CI Games has released its latest Souls-like action RPG, Lords of the Fallen. Powered by Unreal Engine 5 and taking advantage of Nanite and Lumen, it’s time to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC.
For our Lords of the Fallen benchmarks and 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 537.58, the Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 23.9.1 driver for RX580 and Vega 64, and the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition Preview Driver for AMD Fluid Motion Frames for the RX 6900XT and the RX 7900XTX. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
Hexworks has added numerous graphics settings that can bring major performance improvements to the game. PC gamers can adjust the quality of View Distance, Shadows, Textures, Visual Effects, Global Illumination and more. The game also has options for Motion Blur, Film Grain and Chromatic Aberration. Furthermore, it supports DLSS 3 and FSR (though there is no support for FSR 3.0 Frame Generation).
Lords of the Fallen does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. Therefore, for our benchmarks, we used this scene. This was one of the most demanding areas early in the game, so consider this a stress test. Other areas will definitely run better, so be sure to keep that in mind.
As we’ve already reported, the game’s Ultra Settings are quite demanding. Thankfully, though, the game is scalable thanks to its graphics settings. By dropping the quality to High, the RTX4090 can push over 60fps at Native 4K. Not only that, but the game can look quite good even on Low Settings. Add to this the support for both DLSS 3 Super Resolution and Frame Generation, and you have a game that can actually run great on High settings on numerous GPUs. Hell, at Native 1440p/High Settings our RTX3080 and RX 6900XT can offer a constant 60fps experience.
Lords of the Fallen is a GPU-bound title. And, unfortunately, we could not properly test/benchmark our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D. As showcased below, we were GPU-limited even at 720p with DLSS 3 Super Resolution. So yeah, rest assured that this game will stress more your GPU than your CPU.
At Native 1080p/Ultra Settings, the only GPUs that can run our stress benchmark scene are the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
At Native 1440p/Ultra Settings, the AMD RX7900XTX could offer an enjoyable experience (provided you have a FreeSync monitor). On the other hand, the NVIDIA RTX4090 had no trouble running the game with over 60fps. And as for Native 4K/Ultra Settings, there is no GPU that can come close to 60fps.
Graphics-wise, Lords of the Fallen looks absolutely fantastic. This is one of the best-looking Unreal Engine 5 games to date. Thanks to Nanite, there are no object/geometry pop-ins. As someone who hates pop-ins, this is a visual treat to my eyes. Lumen can also significantly enhance the image quality of numerous areas. And, after the disappointing scalability we saw in other UE5 games like Immortals of Aveum, Remnant 2 and Fort Solis, it’s really refreshing witnessing a game with “meaningful” graphics settings. And I know that the Umbral environment of our benchmark scene does not look particularly impressive. Therefore, I’ve captured some screenshots to showcase the game’s graphics.
Lords of the Fallen can run well on PC, and it’s one of the best examples of UE5. However, if you don’t have a high-end GPU and don’t want to use an upscaler at 4K, you should stay away from its Ultra settings. The game looks incredible on PC, supports both DLSS and FSR (though I don’t know why there is no support for XeSS), and does not suffer from any shader compilation stutters. Additionally, Lords of the Fallen plays incredibly well with the mouse and keyboard. And while it’s one of the best UE5 games to date, it’s not flawless. The game currently suffers from some traversal stutters (though they are not that annoying). And while we were completely stable during our benchmarks, we know that some PC players experience major crash issues. Thankfully, though, Hexworks has already released two patches to address some of those reported crashes.
Enjoy!
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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The reviews are so mixed.
The only reviews I ever take into account are the User Reviews.
Offset the trolls and you got your score.
The only reviews I ever take into account are the User Reviews.
Offset the trolls and you got your score.
I meant the user reviews.
The only real review you should take into account is YOUR review, assuming you’re an adult, believing press reviews or user reviews is sheep behavior, download it, try it, make yourself an opinion, users are often as dumb and biased as the press
I agree, but in my experience users will always be closer. Not paid for by the publishers.
Even though you didn’t forget trolls, you forgot fanboys, shill accounts, ignorants, kids, haters, review bombers…
All of which can have incorrect or biased opinion on a product, we all love a selection of games that people hate, and hate a selection of games that people love, this ultimately means that only your opinion matters in the end.
Agreed. I don’t pay attention to user reviews, Metacritic user reviews, Steam user reviews or especially reviews done by mainstream gaming media sites.
As far as user feedback I only consider that from a few people who over the years I’ve come to value their opinion. Even then I take into consideration their biases which I’ve come to know.
Especially those bribed by NVIDIA !!
Depends on the platform I think.
On Metacritic every random person can leave a user review, without ever having played the game. Xbox gamers often review bomb Playstation exclusives for example.
