keeping it from reaching higher levels of performance"
From PC Gamer site article: "However, unlike most UE5 games that boast GPU-hogging rays, Stalker 2 uses the software mode for Lumen. Your graphics card will still be doing the bulk of the ray tracing but it's done through asynchronous compute shaders and not via any ray tracing hardware inside the GPU."

 

[NinoPino]

Sorry, but it is time to retire the 13900 as the CPU of choice.
We are at the end of 2024, and the new architectures of both Intel and AMD, have been launched for a while now.
Cmon, throw the ancient 13900 in the warehouse and jump the river.

 

[coolitic]

UE5 is in many ways a downgrade from UE4, largely because the rush to have artists just drop things in, at the cost of the typical optimization pipeline, ended up hurting almost everyone.

Nanite and virtual shadow-maps in particular are performance atrocities in most cases.

 

[80251]

Is it true Stalker 2 is doing all software raytracing? So all the hardware raytracing cores of the AMD and Nvidia vid-cards aren't doing anything while this game is running? If this is true it's no wonder the CPUs are being overwhelmed.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Sorry, but it is time to retire the 13900 as the CPU of choice.
We are at the end of 2024, and the new architectures of both Intel and AMD, have been launched for a while now.
Cmon, throw the ancient 13900 in the warehouse and jump the river.

I do have the 9800X3D, just need to get the system all set up and ready to roll. Which takes time. But don't forget: 14900K is 5% faster than the 285K, which means the 13900K is basically as fast as Arrow Lake's halo chip (for now, maybe that will change with firmware updates).

MSFS 2020 was also super friendly to X3D, and I see no reason for that to have changed. But also, I looked at CPU vs GPU scaling. With an RTX 4080, at 1080p ultra, the 7800X3D was significantly (22%) faster than the 13900K. At 1440p ultra, the gap was still 21%. And at 4K ultra, the 13900K actually took a 3% lead.

All indications are that MSFS 2024 is more demanding than 2020, which makes sense. But is it more demanding of the CPU, the GPU, or both? Probably the last, but I need to do the testing to figure that out, and that takes a lot of time. But for a lot of other games? The delta is far smaller between the 7800X3D and the 13900K. Pretty sure Stalker 2 would be in that category, especially at 1440p and 4K.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Is it true Stalker 2 is doing all software raytracing? So all the hardware raytracing cores of the AMD and Nvidia vid-cards aren't doing anything while this game is running? If this is true it's no wonder the CPUs are being overwhelmed.

Yes, but...

First, calling Lumen "software raytracing" is a gross exaggeration. It's still using rasterization techniques that run on the shader cores. They're maybe more advanced than some other algorithms, but it's very obvious that the game still uses screen space reflections as one example.

Second, UE5's hardware ray tracing has been a massive and complete bust in most games that use it. Black Myth Wukong is so far the "best" implementation I think, and even that had it's own issues (like being full RT and running horribly and requiring upscaling and framegen). But every other UE5 game, with or without hardware RT support, has been pretty problematic in my experience. Star Wars Jedi Survivor as an example had horrible RT performance, it was super choppy and stuttery even on a 4090.

Third, doing shader-based faux ray tracing isn't going to be inherently more CPU taxing than other methods of rasterization. It's all down to the algorithm. Unreal Engine has traditionally (and still is!) been far more taxing on CPUs than other engines that offer similar quality. It is not highly optimized, basically. It's designed for ease of development, not performance.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

"4090 still only pulls 346W, so something is keeping it from reaching higher levels of performance"
From PC Gamer site article: "However, unlike most UE5 games that boast GPU-hogging rays, Stalker 2 uses the software mode for Lumen. Your graphics card will still be doing the bulk of the ray tracing but it's done through asynchronous compute shaders and not via any ray tracing hardware inside the GPU."

I have power data for the 4090 under a lot of other games, including non-RT games. If it's working hard, whether doing ray tracing or rasterization, it uses 400W or more. RT will increase the workload without needing a faster CPU, but you can absolutely hit high power draw in rasterization games. Borderlands 3 and A Plague Tale: Requiem both break 450W at 4K with the 4090, and over 430W at 1440p.

