After sharing our initial concerns about The Medium, we’ve decided to explore numerous environments so that we could find demanding areas that were not suffering from optimization issues. We also wanted to test the game’s retail/final version. As such, it’s time now to benchmark the game’s DLSS 2.0 and Ray Tracing effects.
For these Ray Tracing benchmarks, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3800Mhz and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 461.40 driver.
Bloober Team has used Ray Tracing in order to enhance the game’s Ambient Occlusion, Reflections and Transparent Reflections. The game currently offers two Ray Tracing Options: On and Ultra. For our benchmarks, we used the Ultra setting.
Now as we wrote in our previous article, there are various unoptimized scenes in which the framerate can take a big hit. These scenes are present in both single and dual reality scenes. Not only that, but you can find unoptimized scenes with and without Ray Tracing. For a non-RT example, you can read our previous article. Below you can also find an example in which the game’s RT effects can bring the RTX3080 to its knees. Yeap, this is The Medium running at 1440p/High/Ray Tracing Ultra WITH DLSS Quality at 16fps. Ouch.
For our benchmarks, we used the dual-reality sequence at the beginning of Dayroom. This sequence reflects the in-game performance, and does not suffer from any unoptimized scenes.
DLSS works like a charm in The Medium. This is one of the best implementations of DLSS, and we highly recommend using it. Below you can find some comparison screenshots between DLSS and native 1440p. Seriously, we cannot praise enough DLSS as it looks almost identical to the native resolution (and in some cases better. For instance, Marianne’s hair is less aliased with DLSS).
On the other hand, Ray Tracing does not make a huge difference in this game. Below you can find some comparison screenshots between the rasterized and the ray-traced version of The Medium. And while there are some minor visual differences, we are not sure whether these minor graphical improvements justify the enormous performance hit.
Without DLSS 2.0, our RTX3080 was able to offer a constant 60fps experience at only 1080p/High settings (obviously without Ray Tracing). At 1440p/High, we noticed some drops to mid-50s, though we can say that the game can feel somehow smooth due to its slow-paced nature. With DLSS 2.0, our RTX3080 was able to offer constant 60fps at both 1080p and 1440p.
When it comes to Ray Tracing, in native resolutions, the RTX3080 struggles to run the game. At 1080p/High/Ray Tracing Ultra, we were getting a minimum of 47fps and an average of 55fps. In order to get a constant 60fps gaming experience, we had to enable DLSS. As for 1440p, we were getting drops below 60fps, even with DLSS Performance Mode.
In conclusion, the Ray Tracing effects in The Medium bring a big performance hit. And, to be honest, we really don’t believe that these slightly improved visuals are worth the enormous performance hit. On the other hand, DLSS is absolutely incredible in this game, and we strongly suggest enabling it. In our opinion, DLSS without Ray Tracing is the best way via which you can experience The Medium.
Stay tuned for our PC Performance Analysis, in which we’ll be benchmarking various GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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RT adds heavily on the immersive side, while this is an immersive title. Did you play it or just review it?
I don’t think RT would add much to this game because of the fixed camera angles and low interactivity. Maybe in a game like Battlefield V where you have explosions and stuff but so far I can’t see it making an improvement.
Nothing screams immersion like having your screen split in two…and visually there’s barely difference in the comparisons i saw with raytracing.
and those fixed camera angles… oh dear.
Soo poor fps to begin with and then you are able to enable slideshow mode with raytracing on top of the already poor fps – No thx as low fps is immersion breaking.
I’m getting between 60-90 fps in most scenes with a 1080ti at 1440p max settings. It drops to 30-40 fps in parts where the game is rendered on two screens. Its not very noticeable though because of the fixed camera angles and slow paced nature. I also have G-sync on so that’s probably making it better for me.
Otherwise very cool atmosphere and story so far.
Heard its quite ok with dx11 but sux with dx12, running dx11?
Dx11. I think that’s by default. I can’t find an option or .exe to switch to Dx12.
Its just hearsay so don’t take my word for it.
Add -DX12 in the command line when running the game’s executable.
DX11 no RT (obviously) is silky smooth at 4k. DX12 and RT I get stutters and dropped to 30 fps, which was a close up of my character just looking at the screen out a window. This is with a 3090.
Indeed, DX11 is working much better, DX12 was hitching all over the place.
Very weird. HDR is messed up as well. I need to get into it more, but right off the bat I thought I was playing Syberia.
Seems like its no proper about the dx12 implementation then
What are your settings?
Maxed out, DLSS high.
wooo a 3090, you msut have friends in high places.