On Steam, you can only do a user review if you bought the game, from what I understand. That makes it a lot more reliable, but it still means that you only get reviews from people who were already interestd in the game and game-genre to begin with.
I don’t get it. Since when pop in was this massive issue that we needed to fix trowing lots.and lots of HW at it? It was well under control in most games. All culprits were mainly due to lazy developers or settings not pushed more than ps4 Xbox one levels.
The trade off is terrible for such a non issue… 9th gen is barely starting and the 4090 is a 1080p 60 card now? Devs should be ashamed…
When considering the games coming out using UE5 and the poor performance even with the 4090 it’s clear that there is a real problem and for now it looks like it’s going to be a continuing problem because there’s not going to be a significantly faster GPU generation until 1st half of 2025. Realistically it will be around a year and a half from now before the next generation. Assuming the next gen GPUs won’t cost even more and pricing that’s out of reach for mainstream gamers.
It has been the case with unreal engine for a long time now. Devs just hide behind muh next gen ultra graphics excuse. And when you see most pc gamers getting fooled by this excuse then you realize why devs keep doing it
An important note that I think you should’ve mentioned is that global illumination and reflections will switch to over ray tracing solutions when set to high or ultra.
Most people seem to have missed this, and you right.
My GPU usage goes from 50% to 95% when switching between Medium and Ultra (Global Illumination and Reflections).
You sure this is the case on high too? Because I’m getting 100+ fps at 2k native with an RX 6800 XT, which I shouldn’t be if it has RT.
That I’m not truly sure of as I don’t have the game. I’m just reporting what I found on PC Gaming Wiki and on the Steam forums.
The in game settings also say it. High and ultra utilise raytracing
I really don’t feel this game looks very good. Am I alone? Lighting feels kind of flat to me.
The motion blur makes it look attrocious.
But even with it turned off, most textures don’t look sharp or detailed, not even in 4k.
If I compare this game side-by-side with games using custom engines like a Plague’s Tale for example, it is a night and day difference.
Unreal engine games always seem to need a lot of post-processing tricks, dynamic resolution, blur, fog, extreme LOD, aggressive mip-mapping, and other tricks, to get it to run at reasonable framerates.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ba88e997117236bad743d3ede5e675935d0d454679a556551e02ed83eb7b1fd6.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3783f47c8ed6fc62b998ca94e2a2a977df1cedeb74f41eb35e1f1c110ee0c0be.png
Lords of the fallen in 4k is clearly not 4k. It’s some upscaled/dynamic resolution 720p bs from Unreal Engine.
A Plague’s Tail in 4k is actually 4k.
Lords of the fallen in 4k is clearly not 4k. It’s some upscaled/dynamic resolution 720p bs from Unreal Engine.
A Plague’s Tail in 4k is actually 4k.
Everything looks really grainy and everything in the distance looks super grainy. I’ve tried turning off film grain and everything grain related by to no avail so far.
Edit: i’mma try out that no sharpening mod listed below.
That’s unreal engine for ya. 90 percent of games are going to look like this for the next decade
The grass, some corners lack ambient occlusion. This was the case in remnant 2 as well. It seems the default intensity of ambient occlusion has been lowered in ue5 for some reason.
That’s easily changeable in UE5, so it must be an artistic decision.
Poor artistic decision
My thought exactly. UE5 can look fantastic but that’s not what i’m seeing in this game
It was the best selling Steam game for a few hours, but dropped off very quickly, just like Lies of P. Now BG3 is back on top.
Fans are very loud about these type of games, but the market for this type of genre is likely not that big.
Still an abysmal 53% user score, which is a lot better than the 28% it had yesterday, but still very low. While many negative reviews are about technical issues, there is a considerable amount of criticism for the gameplay too.
There’s a surprising amount of sharpening in the environment details. Sort of to the point of oversharpening (where pixels get somewhat washed out from being brightened too much). I guess game developers still haven’t figured out that you can sharpening by making dark pixels darker as well?
I haven’t noticed any sharpening, so I assume you using a resolution scaling technique with sharpening enabled.
I play at native resolution, so try that or disable sharpening entirely depending on the scaling technique you using.
Sorry, I was referring to the screenshots in this article. I don’t have the game.
It looks fine to me, but you can use this mod to remove the game’s default sharpening.
https://www.nexusmods.com/lordsofthefallen2023/mods/12
They have r.tonemapper.sharpen at 1.3 by default? That’s definitely a little on the high side. Someone at the studio must like heavily sharpened game visuals.
