NACON has just released the new Souls-like game from Spiders, Steelrising. Powered by Spiders’ in-house engine, the Silk 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.
Steelrising comes with a respectable amount of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Models, Foliage, Shadows, Particles and more. The game is also using Ray Tracing in order to enhance its reflections. Unfortunately, though, the game does not have a lot of reflected surfaces (at least at the beginning). Thus, most of you won’t see any visual improvements (which also explains the minimal performance hit of these Ray Tracing effects). Furthermore, Steelrising supports NVIDIA’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR 1.0 AI upscaling techs.
Since the game uses FSR 1.0 and not FSR 2.0, we don’t really recommend it (unless there is nothing you can do in order to improve overall performance). On the other hand, NVIDIA DLSS does an excellent job at matching native resolution. Below you can find some comparison screenshots between native 4K (left) and NVIDIA DLSS Quality (right). Seriously, these screenshots look identical. Therefore, and since DLSS offers a noticeable performance boost, we highly recommend enabling it. Truth be told the performance increase is not close to what we’ve seen in other games. Still, this can be considered a free performance boost for all RTX GPU owners.
Steelrising does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. Thus, and for both our CPU and GPU benchmarks, we used the following scene. This scene appeared to be one of the most demanding areas of the game. Therefore, consider these as stress benchmarks as other areas may run noticeably faster.
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. Without Hyper-Threading, our simulated dual-core system was unable to offer a playable experience due to severe stutters. However, and once we enabled Hyper-Threading, we were able to get a constant 60fps experience at 800×600 on Ultra Settings with NVIDIA DLSS. Now the reason we dropped so low our resolution and used NVIDIA DLSS is because Steelrising is a GPU-bound title. Without DLSS, we were GPU limited at 800×600, even when using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080.
At 1080p/Ultra/No Ray Tracing, there wasn’t any GPU that could offer a constant 60fps experience. Yes, both our NVIDIA RTX3080 and AMD Radeon RX 6900XT had drops below 60fps. Again, our benchmark scene is a worst-case scenario. Regardless of that, though, it’s pretty clear that the game currently has optimization issues. Seriously, there is nothing on screen justifying these ridiculously high GPU requirements. And, as we’ve already reported, the game’s Ultra Textures require more than 13GB at 1080p.
At 1440p/Ultra/No Ray Tracing, there wasn’t any GPU that could offer an enjoyable experience. After all, both the RTX3080 and the RX 6900XT had drops below mid-40fps. And as for 4K… yeah, good luck with that without using DLSS.
To its credit, the game is at least scalable. By dropping our settings to High, we saw a 69-88% performance increase. Then, by dropping to Medium settings, we got an additional 14% boost. However, the only way we could get a constant 60fps experience at native 4K was by dropping our settings to Low.
All in all, Steelrising has major optimization issues. Although the game does not require a high-end CPU, it certainly requires a powerful GPU, even for gaming at 1080p. And, as we’ve already said, there is nothing on screen to justify these high GPU requirements. Yes, Spiders is a small team so we can’t expect miracles. However, the team should simply ditch the Silk Engine if it’s unable to properly optimize it!
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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Oh fvck I forgot to download this cr4p. Gonna do it later after work.
This is AC3 level of graphics from 2012 and you need RTX 3080 to get 25FPS in 4K.
They coded that thing in broken Java Script or what ?
No, just the broken DX12 API, as usual…
Even if I don’t really like DX12, it isn’t the API fault, there are games that are greatly optimized on DX12 such as Horizon Zero Dawn, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider or RE: Village, but it’s easier to mess up with DX12 than on DX11 as a lot of games are a disaster in it, such as Elden Ring or this one.
Elden Ring is a disaster because it’s developed by from software and PC gamers keep buying their games, thus reinforcing that it’s ok. They finally got to 60 FPS being standard and I will never change at 60 again, this is 2022. That’s why I love deck 13 because they do a way better job at the genre than from software does. But you wouldn’t know or admit that because everyone thinks from software is god. But it’s their money, let them waste it. In just despise the message that these gamers keep sending to these companies. All because of FOMO!..
I even decided to try Sekiro, 60fps locked? Uninstalled. Way too many other games to play, to waste my time there. All I have to say is, thank the heavens for the high seas. Because if I had purchased Sekiro or Elden Ring. I would probably be one of the losers sending death threats.
my 4 year old 600-800 dollar pc ran elden ring just fine, and sekiro had absolutely no issues soooo idk about any performance issues but the game is definitely worth playing because there is a lot more than just performance. Like the combat and gameplay which is extraordinary and no one really competes with that. But bloodbourne best fromsoft game.
Did you read and understand what we are talking about bro? Good that your 600-800 dollar PC can run the game but we are talking about something else.
Absolute BS, Elden Ring doesn’t run “fine”, every single person I have spoken to always tells me about the technical issues this game has, freezing and other stuff, even decent rigs have a hard time locking this to 60 fps on high/ultra settings while not looking that impressive to begin with (it doesn’t look bad, but shouldn’t demand as much as it does when you have games like Control, RE: Village or Horizon: Zero Dawn that run way better).There are no excuses for this sad performance no matter how great the game is, which it’s great, but programmed by idiots.
Also “sekiro had absolutely no issues”? Bro you are just completely oblivious technical issues in games, all Fromsoft games suffer from sudden fps drops and stutter, install MSI Afterburner, let it show the frametime graph and screenshot it here so we all can see how spikey is in your end and everyone else. You’d be proving my point, it is not subjective, it can be proven and happens regardless of your rig, their engine is garbage, the issues are there, but some people simply don’t care like you, so in your case, it doesn’t exist because you can’t notice it or you care so little is all the same, doesn’t mean isn’t there.
There are mods to unlock fps for most of these games now, but still I get what you mean, also Dark Souls 3, Sekiro and Elden Ring suffer from odd fps drops and stutter, even to this date, no fixes at all on that regard, Fromsoftware can’t optimize for sh*t. People will buy their games anyway and they won’t care.
It really looks better than AC3, come on.
And AC3 was state of the art for 2012.
Spiders are your usual AA development studio.
Vysnc is also broken. Turn that damn thing off. The menu will run at your monitors refresh rate but one you got in game vysnc locks the damn thing to 60 FPS or in t case 30.
This is embarassing, i tested the game on my 2070 super laptop 115w, i can do 1080p 60 at almost max settings only with dlss (and is a miracle considering that a 3080 have problems too, basically one of the best current gen gpu’s), never happened before except for hard games with rt suite for shadows and reflection or sometimes even global illumination.
Graphics is mediocre at most, not bad, but mediocre, they just can push a game in the market in this state, embarassing.
This game performs WORSE than cp2077 at 1080p WITH DLSS!!!!! and looks mediocre. Wth are spiders doing.
Its same trash engine they used for that boring crap game called Greedfall that also worked like sh*t on top hardware. They always made sh*t and unoptimized games. Maybe they should hire apes i bet they could figure out how to optimize their games finally after 10 years.
See, these guys needs to switch engine. Such a crap shoots they produce. If anyone needs to switch engine is spiders.
They either need to seriously fix their crap engine or just use a new one all together.