That Stalker 2 only pushes the 4090 to <350W at 4K means it's CPU heavy, which is why the 4090 can "coast." We'll have to see what the 9800X3D manages, though...

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

So no GPU is capable of 90fps even when rendering at 67% without using fake frames to inflate the frame count...Good to know I can strike this off my list of games to buy for at least the next 5 years.

 

[mac_angel]

WTF!?!? Seriously? I'm eith Tom's Hardware, these game companies shouldn't be making games with the requirement of using upscaling techniques and frame generation. If your game can't run on an RTX4090 at a decent resolution with max settings, you're a really crappy coder, and company for allowing that.

 

[valthuer]

WTF!?!? Seriously? I'm eith Tom's Hardware, these game companies shouldn't be making games with the requirement of using upscaling techniques and frame generation. If your game can't run on an RTX4090 at a decent resolution with max settings, you're a really crappy coder, and company for allowing that.

As far as Stalker is concerned, it has nothing to do with coders being crappy and everything to do with this specific graphic preset being that much demanding.

Unfortunately, upscaling is a must in today's gaming.

 

[alchemy69]

Whilst it may be imminently playable, I suspect you meant eminently.

 

[80251]

Stalker 2 looks no better than Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition and Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition actually uses ray tracing hardware and doesn't exhibit any of the massive perf. issues Stalker 2 is having. Could this be because instead of using hardware ray tracing they're using a async. computer shaders as per the pcgamer review?

"However, unlike most UE5 games that boast GPU-hogging rays, Stalker 2 uses the software mode for Lumen. Your graphics card will still be doing the bulk of the ray tracing but it's done through asynchronous compute shaders and not via any ray tracing hardware inside the GPU."

So basically Stalker 2 is using a less advanced engine than Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition?

 

[FR33L35T3R]

FSR quality has the same (or even worse) quality than DLSS Ultra performance mode.
So the comparison between them with the same quality setting doesnt make sens.

 

[tommtajlor]

Wow. Even the 4090 is not a 4k card anymore.

 

[Bikki]

Tim Sweeney after all the lawsuits settle need to head back to UE5 with performance focus patches.

 

[MrstimX]

I'm running a 4070 super, 12400 at 1440p , DLSS quality with framegen, and getting over 100fps with 99% gpu utilization most times. runs well for me

 

[80251]

@MrstimX
But framegen isn't really a tech you want to be using. It generates fake frames that aren't based on user input.

Your FPS is amazing considering all other performance reviews of Stalker 2 aren't getting that kind of perf. with 4090s and 7900XTXs.

 

[80251]

Whilst it may be imminently playable, I suspect you meant eminently.

Why not both?

 

[MrstimX]

@MrstimX
But framegen isn't really a tech you want to be using. It generates fake frames that aren't based on user input.

Your FPS is amazing considering all other performance reviews of Stalker 2 aren't getting that kind of perf. with 4090s and 7900XTXs.

well i dont notice the input lag when using it, in any game, really, so i just default to using it.
the first town, tanked performance a bit, cpu was at 100%, gpu around 90%, dropped to around 80-ish fps, but still playable. some stutters as i think 16gb is not enough for this game.
Using resource monitor i see the page file being read and written to.

 

[Loadedaxe]

well i dont notice the input lag when using it, in any game, really, so i just default to using it.
the first town, tanked performance a bit, cpu was at 100%, gpu around 90%, dropped to around 80-ish fps, but still playable. some stutters as i think 16gb is not enough for this game.
Using resource monitor i see the page file being read and written to.

@1440 what, Low, med, high, ultra?
I am curious, I haven't bought the game yet, I don't think my older Ryzen system is going to run it well at 1440p, and I refuse to play at 1080p. That's not what I built this machine for and I am not into to upgrading every 2 years, especially to play one game.

They really need to go back to the drawing board and optimize this better. A$2000 gpu and high end cpu can't play it well, that's not acceptable.

 

[valthuer]

Don't know why, but, at 4K Epic DLSS Quality + FG, not only is gameplay butter smooth, with more than 100 FPS, but it also looks better than native. 4090, may be old, but she's still a beast!

 

[Dementoss]

What is the point of designing a game so that only well-off gamers, with the best and most expensive hardware, can run the game looking anywhere near it's best?

Shows an arrogant disregard for the majority of gamers.