Deep Silver released last week the latest part of the Saints Row series (which is also a reboot of the franchise), Saints Row. Powered by Volition’s in-house engine, it’s time now to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.
For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3800Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti and RTX 3080. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 516.94 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 22.8.2 drivers.
Volition has added numerous graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Shadows, Water, Effects, Global Illumination and more. The game also comes with a Field of View slider, and supports Ray Tracing Ambient Occlusion. However, Saints Row does not currently feature any AI upscaling technique. According to a slide from AMD, though, a future patch will add support for AMD FSR 2.0.
Saints Row does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. As such, and for our tests, we used the desert area right after the game’s prologue mission. That area appeared to be one of the most taxing areas we could find, so consider the following benchmarks as stress tests. We also lowered our resolution to 800×600 for our CPU benchmarks (so that we could avoid any possible GPU bottlenecks).
In order to find out how the game scales on multiple CPU threads, we simulated a dual-core, a quad-core and a hexa-core CPU. And, surprisingly enough, the game does not require a high-end CPU in order to be enjoyed at high framerates. Even our simulated dual-core system (without Hyper-Threading) was able to provide more than 90fps on High settings.
Now while Saints Row is light on its CPU requirements, it’s really heavy on its GPU requirements. For gaming at 1080p/Ultra settings, our top three GPUs were able to provide a constant 60fps experience.
At 1440p/Ultra, our NVIDIA GeForce RTX2080Ti was unable to offer a constant 60fps experience. As for 4K/Ultra, there wasn’t any GPU that could come close to a 60fps experience. And that’s without even using the game’s Ray Tracing effects.
Thankfully, players can significantly improve performance by adjusting the game’s graphics settings. By dropping our settings to High, we were able to get to a 50fps experience on our RTX3080 at 4K. And, by lowering our settings to Medium, we were able to get a constant 60fps experience at that resolution.
Now before continuing, we should mention some tech issues we’ve experienced. For starters, the game currently suffers from numerous unoptimized scenes. Take for instance the following screenshot. This scene, even at 800×600 (and that’s with High settings, not even Ultra) was stressing our NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. Truth be told, we were getting 158fps but that’s at 800×600 and High settings. We also experienced some annoying flickering issues, and we witnessed some flickering shadows on the ground. Speaking of shadows, there are MAJOR pop-in shadow issues, even on Ultra settings. Ultra Shadows have also a huge performance hit, so we suggest lowering them to High.
As said, Saints Row supports Ray Tracing Ambient Occlusion. And, to our surprise, these Ray Tracing effects are not that heavy. Not only that, but they can significantly improve the game’s graphics. Below you can find some comparison screenshots between the ray-traced version (left) and the rasterized version (right). The final comparison, in particular, showcases how RT AO can significantly improve the game’s visuals.
What’s also fascinating here is the impressive performance of the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT when enabling these RT effects. Contrary to what happens in other games, Saints Row’s RT AO appears to run slightly faster on AMD’s 6900XT than on NVIDIA’s RTX3080. This may be the first time we witness something like that.
Graphics-wise, Saints Row feels like a mixed bag. On one hand, the game has some amazing lighting and global illumination effects. Not only that, but there are numerous destructible objects (FINALLY). The game also compiles shaders before starting a mission, which means that it does not suffer from any stuttering issues. And, thankfully, its Ray Tracing effects are not that demanding, so we highly recommend enabling them. However, Saints Row has major and laughable physics bugs (for example, you can literally destroy a truck with a… bike), the character models are dated, and its environments feel lifeless.
All in all, Saints Row is in an average state right now. The game suffers from some unoptimized scenes, and Volition will have to fix a lot of things via some post-launch updates. The mouse controls also felt weird, so I don’t really know what’s going on with the K&M controls. And while the game does not require a high-end CPU, its visuals do not justify its high GPU requirements!
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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Yepp, didn’t even bother to pirate this crap. Just ignored it like many PC gamers.
