Microsoft has just released The Outer Worlds 2 on PC. The Outer Worlds 2 is powered by Unreal Engine 5, and supports NVIDIA DLSS 4 and Ray Tracing on PC. So, before publishing our PC Performance Analysis, I’ve decided to test these techs on the NVIDIA RTX 5090. So, let’s dive in.
For these early benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 581.57 driver.
Obsidian has used Ray Tracing to enhance the game’s lighting, reflections, and shadows. So, here are some comparison screenshots. On the left, you will find the shots with Ray Tracing On. On the right, you’ll find the shots without Ray Tracing.
For the most part, The Outer Worlds 2 looks a bit better with Ray Tracing. That is, until you spot some really awful shadows that can appear while exploring the world. These noisy shadows are awful. In those places, the game can look better without RT. So, that’s a big bummer.
The Outer Worlds 2 does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, I used the city area in Eden. This area appeared to be stressing both the CPU and the GPU. As such, it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of it runs.
The reason I chose the city of Eden is because is way more taxing than the prologue. The prologue was running with 60FPS on the NVIDIA RTX 5090. As soon as you go to Eden, though, things go downhill.
Ray Tracing brings an ENORMOUS performance hit on the CPU. Our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D was simply unable to provide a smooth gaming experience at 4K, even with DLSS 4 Quality (or Performance Mode). As you can see in this screenshot, the NVIDIA RTX 5090 was used at only 75%.
To get a playable experience on this high-end PC system, you’ll need to enable Frame Gen. With DLSS 4 Quality and Frame Gen, we were able to get at 80FPS. For what it’s worth, I did not experience any major input latency issues. Mouse movement felt fine. Then, with MFG X3 and X4, we were able to get to 120FPS and 160FPS, respectively.
Without Ray Tracing, The Outer Worlds 2 runs with a minimum of 39FPS and an average of 46FPS at Native 4K. By enabling DLSS 4 Quality, we were able to get close to a 60FPS experience. There were some drops to 57FPS here and there. The only way to get framerates over 70FPS at 4K/Very High Settings was by using DLSS 4 Performance Mode (without Frame Gen).
The DLSS 4 implementation is pretty good in The Outer Worlds 2. Here are some screenshots I took while moving the camera around quickly. Yes, there are a few visual glitches here and there. But, during normal gameplay, you won’t be moving the camera that wildly. Overall, the results are quite good. It may not be the best DLSS 4 implementation out there, but it’s definitely above average.
All in all, I do not recommend enabling the Ray Tracing effects for The Outer Worlds 2. While they can improve the game’s visuals, they also bring some truly noisy shadows. Moreover, you’ll need to enable DLSS 4 Frame Gen and Super Resolution. Otherwise, you won’t get an acceptable performance. Plus, I noticed some additional stutters with RT On.
Our PC Performance Analysis for The Outer Worlds 2 will go live later this weekend. So, stay tuned for more!
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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lol 47fps with DLSS….
cpu bottlenck
Yeah looking at the screenshots and what laughable performance, it seems skills and passion isn't one that should be associated with 0bsidian nowadays. Basically seems to be universally a truth with almost all UE5 games, only a handful out of the 100's that runs well while also looking pretty descent.
That most females look like they made 1/2 transition don't help make the game look any less degenerate oriented either
This is Retardera verified masterpiece we are talking about here, be grateful what u wish for /s
As far as I am concerned Ultra settings should be reserved for returning to play a game ~10 years after release. I wouldn't expect Ultra settings to be optimised in any way. The problem as always is enabling Ultra and expecting to have a good time.
For me the primary comparison is performance for visuals. Forget the sliders for a moment and compare the visuals in this game or borderlands 4 which was another recent eff up to Cyberpunk 2077. If your game with crappy lumen RT looks and runs worse than cyberpunk with path tracing, there’s a problem.
ultra settings should be playable now on a top tier gpu , you dont buy a 2-3k gpu to play a 10 years old game
also the game is not that good looking or has anything that special , games 8 years older look better
The f*k is this turd?
This post is a great starting point for anyone new to the subject.
Very readable and informative. Saved this for future reference.
Why not call it "Unpowered by Unreal 5 Engine" at this point in time? Basically all games made with that engine with very few exceptions runs like crap.
John is spot on with his recommendation on the ray tracing. I don't know what the heck they did here, but the shadow noise is absolutely TERRIBLE with RT on. I initially thought that perhaps it was some sort of film grain that was the issue, but it's the actual ray tracing setting. Doesn't help that there are no individual ray tracing options for lighting, reflections and shadows. Perhaps there's some tweaking that we can do in the INI file to disable just RT shadows. Also not sure if the game is using any ray reconstruction as well.
yeah it`s because of crap denoising with rt on, perhaps someone can test if ini tweak to turn on the ray reconstruction fixes it.
I appreciate the honesty in your assessment — refreshing to see.
Another game that looks worse with ray tracing. Such an easy setting to disable. Get actual playable framerates (none of that 47 fps nonsense) and better looking games.
Congrats. Dumbest comment of the thread.
Optimization on this game is non-existent.
cap your frame rate to 1 then use 60X frame generation, that'll fix it.
The game is not even worth pirating, it's very unoptimized, combined with the awful woke writing that slams capitalism every chance it gets, I deleted it after 30 minutes.
Simpleton. Go play a multiplayer game.
Why not call it "Unpowered by Unreal 5 Engine" at this point in time? Basically all games made with that engine with very few exceptions runs like crap.
How is the performance in comparison to Avowed? I guest is exactly the same.
It looks SO bad, I don't even want to pirate it just like the other tr4nny vampire game.
Another Unreal Engine 5 game.
Yup. The game looks incredible.
Ultra performs terrible, Very High is reasonable, as usual.
Obsidian is not Obsidian anymore…
a little better only with rt? Even from screenshots large difference is obvious
Different does not equal better. I'd be hard pushed in many of the shots to say which is with RT and which is without. Likewise for saying what looks better. Ultimately it will come down to the higher framerate looking better here.
No rt gives depth to game s Presentation in every istance it is implemented
Different does not equal better. I'd be hard pushed in many of the shots to say which is with RT and which is without. Likewise for saying what looks better. Ultimately it will come down to the higher framerate looking better here.
A 5090? Hardly a base for the average gamer to go off is it…
It's called math. Use it.
Muppet…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVo_KKW_a5Y
30fps on a 2000€ GPU, ok.
Multi-frame generation is AWESOME!