Yesterday, Sony released Death Stranding 2: On the Beach on PC. Powered by the Decima engine, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC.
For our benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 595.76, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 26.3.1 drivers.
Nixxes has added a respectable number of settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Shadows, Textures, Terrain, Clouds, and more. The game also supports all PC upscalers. In other words, there is support for NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 4.0, and Intel XeSS. Plus, for the first time in a Decima-powered game, there is support for Ray Tracing.
Death Stranding 2 does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, I tested the following scene. This area was way more demanding than the starting area. As such, it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game runs.
In this article, we’ll be focusing on the rasterized version. For Ray Tracing and DLSS 4.5, we have a separate article. So, make sure to read it if you are interested in them.
At 1080p/Max Settings, our top six GPUs were able to push framerates above 60FPS at all times. The NVIDIA RTX 3080 was also able to provide a smooth gaming experience, provided you use a G-Sync monitor.
At 1440p/Max Settings, our top five GPUs were able to provide a great gaming experience. As for Native 4K/Max Settings, the NVIDIA RTX 4090 and the RTX 5090 were the only GPUs that were able to provide framerates over 60FPS at all times.
Graphics-wise, Death Stranding 2 looks amazing. Even without its Ray Tracing effects, this game is a looker. Kojima Productions has made an incredible work with the game’s lighting and character models. Thankfully, pop-ins are kept to a minimum. In other words, the game does not suffer from the aggressive pop-in issues we saw in Crimson Desert. And yes, I know. Different games using different engines. Still, it’s worth mentioning.
My only gripe is with some low-res textures that you can find in various places. The game could benefit from a 4K Texture Pack. Apart from that, Death Stranding 2 is one of the best-looking rasterized games. Then, by using its Ray Tracing effects, you can make it look even better.
Before closing, I should note that I did not experience any stuttering issues during gameplay. The game felt really smooth, even while exploring the environments. However, there are stuttering issues during the in-engine cinematics. Most of you may not notice them. Still, this is something that Nixxes needs to fix.
All in all, Death Stranding 2 is one of the most optimized PC games of 2026. The game can run on a wide range of PC systems, and it looks amazing. It’s not THE best-looking game on PC in 2026. However, when it comes to overall optimization, this is one of the best examples we’ve gotten this year. Both Nixxes and Kojima Productions did a great job here.
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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