Prime Matter released System Shock Remake last month. And yes, I know we are late. But hey, better late than never, right? Powered by Unreal Engine 4, it’s time to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.
For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 536.23 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 23.5.2 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
Nightdive Studios has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC players can adjust the quality of Textures, Fog, Post-Process, Ambient Occlusion, Shaders, Shadows, Effects and Foliage. The game also supports NVIDIA’s DLSS 2 AI-upscaling tech.
System Shock Remake does not require a high-end CPU in order to be enjoyed. While testing the game, we saw it using mostly four CPU threads. Without SMT, our simulated dual-core system was unable to provide a smooth gaming experience due to severe stuttering issues. When we enabled SMT, we were able to get a constant 150fps experience at 1080p/Max Settings.
All of our GPUs were able to provide a smooth gaming experience at 1080p/Max Settings. Yes, even the AMD RX580 was able to push constant 60fps. This basically means that the game will run on a huge range of PC configurations, something that will please a lot of players.
At 1440p/Max Settings, most of our GPUs were able to provide framerates over 100fps. Our AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 also came close to a 60fps experience (though there were drops to the 50s in some scenes). And as for native 4K/Max settings, our RTX3080, RTX 4090, RX 6900XT and RX 7900XTX had no trouble at all running it.
Graphics-wise, System Shock Remake shares the same art style as the original game. At times, it can also look great, especially due to its advanced lighting system. However, while its environments look great, its enemies look a bit janky. Their 3D models are not THAT detailed, and their animations and hit reactions are mediocre.
All in all, System Shock Remake performs incredibly well on the PC. The game can run with over 60fps on a lot of graphics cards, and it does not require a high-end CPU for gaming at high framerates. The game has a few traversal stutters, however, I’m certain that most of you won’t even notice them. And, while System Shock Remake is not pushing the best graphics that the PC platform is capable of, it does have an amazing art style, and it runs smoothly on a wide range of PC configurations!
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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John, it would have been informative if you had mentioned that one of the reasons why this UE4 title performs as well as it does is because it uses the DX11 renderer, not DX12.
The game is, as always, faster in DX12, like all UE4 games. And you can play in DX12 just fine.
Ehh it’s kind of a mixed bag. I tried switching in between DX11 and 12 in the demo, and overall the performance seemed a bit lower in DX12 while it stuttered more, but there were some spots where I think DX12 ran slightly better. I’m using an nvidia GPU though so maybe it’s better on AMD GPUs in scenarios where the game’s less GPU bound.
my potat pc from 2016 can handle the game on mid without stuttering both in DX11 and 12, but only after I off the CFG in windows exploit protection for the games .exe. It´s something I found out years ago and it works with every UE4 game. I rly don´t know why tho
Can you elaborate on what this is?
Windows search bar down left. Type exploit protection and open. Then on the top switch to Program Settings, [+] add program to customize. Choose exact path and look for the systemshock.exe. Pick that.
Scroll down to “Control flow guard (CFG). Override system settings, Off. Then apply.
done
try it out.
You can always delete this again if youre unsure. Just don´t!! turn the CFG Off in System settings or some programs won´t work.
GL
Oh yeah, I remember this workaround now. It’s something that’s supposed to mitigate stuttering in almost any game that has this problem, not just UE4 games. Anyway, I tried it for the demo and ran it under DX12, but sadly there were still a few spots of stutter. But that could be due to me keeping my browser with several tabs open in the background this time.
It works with any DX12 title, not just UE4.
UE4 can he a bit iffy until PSO stabilizes. As for DX12 vs DX11, DX12 is vastly faster in CPU bound scenarios, while they’re on par, with margin of error between them in GPU bound scenarios.
To be noted: game is less CPU bound when played in DirectX12.
As all UE4 games, the DX12 PSO shader stutter goes away after a few minutes.
The game can also use UE 4.27’s TSR instead of TAA.
Nvidia GPUs, Maxwell and up, can use the FSR2/XeSS mod to get temporal upscaling. Or just TSR.
Unfortunate game doesn’t support FSR2 officially.
TSR is good enough until they add support.
Wish there was a universal FSR to DLSS and DLSS to FSR tool.
Shïttiest game I’ve ever seen.
Sh?it is you.
