NACON has lifted the review embargo for Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on 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 595.97, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 26.3.1 drivers.

Big Bad Wolf has added a respectable number of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Shadows, Textures, Global Illumination, View Distance, Effects, Foliage, and more. The game can run up to 240FPS, and it supports both NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 and AMD FSR 3.0. Interestingly enough, DLSS 4.5 Frame Gen is disabled when your framerate can go higher than 240FPS. On my review code, DLSS 4.5 MFG X2 worked fine. However, I could not use DLSS 4.5 MFG X3, X4, X5, or X6. The moment I was enabling those modes, the game was automatically disabling them.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our tests, I used the following scene. This was one of the most demanding areas I could find early in the game.

Most of our GPUs were able to run the game smoothly at 1080p/Epic Settings. Our NVIDIA RTX 3080 came close to a 60FPS experience (though there were some drops to 58FPS). On the other hand, the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT had no trouble running it with over 60FPS.

It’s also worth noting that the game does not work that well on the RDNA 4 GPUs. At least right now. As we can see, the AMD Radeon RX 9070XT is significantly slower than the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX. My guess is that performance will get a big boost with a new driver. But right now, owners of RDNA4 GPUs will not get the best experience out of it.

For instance, at 1440p/Epic Settings, the AMD Radeon 9070XT drops below 60FPS. On the other hand, the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX is able to provide a smooth gaming experience. Regarding NVIDIA’s GPUs, like the RTX 4090, 5080, and 5090, they have no trouble at all pushing over 60FPS at that resolution.

Finally, at Native 4K with Epic Settings, you can get over 60FPS on the NVIDIA RTX 5090. The NVIDIA RTX 4090 can also provide a smooth gaming experience, provided you use a G-Sync monitor. For a UE5 game, these framerates at Native 4K are great.

Although Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss does not suffer from shader compilation stutters, it does suffer from traversal stutters. They are not that frequent, but most of you will immediately notice them. It’s a bummer as this is perhaps my only complaint with the game.

Graphics-wise, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss looks fine. Since this game is coming from a small team, you should obviously temper your expectations. The in-game characters cannot match those of Alan Wake 2, Hellblade 2, or Death Stranding 2. However, the environments look great, and they punch above their weight. For a “double-A” game, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss looks great.

All in all, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss appears to be running great on PC. The game does not require a high-end PC to be enjoyed, even on Epic Settings. Not only that, but it supports both AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS so that PC gamers can further boost their performance. There are proper on-screen KB&M prompts, and mouse movement feels great. The only downside is the traversal stutters. Other than that, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is in a really solid state!