While I do know people in high places, they are def not friends and had no bearing on getting a card and CPU. 🙂
I sat on a Twitch stream watching stock for over a month to get my gpu/cpu. Snagged both before end of last year. Seeing the still lack of stock makes me feel bad for those stuck waiting. Makes me really not regret purchase.
Good luck to everyone!
you watched twitch for a month, now I feel sorry for you. Was cyberpunk 2077 worth it? I’ve already finished it at 1080p 60 fps on my humble RTX 2060.
Haha. I use the term “watch” loosely. Streamed a single channel on my phone. The people in chat were actually helpful.
Flame away folks. I enjoyed Cyber for what it was. Overall esthetic was nice, ray tracing looked great.
I’m more enjoying playing my older games with maxed settings at higher framerates/ resolutions. RDR2 is some good stuff.
No regrets with the new build. Already had the funds and seeing the current state and prices of hardware…
yeah, I really liked cyberpunk, it was quite enjoyable. I grew accustomed to the driving controls and it was such a joy to drive through night city at night in the rain.
These days I’m playing nioh 2 and it’s hell, but it makes me so salty to be murdered by fluffy terror muppets that I come back to it again and again and again.
I didn’t see any major bugs in cyberpunk, unlike that Avengers game cr4p that made my computer restart near the end of some levels. And only once did I see an NPC t-posing. But that sh¡t with the police teleporting behind you and one-shot killing you, my word.
I steered faaar away from Avengers..
Nioh 2 I could not get into. Nioh 1 and Sekiro were fun. Though never finished either or any “soul like”.
CP was fun and gets more hate than it should, mainy derived from the console versions. You can tell stuff was left out. Tops of building are empty and cause gfx glitches when viewing the city, very few chests on top of buildings. The driving never bothered me, I never expected it to be realistic. People complained about GTA IV driving as well. I had a couple bugs in CP. Only major one was getting into a car, load screen came up, car was a mile above the city. Reloading loaded the same scene. I finished it before Any major patches. I’ll give it another go to get the secret ending once the DLC launches.
Snowrunner has me hooked again. Not sure why I stopped playing it. Challenging sandbox of fun.
I’m now a dirty miner. Enough ,you got a 3090 why aren’t you mining, comments made me do it. Lol
I also have my arcade cab with a gtx 1080 mining as well.
NFT is next. 2021 year of crypto!
I’ll check snowrunner… aaaand I did. I don’t think that’s my kind of game? It looks like one of those truck driving shows on History Channel.
I actually finished The Avengers, I’m that stubborn.
I had enough fun doing side quests in Cyberpunk, I didn’t feel the need to check the rooftops.
It’s around 37 C over here, around 100 Fahrenheit I guess? I doubt I could mine crypto without setting the neighborhood on fire. I could use some crypto, care to donate some?
I’m a sucker for trucking and have played most trucking games.
Snowrunner has you trying to pull big objects/trailers out of mud and snow. I like messing with the AWD, differentials, and winches. You use that winch a good 50% of the time to unstuck yourself and things. Relaxing slow paced game. Until you dump your load on the side of a mountain when you mis-navigate a turn.
Scania and 18 wheels of extreme trucker roads 1 and 2 are good fun too. Scania is more dangerous road scenarios to clear, 18 wheels has you hauling stuff on the most dangerous roads in the world.
I’ve considered Avengers just for local co-op, but read its a brutal grind. Hmmm
I’ll send you 1 Raven coin. 🙂 Don’t spend it all in one place.
With the difficulty of Etherium going up I may not even be able to mine 1 coin in time. Not really running 24/7. My 1080 is, but has 1/3 of the 3090 power.
I’m lucky it’s cool right now, 67f. Soon it will hit 90 – 100, so I’ll have to slow down the mining to keep temps decent.
You know what, I wish I could live in Alaska, I’m already used to earthquakes anyways. I’d rather freeze to death than stand the sticky miserable heat from the tropics.
Are you middle aged? Towing stuff with a truck sounds like something a 40 year old would enjoy XD
Not far off, but you did admit to finishing Avengers. Lol
Snowrunner is more than towing trucks. I find it more interesting and entertaining than more traditional puzzle games like The Witness. That just bored me.
I’ve sunk a ton of hours into Noita. That’s an amazing game and I’m not a fan of rogues. Crazy difficult.
What else are you playing at the moment?
now i see why its called the medium…
the half-assed more like.
2666 is just the stock speed, when the XMP is enabled in the mobo bios the 9900K will take advantage of higher ram speeds
Well, I guess I learned something. I was told I couldn’t upgrade my ram past 2666.
You were told but still you came here saying you can’t go higher than 2666…amd you were already TOLD. Are you a fool or a drunk dude?