Were you able to hook the RTSS overlay when using Vulkan api?
i cant believe how bad this game is, i thought of giving it a shot and then i saw synthetic man’s review, the combat sucks the dialogue sucks the graphics suck, its buggy, driving sucks, mission suck, open world is empty and the side mission suck. This game is so bad that they think their discord and reddit moderators in the credits for banning criticism and the guy they think said “f people who like saints row 1 and 2” this is literally a skinsuit, meaning woke leftists who dont like this franchise took it over and wore it like a skinsuit. If you abort some missions a message pops up saying that many women cant choose to abort so think about that. This is what that Bernestein character who is in charge of writing dialogues and narrative in missions wrote. Just wow. Everyone is like “this game sucks” yes why do all WOKE games suck? What is the common denominator? Like saying having a bunch of woke talentless hacks taking over something and ruining it or something. What all those Mohameds have in common? To use another phrase….come on put one and two together.
“If you abort some missions a message pops up saying that many women cant choose to abort so think about that.”
Oh god how terrible, especially for the straight male gaimurz, how will they deal with this? Heavy counselling advised!
i cant believe people like you exist and you got likes for this idiocy no less, i bet you shove things up your butt.
That’s because they are as brain dead as he is.
Its why they keep making crappy woke games, movies, tv shows etc, for people like him that are in abundance on popular social media platforms like Twatter and Reddit. Instead of making new franchises catered to the wokesters they hijack something thats already popular and then blame the original fans for not liking it.
ever notice how modern games are too colorful to light hearted with lots of needless swearing and tons of post ironic millennial humor and breaking the fourth wall constantly? Thats because the people who make games now are soyboys, gays, women and all of them are middle upper class leftists in big rich cities. Notice how the actors in movies now look like round faced children, like they never grew up and all their reactions are so fake meanwhile in old movies everyone looked old tired and serious like clint eastwood. These people dont have any life experiancies they are domesticated soy eaters who are doing exactly what the establishment tells them and repeat the lines they are given, this is why everything is so stale and samey, no one pushes any boundries or has anything interesting to say, they just do what they are told.
I have noticed that too…its like graphics are soulless, animations stiff, artstyle mostly non existent , writing laughable ….this is not limited to video games I’m afraid !
watch the new matrix movie, i am not telling you to watch it because its good, its not, i am telling you to watch it because it describes how modern entairtinament is made by focus groups in corporations that discuss what is it that make this thing good and gets them more audience, its a “help me” message from the person who made it. Western art is dead.
Being railed by all those black bulls must have you wheel chair bound.
Beacuse most woke writers are just wannabe hacks, they copy’paste with a gender/rac3 swap instead of making own creative work. Thats why it sucks… seen it, done it but a with a different genital/skill color
If they instead did something original perhaps it wouldnt just been seen as trash tier but who am i kidding – It seems to be beyond them!
Beacuse most woke writers are just wannabe hacks, they copy’paste with a gender/rac3 swap instead of making own creative work. Thats why it sucks… seen it, done it but a with a different genital/skill color
If they instead did something original perhaps it wouldnt just been seen as trash tier but who am i kidding – It seems to be beyond them!
My question why did they hire woke writers to do thier stuff? I mean why devs wanted to be thier games ‘a woke’? because it wasn’t anything like this before, now what made devs change thier minds?
My guess… their cheap compared to creative hires and also brings “free” marketing. All the praises on the madhouse of twitter and the far left part of th emedia that see such things as a pro rather than reviewing the acutual product and base their scores on that – Combined with the rackus it causes makes their product almost freely gossiped about.
Whenever it helps in the long run… i doubt it, it’s not without reason go w go broke is a meme
Yeah that could be the case I agree.