Don’t get me wrong, I usually add sharpening even in games that aren’t blurry (no TAA, no FXAA, etc), but I don’t add so much that it overbrightens pixels and I like to add more than one type of sharpening as well (there’s a reshade shader that can sharpen by making pixels darker instead of making them brighter, which pairs nicely with CAS which sharpens by making pixels brighter).
which reshade pairs with CAS?
https://github.com/rj200/Glamarye_Fast_Effects_for_ReShade
I usually use the “Glamarye_Fast_Effects_without_Fake_GI” shader and disable the FXAA and DoF. In some games I like the ambient occlusion and in some games I don’t, but it requires depth so it doesn’t work in multiplayer games. The sharpening has no requirements, but sometimes you need to tone it down when pairing with CAS or you’ll end up oversharpening and causing things to look too gritty (when that happens to face textures it’s not good looking).
Note that the version that has the “Fake GI” effect does work fine in some games, but it alters the lighting in weird ways in others. Which one you use is entirely personal preference.
It does come with a couple of standalone sharpening shaders, but I got the impression they weren’t the same sharpening that’s used with the Glamarye_Fast_Effects shaders. I don’t recall whether or not I tired them to see if I liked them.
Digital foundry is going to eat this game alive. I am just shocked they did not cover Lies Of P. That game is awesome and has amazing performance even with Denuvo.
They did cover Lies of P
Not on PC.
This one is a lot more detailed tho and used heavy new tech.
stats show Lies of P had terrible sales
no one wants to play Hogwarts anymore
and BG3 is loved like crazy
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/676d48d8736fcf357a6ca47dadf647e7cd6d6be8f87efc6aeaace2729b0bccd4.png
Lies of P is on Game Pass. Hogwarts Legacy is one-and-done; there’s no reason to play past the story. SF6 is underwhelming and monetised to hell and back.
SF6 is underwhelming ? Wut ? Buddy this is probably the best launch version of any SF.
No way to benchmark this game as the game will run 120 at one spot, 100 in the next, dip down to 60 in the next part and then it will be 40 for the last part.
It’s just another Unreal Engine game, stutters included.
And no John, it doesn’t look a generation above Hogwarts Legacy or Mirage, quit smoking that chronic.
For the person that likes to say, “upgrade your toaster and don’t expect a 1060 to run this smoothly”. You need to stop it. Here is why. This game gives you 40fps indoors on 6900 XT . INDOORS PEOPLE! I haven’t even made it outside yet, and inside of a cave we are dropping down to 40 fps on 3440×1440, basically 1440p. This is unacceptable. The game is highly unoptimized that is why Im so glad I stopped buying DRM games because it also saved me from buying day one Filth. In years time this game will run like a breeze when it’s time to become released on a DRM-FREE platform.
The day one people are playing the worst version of any game. Why do y’all continue to put up with this. Why do y’all continue to shell out money for a underwhelming experience. The person that buys this game on sale for 20 dollars will have a way more satisfying experience than you ever will. There is NO REASON to buy a PC Game on Day 1. This game doesn’t look better than cyberpunk, a 3 year old gameand on release that game was not doing 40 fps INDOORS. I can only imagine what will happen once I go outside of the cave. I guess I’ll never know, because even though I didn’t pay for this game, I will not be playing it any further to even know if anything exists outside of the starting cave. Come on folks, let’s have some standard. They have no intention of releasing finished products anymore.
On the AMD RX6900XT, we get constant 60fps at 2560×1440 on High Settings (at native resolution). Drop your settings instead of putting everything on Ultra, it can’t be THAT hard (especially when the game looks great even on High settings).
That’s not my point John… And you know better here. John don’t let me fight you bro. This is unacceptable and you know it won’t be like this 6 months from now on the same hardware. No game performs this bad in a 500 sq ft room. 60 FPS on 1440p is a God damn joke and a sh*t in the face. 60 FPS John? What year is this, 1997?
On Ultra Settings, the game uses the highest values of Lumen and Nanite. UE5’s Lumen and Nanite are really demanding and we’ve seen a lot of games that struggle with them so don’t expect any miracles. That’s why all the released UE5 games on Ultra still perform similarly to their launch versions. Moreover, contrary to Fort Solis, there aren’t any visual artifacts when using Lumen. The Ultra Settings are really demanding so use High Settings, as simple as that.
Right, 60 FPS was a standard in 1997 when people barely had GPUs capable of 3D acceleration, lmao.
Did you try upscaling. Does it have fsr3? Band aid I know but that’s the future we are going towards
Not my future. My future is, no BUY! Like I said, no love lost because I didn’t pay for the game. It’s rediculous how many people are defending this FOOLISHNESS everywhere. I don’t touch fake frames tech. Uninstall it is
The game is SLIGHTLY superior to Elden Ring in graphics, yet it requires 4x more hardware?
Maybe there’s something to do with the Unreal Stutter? Maybe lazy fücking devs (a prerequisite to work these days)?
It’s just unjustified.
it seems you have poopoo in your eyes mate !
LOL
In many places Elden Ring looks way better.
Just fyi, using a newer engine means nothing if the artistic work is done by a 12yo.
You should play more games, it seems.