I was told I couldn’t. Sorry it autocorrected to could.
this game is a joke, i am playing it right now on my 2070s and guys i have see 17 fps in one dual side world point, 17! without RT and with dlss active (1080p highest).
I think that this is one of the worst optimization (or non optimization) i ever see in my entire life. The concept of 2 world rendered togheter is stupid AF, cause it even is not smart at all, sections are bad, you just see a splitscreen with no sense, one world with a switch to 2 will be much better and probably even smarter in terms of gameplay.
But guys, 17 fps on a 2070s. Basically who have a 1060-1660-rx580-rx590 can just hope to hit 10 fps on 720p in the very same place to lowest settings… this is not playable at all.
The very last scene on the lake was 19 – 25 fps for me.
So John, where is thr 2080ti bench?
Without heavy AAA games like this nvidia would be up the creek with their nonsense, I think they heavily underwrite these sorts of gpu crushing games on the slay tbh. RT is one huge example of that, base a whole new generation of more and more expensive graphics cards over a perf killing tech that’s years away from being viable for the average gaming rig, with negligable benefit, brilliant marketing/scamming. Remember the juice Monsanto family and their roundup scam? So no it’s not far fetched, evil juice at it again. Sacklers and opiods?
I’ve seen some interesting examples of RT recently but I see no reason to upgrade from the 10 series atm. DLSS would be nice, but this game still runs fine without it. I think an upgrade of +30% performance is appropriate, but given the lack of availability and price gouging for the 30 series, I don’t see myself upgrading until maybe the 30 ti models or the 40 series.
Hitman 3 could use real time reflections though.
nvidia diversified, these days they’re making CPUs and GPUs for cars, phones, bitcoin mining and vaccine passports. They don’t need gamers anymore. Expect more of nvidia’s sh¡t in the future.
Let it be known the Sackers are Jews lest we forget.
This game has weird graphical options. In the graphic options there are low, medium, high and custom. If you choose low, medium or high it will override the custom graphic options you set. You have to choose custom. But I found out that choosing low and setting RT to on provides a balance of image quality and performance on my 3060 Ti at 4K. There are spots that the FPS will drop because there is a CPU bottleneck in some areas of the game. Getting ~36 FPS when the GPU usage is around 50% just shows bad optimization. I am using a Ryzen 3600.
I don’t think changing graphical options do anything. I was concerned because my GPU fan made a sound like an airplane taking off so I checked the graphical options and I was playing at 3K something, I changed it to 1080 and it didn’t change sh¡t. Changed from 30 to 60 back to 30 to unlimited fps and I didn’t see a difference in performance, temps, or fan speed either.
Pirated it. Wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible, finished it in one day. 50-60 fps 1080p all bells and whistles on. RTX on. GPU temps 64-85C. 4-5 hours long ¿?
Game looks like a REMASTERED PS3 game with lots, I mean LOTS, of particle effects.
Game only looks “next-gen” good at cutscenes with EXTREME face close ups, but the framerate drops. Last scene where the main character shoots herself was 19-27 fps, but could see the fancy-schmancy effects like subsurface scattering, fullscreen reflections, refractions, etc, etc though.
Plays like Resident Evil 1 on brakes.
Main character is a blocky squared-shoulder flat-assed big-nosed brown b¡tch with a repelling personality.
The action is S. L. O. W.
Most of the time you can’t tell what’s happening on screen because the main character is SO FAR from the camera and hidden behind geometry, fog and particles.
Game camera is so, I mean, SO, disorienting. Action happens in ROOMS, like an old Gameboy Zelda game, and the FIXED CAMERA changes angles AT EACH ROOM.
The only times I died was because I changed rooms, got dissoriented and the demon caught me. Once the demon catches you you have to wait 2-3 minutes until it finishes saying its piece for it to catch you once again because you can’t tell where you have to go since the camera is like 40 meters behind you and the camera angle changes from one room to another.
The puzzles are easy.
The main character is a stronk independent wahmen who takes no sht from no demon and talks to herself in “smart” quips like “Oooh mister demon” “Oooh I hope the solution to this millennial-level difficulty puzzle is next to my left foot”
Game is actually white-shaming jewish propaganda funded by the EU and made by today’s nazis, aka the Poles, as a mea culpa. There are star of David necklaces abandoned in burnt down houses, nationalist fake game antagonist No.1 abuses the actual main game antagonist, you read the diary of an holocaust survivor, there are abandoned shoes, old teddy bears, dolls, etc, etc, until the very end when turns out it was a bat-winged demon responsible for the pogrom all along.
I feel sorry for those of you who actually bought this half-ass3d piece of propaganda.