But again are these devs so blind that they didn’t see the reaction/potential pre-views, weighted feedback, valueable response to thier trailers and gameplays way long before the release of the product? I remember Saint Row trailer in 2021 and it wasn’t so special or something make you excited and this reaction could be seen or devs can calculated the feedback and yet they went with it without making any big improvement (as we can see the reviews).
Some devs are smart and they always check the response and feedback of thier games based on early trailers or gameplay, like Thief (2014) which dropped XP system (although it was not the best Theif game but an average), Ubisoft dropped PoP remake and ID software updated Doom:E UI based on customers feedback.
Yeah many devs listen to feedback but suspect many of the issues like with the publishers who pushes things on the devs (not many independent devs can pull of the budget needed for most of todays aaa’s) – Many of the publishers “spineless” suit’s don’t dare to move against flow and promote something different and if they did take the risk of loosing their possition if it backfires so they do what everyone else is doing – By just looking at most aaa titles of today… how many are really new, creative and contain what the customers really want? Most are bland, microtransaction fuled money grab’s basically – I suspect something simular here, they do what everyone else is doing and its fuled by the same media reviews that sees things as w as a pro so they add that to the checklist
I’ll forever believe you either have the most amazing 980 Ti in existence or the crappiest Vega 64 in existence.
V64 is almost always consistently faster than a 1080 and yet most of the your benchmarks have the V64 slower than a 980 Ti, which should ALWAYS be impossible.
:sigh:
Should be especially true for Vulkan, where Maxwell struggles the most.
However, AMD’s official Vulkan driver also isn’t the best out there; that’s why Valve is using their mainly self-developed AMD Vulkan driver called RADV on the Steam Deck.
STFU, i have old gaming laptop laying around with GTX980m gpu which i still use a lot for playing less demanding games. Doom and Doom eternal runs great on this GPU & vulkan is also working fine with emulators on this old GPU.
Just a few days ago Hardware Unboxed have compared Vega64 vs GTX1080 in modern games. Results vary depending on the game, so it’s hard to conclude anything. It’s fair to say both GPUs offers similar performance.
But GTX1080 has big advantage, much lower TDP (GTX1080 200Watt vs Vega64 300Watt). It gives you much lower temps, and bigger OC potential. My GTX1080 runs 2060MHz (10.5 TF) out of the box, and with such big OC my results arnt far away from stock 1080ti (11TF), while remaining silent and cool. I had 1080ti in the past, it was 250W GPU and temps inside my PC case and CPU were much higher, so I cant imagine something like 300Watts (and more if you want to OC Vega64).
A title that anyone using the EGS deserves…
Epic, make piracy great again.
after seeing synthetik’s man review i wouldnt even pirate it. Also they will double down and be bailed out by esg like it happen to tale tales.
Thang is in order to make a good game, you need to be connected to reality. You need talent. You need to know how many things work. From how a weapon sounds, to how the body moves so you can make good animations, to how real-life actually looks so you can make good graphics,. You also need to be a normal human being. Instead of a deranged sick woke. Total Overdose is better than this trash lmfao ?
Why is virtually every article on this site a performance analysis or info on a mod for some woke piece of crap that the average person here isn’t even going to bother pirating?
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Did you dig that moldy one up on Know Your Meme? Run along now, those Skyrim mod articles aren’t going to write themselves.
I would rather have the ebola.
Wow, Amd sponsored Title runs better on nvidia hardware. A GTX980Ti beats Vegas 64 which is insane.
Ofcorse, they dont want their old to run well so they pay to gimp it… to promote the new!
Makes sense. People only thinks that nvidia gimp their gpus. Not only nvidia gimp their gpus but also amd gimp their gpus to look newer one better.
There’s a great game released on Friday but DSO decided to review this flop instead…
This takes the crown for my worst game of the year.
since people still post here empress says this is the best saints row game and all the high rather sony games are gay including spiderman…because you play as a guy. Just lol.
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Saints row isnt a finished game let alone a good one.
i will buy this game when there is BIG discount on steam …. ^^