Probably, yeah. But I’m not selling myself, I can be shït everyday of the year, cause that’s nobody’s business. This shïtty game, tho.
Very good answer man.
Well thank you, kind sir.
why?
Way too generic, be it the story, the gameplay or even the graphics. Everything is bland on this project, imho. I don’t know the original, tho. Maybe I’m talking shït here, if it is faithful to the original.
at least in terms of performance/visuals i agree . I can’t bother playing because it looks and performs so bad So i don’t know about gameplay.
Looks great plays great. It shows that some time ago the new how to make games. It doesnt hold you hand, you have to use your brain, difficult for some of you in here, go play ubishit games.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Get a load of this morön assuming everyone is as dümb as him.
Looks great plays great. It shows that some time ago the new how to make games. It doesnt hold you hand, you have to use your brain, difficult for some of you in here, go play ubishit games.
The game is good but i don’t understand why they went with the pixelated look, the original game already exist.
Seriously john,game looks like crap and extremely dated. It’s performance and visuals compared to games like days gone,doom eternal,RE remake is very low. just more than 60fps at 4k on 3080 or 4090 is not a sign it’s runs incredibly well on PC. this game just looks too old and dated. You really need to change your wrong point of view and use of words that describe the quality of game as you are supposed to give us FACTs on an analysis for god’s sake. This game is one of the worst looking games technically, aside from the art style, which is not great either . your much older pc performance analysis were much better and more realistic. It seems you forgot the meaning of optimization which is getting MORE with LESS resources,didn’t you?
its an indie game that was supposed to come out years ago.
Bro, it doesn’t change the facts. it is dated and crappy looking ,specially considering it’s performance,no matter who made it or when.John exaggereates too much, performs incredibly well?! It is not the first time i see unrralistic praises about crappy running games on his analysis.if this is incrrdible so what about games like doom eternal,days gone…
It’s a modern interpretation of an OLD game. The point was not to make a game that has fidelity on the level of the games you mentioned. The point was to create a relatively accurate rendition of the old game in a new graphics engine. And with that goal, they did an excellent job. It’s a modern rendition of an old game.
The artsyle is low fidelity,it looks bad deliberately, so it must run way better.i know their art style is a choice but it doesn’t justify low performance at all.
It’s basically using textures with a pixelated look. But it’s still a modern engine using modern techniques. The lighting and shading being used are all very much current. Just because it has pixelated textures doesn’t mean you should expect it to hit 300fps when running on a toaster. It’s modern tech with an old style. Considering that it runs quite well on a range of systems.
It looks like crap whatever shading,lightning it uses. Don’t justify the crap. Just adding new tech running looking like crap is not gonna make it high quality nice performing game. i have seen enough games to know it. There is alot of blind prejudice around this game. BTW it’s pixelated artstyle sucks but that’s pesonal opinion .
Maybe it’s just your opinion that’s crap?
maybe it’s morons like you who believe crap is good. when you have nothing realistic about the subject ,performace, to say, you better shut your mouth.
an old game that wasnt particularly good.
Black Mesa showed how do you remake and old game.
Black Mesa had no soul.
doom eternal combat is so annoying that you cant use the same weapon for more than a few seconds, the visual style is so cartoonish it makes it look like cod and there is way too much platforming with secrets being cut outs in the walls. You wont be getting another doom eternal any time soon, closest you get is turbo overkill which also looks dated and its an indie game but you expect indie games to be as good and polished as AAA games? Also days gone is just a zombie game with less zombies and no woke trash in it, its not a great game. Its not insufferable cringe, and its competent, thats it. In fact not only the game is old and dated and has high requirements to run well but when it came out on ps4 it was a broken mess.
first i am talking about performance not gameplay.second being indie doesn’t justify running Like crap.Third, you can dislike days gone but it played and ran very well oc PC and wasn’t dated,at least not like this crappy mess. i didn’t talk about PS4. all the games i said and many more, look and perform way better than this old looking fart . how much prejudice for god’s sake? Why? because a million years ago the old version was a nice game we should praise whatever crap the current release is?
Your face is dated and crappy looking.
