Multi-platform game releases have a tendency to aim for a performance target on a console, then leave the PC version of the game to the whims of whatever hardware you happen to be running. That means performance for PC gamers is something of a crapshoot — recent examples like The Last of Us and Jedi: Survivor show how that looks when it goes wrong. But what of Redfall, the much-anticipated multiplayer vampire shooter from Arkane Studios? Let’s take a deep dive into how it performs on PC.
PCWorld’s Adam Patrick Murray tried out Redfall on a whopping eight different graphics cards, ranging from super-affordable to “I guess I’m not paying rent this month” expensive. Here are the cards, four from Nvidia, three from AMD, and one from Intel, all tested on the same benchmark system.
- MSI GeForce RTX 4080 VENTUS 3X OC
- ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4070 OC
- EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Gaming
- Founders Edition Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
- Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XT
- Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6750 XT
- XFX Speedster QICK 210 Radeon RX 6500 XT
- Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition
The goal of this test isn’t necessarily to pit the cards against each other like…well, like a bunch of heavily-armed survivors shooting vampires in a sleepy Massachusetts town. No, it’s to see what settings you need to get to hit a 60fps target for smooth gameplay. That being said, it shouldn’t be surprising that the bigger, beefier cards can generally get more visual goodies in under that performance target.
Performance for the pre-release version of Redfall is a bit iffy. While it’s often smooth, any kind of motion in the highly detailed environments can cause framerate dips and jitters, to say nothing of when combat starts and lighting effects are going wild. Even the RTX 4080 struggles to maintain 60 frames per second in 4K with relatively high settings.
To see the ideal settings for the relevant graphics cards, use the chapter breaks in the video above to find the closest card to the one you’re using. While these cards from Asus, MSI, EVGA, Nvidia, Sapphire, XFX, and Intel may not be identical to the specific model you own, you can generally trust that graphics cards based on the same GPU (with various cooling and OC tweaks) will perform at about the same level, give or take five percent. Your CPU, RAM, and monitor resolution will add further variables, of course.
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Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer
Michael is a former graphic designer who's been building and tweaking desktop computers for longer than he cares to admit. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order.