The early impressions of Redfall aren’t constructive, and its PC efficiency isn’t doing the sport any favors. I initially got here into this story with a selected angle about how sure GPUs would wrestle to run the sport greater than others, however the extra I dug in, the extra I spotted there are compromises irrespective of the place you look.
On one hand, Redfall is a reduction on account of the truth that it even runs within the first place, particularly amongst video games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and The Last of Us Part 1 which have launched in dire states. It’s nonetheless laborious overlooking the issues within the PC port, although, that are current for those who’re not operating the most recent and best {hardware}.
Lesser of two evils
I solely obtained a duplicate of Redfall late Thursday night, apparently the identical time reviewers additionally obtained a duplicate, so I haven’t had time to do in depth testing on the sport. A number of hours of testing have already revealed some clear tendencies, although.
First, the sport runs nice on the RTX 4090. That shouldn’t be a shock — you don’t spend $1,600 on a GPU to have it run video games poorly — nevertheless it’s essential to get that upfront. At ultrawide decision (3,440 x 1,440), I used to be in a position to clear 100 frames per second (fps) at Epic settings with none upscaling. There have been different points, which I’ll get to later, however the recreation ran properly.
Moving past the very best of the very best, Redfall begins to have issues. I examined the AMD RX 6700 XT and Nvidia RTX 3070 at 4K with Epic settings, and each playing cards averaged round 50 fps. That’s with out upscaling, too. Not dangerous.
Each card exhibited completely different points, although. Starting with the RX 6700 XT, it had a good common body price, nevertheless it confirmed very dangerous body pacing. As you possibly can see within the chart above, it will shoot back-and-forth between round 5 milliseconds and 30 milliseconds, making the sport really feel uneven no matter what the common body price says.
Compare that to the RTX 3070’s body pacing (above), which is far more constant. It’s essential to notice that Redfall is a recreation being promoted by Nvidia, and AMD has but to launch a driver with official assist. Nvidia has, and due to that, the sport runs a lot smoother on Nvidia GPUs.
Team Green isn’t out of the woods, although. The RTX 3070 carried its personal issues associated to VRAM. Redfall requires 6GB of VRAM in its minimal specs and 8GB in its really helpful specs, however even 8GB carries some severe issues.
With each the RTX 4090 and RX 6700 XT (24GB and 12GB, respectively), Redfall consumed between 9GB and 10GB of VRAM at 4K Epic settings relying on the scene. The RTX 3070, nevertheless, solely consumed round 6GB. I’ve reached out to Nvidia to see precisely why the utilization is decrease, and I’ll replace this text once I hear again.
The penalties of this method are clear, although. The recreation confirmed weird pop-in and artifacts with the RTX 3070. You can see an instance of that above. Early on within the recreation, you get this awesome-looking shotgun, however each time I swapped to it with the RTX 3070, it will take a few seconds for the mannequin to load in. Similarly, each time I aimed down a scope, there was a second or two the place it confirmed a really low-quality scope mannequin.
The worst issues come up when transitioning between zones. Redfall has an open world to discover, nevertheless it’s very clearly divided into completely different zones that the sport hundreds in as you’re shifting (I’ll clarify why it’s clear subsequent). With the RTX 3070 and solely 8GB of VRAM, the whole world would shortly revert again to low-quality variations for a number of seconds earlier than loading again in.
And, as you possibly can see above, typically the higher-quality fashions wouldn’t load in in any respect, resulting in a off-putting impact the place half the display appears blurry, even near the digital camera. To be clear, none of those points have been current with GPUs I examined with greater than 8GB of VRAM.
Traversal stutter
In addition to a few of the points above, Redfall additionally has traversal stutter, and it may be fairly dangerous. It’s essential to notice that Redfall obtained a patch simply earlier than the sport went dwell, and it solves some of the issues with traversal stutter, however there are nonetheless points.
If you’re unfamiliar, you would additionally name traversal stutter “loading stutter.” In a big recreation like Redfall, solely choose parts of the map are literally loaded at any given time. As you journey all through the world, different parts will disappear and new parts will probably be loaded in. When this occurs, there’s a stutter, making it simple to identify the place the loading factors are within the recreation.
A number of stutters right here and there aren’t a giant deal, however they’re constant in Redfall. You can run again=and-forth throughout a loading level and see a stutter each time you cross it. Sometimes it occurs when coming into and exiting buildings, and it lasts upwards of 15 seconds.
It appears Arkane solved a few of the traversal stutter points with the launch day patch. I didn’t encounter practically as many, however I nonetheless discovered some for the few hours the servers have been on-line earlier than the sport went dwell to all. I’m simply apprehensive that these issues will solely grow to be extra frequent later within the recreation, which is normally the case.
Unfortunately, upscaling doesn’t clear up the issue with traversal stutter. Redfall consists of Nvidia’s DLSS, AMD’s FSR 2.1, and Intel’s XeSS. For DLSS, there’s even Frame Generation if in case you have an RTX 40-series GPU.
I examined all three, and so they work. I’d most likely advocate XeSS for most individuals, although. FSR 2.1 offered the very best efficiency, but additionally the worst picture high quality with some nasty shimmering on lights. DLSS appears nice too, although the sharpening is a bit too aggressive for my style.
Regardless, none of them can take away traversal stutter. At the very least, they can assist playing cards just like the RTX 3070 and RX 6700 XT obtain a better common body price.
Open for no motive
Redfall didn’t want an open world, and if something, it really works towards what the sport is attempting to perform. That’s true on a technical stage as properly. The giant map means the sport struggles with managing VRAM and traversal stutter, neither of which it wanted to take care of.
There’s little question that Redfall is in a greater state than some PC releases we’ve seen this 12 months, at the very least among the many few GPUs I used to be in a position to take a look at. And for common body charges, it runs properly on a wide range of {hardware}. There are nonetheless clear issues, although, each for AMD and Nvidia, and I’m apprehensive about how the sport will run on GPUs with lower than 8GB of VRAM. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any readily available to check.
There’s additionally an always-online connection that was vulnerable to points throughout my testing — I’d usually should strive a number of occasions to load into the sport, even to play solo. In quick, be cautious if you wish to decide up Redfall on PC.
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