That was your mom’s face last night .
looks better than minecraft and runs better than minecraft, never underestimate the power of poor optimization
i see your standard and reference is minecraft. low standard gamers like you are the reason why crappy low quality game are sold. underestimate the power of low level gamers like yourself. you need to go play nintendo. pc is not for people like you.
pipipipipipipipipipipipipipi i cry on the internet
oh i see,another dumb kid who doesn’t have a brain to talk like adults. I see you can’t defend your bullsh*ts, so started saying nonsense. what a loser.
moooooommy
kidoooo
Keep consuming AAA crap if all you’re interested in is graphics.
another idiot who doesn’t understand the main subject.
You’re nothing new, just another normie kid that that only cares about shiny graphics over gameplay.
and You are from even older kind of people,an idiot who thinks he knows others. You can think whtever you want, i don’t give a rat a*s. go improve you reading comprehension. you still don’t know subject .
Would like to know the performance on the Steam Deck.
800p60 while using TSR ar 67% rez scale in DX12/VKD3D. Probably.
With the current SteamOS 3.4 version it already runs with pretty stable 40 FPS @ medium settings.
Expect the performance to increase with the imminent SteamOS 3.5 upgrade.
Plus a set of Linux commands will be released shortly, which can be applied with a single copy & paste command.
That will bring an additional performance boost to the Steam Deck, for games & emulators.
Stay tuned…
Sounds good, thanks!
not suprising considering most perfomance issues nowadays have to do with large maps and there is heavy usage of things like volumetric fog to hide whats in the distance, meanwhile this game is a maze with endless corridors so it never renders too much, in fact it unloads assets while not in the same room, this is why corpses ragdoll wen you enter a room, they are placed in the room when you enter, the doors are like loading screens.
Good remake overall but the original system shock was always flawed and this remake changes some things for the better and others for worse. One one hand you got upgrades but only for weapons, on the other hand upgrades make weapons larger and the new inventory system where every item takes a slot and weapons take multiple ones is annoying, you dont need credits to take a slot damn it. The level design is close to the sprawling mazes of the original, almost identical but where those large maze levels actually good? Nothing interesting happens most of the time. System shock 2 on the other hand has much better levels and campaign overall. At some point they basically reboot the game and then restarted and made it closer to the original but not for the best. The engineering level took me like 4 hours to finish with back tracking for the codes, speaking of which was it necessary to make it without any objectives at all, new players to this will have no idea what to do, but the walkthrough for the old game still works. Shows you how close to the original is for better or for worse.
The last two levels are meh, just like the original but the final boss battle is a drawn out interactive cutscenes basically that you move around and stand on moving pads. I think the worst thing about this remake is the music, most of the time there is none of it, so the game feels dead and silent, they should have remixed the original songs, i dont care if people dont find the music fitting in a horror game, its not scary and techno motivates you to keep moving and exploring, these levels take forever to get through. I was enjoying 7/10 levels but it got too tiresome after a that, in the end i just pushed myself to finish it and the last level has way too many close spawns, its a clusterfck, still better than the infinite spawning enemies of the original, i cant reccomend the original over this in any way, i just wish they didnt remove the hornet gun, it was so unique and while the new straightforward cyberspace levels look good, it has too many enemy spawns and too many of them. Also too many logs and they added a milenial valey girl lesbian character called dana hunter or something who is like, omg and she made the isolinear chip to defeat shodan, also they race swapped some character like oliver darcy, which i dont get, they have added so many new logsd and new characters that add nothing of value so why do that.
When you finish the game a song “its what you get what you wanted” plays, i guess this is the devs being frustrated that they had to remake this game instead of rebooting it and it took so long. Overall it was a good game for 70% of the game through much better than whats out there right now but not amazing. Still better than the original, now off to play system shock 2 again which is one of the best games ever.
John, it’s very likely that you have v-sync enabled. I just tried the demo and when not GPU bound the game runs well over 200 FPS (sometimes even over 300 FPS) on my Ryzen 5700X. You may want to redo the benchmarks.
John just wants more ads and for you to support him on patreon.
It´s an Unreal Engine 4 dumpster game, so remember if you´re having traversal stuttering switch the exploit protection CFG in windows to off for the games .exe.
Every UE4 optimization masterpiece game has this.
Not too good being CPU capped at about just 160 fps…
Tiny world, close views, few enemies, almost nothing happening at any given time… Where is that CPU or engine being clogged?
Actually really bad. But at least it easily runs well above 60. Different things.