Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 is currently available to those who have pre-ordered the Gold or Ultra Editions. The game will become available to everyone on September 9th. So, before publishing our PC Performance Analysis, we’ve decided to test the game at Native 4K with Ultra Settings on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Can NVIDIA’s high-end GPU run it with over 60fps? Time to find out.
For these early benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 560.94 WHQL driver. Moreover, I’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 does not feature any built-in benchmark. This is a bit disappointing, as World War Z had one. For those unaware, World War Z and Space Marine 2 use the same engine. As you’ll see, though, Space Marine 2 is way more demanding than WWZ. It’s also better looking than it.
The good news here is that even during chaotic battles, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 can run the game with over 60fps at Native 4K with Ultra Settings. Space Marine 2 does not use any Ray Tracing effects. However, the game can display A LOT of enemies on screen. It also looks amazing, even though it uses rasterized techniques. The lowest I’ve seen was 64fps. That’s from a swamp area at the beginning of the first mission. In that area, our average framerate was 73fps. Since this was one of the most demanding areas, it’s the one we’ll also use for our PC Performance Analysis.
What I found interesting is the last screenshot. As we can see, that shot with all those marines is as demanding as the scene with the swarm. Saber has done a terrific job here. Yes, the game is demanding. However, the huge amount of enemies does not bring high-end PCs to the ground. So, that’s good news.
At launch, Space Marine 2 does not support NVIDIA DLSS 3 or AMD FSR 3.0. Instead, the game uses older versions of these techs. There is also no support for Frame Generation. So, that’s a bummer, especially for those who might be CPU-limited. Still, Saber has stated that it will add both of them via a post-launch update.
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 cannot match the visuals of Hellblade 2 or Black Myth: Wukong. This does not make it a bad-looking game though. Don’t get me wrong. What we have here is a great-looking title. And although the Swarm Engine does not seem to be as advanced as UE5, Space Marine 2 has an incredible art style.
As said, we’ll be sure to benchmark the game with numerous AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. So, expect a PC Performance Analysis in the next couple of days. I’ve also captured a video (which will be added to the article once it’s live on YouTube). Do note that the footage was recorded with the NVIDIA App. The app brought a 5fps performance hit, so make sure to keep that in mind while watching it.
Enjoy and 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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The graphics look terrible. It's oversharpened to try to overcome the excessive blurring of the anti-aliasing, but everything that isn't close to the camera is still pretty blurry. Also, the explosion in the first screenshot is obviously downsampled and looks pixelated. Games from 10 years ago look better than this.
I think you meant that the explosion looks upscaled, downsampling would make it look more detailed.
You're thinking of supersampling (rendering at a higher resolution and then downscaling it). Downsampling (aka. subsampling) is when you render at a lower resolution and then upscale it.
I know NVIDIA and others use confusing terminology like "Super Resolution", however that is a deceptive marketing term that is intended to make people think that AI upscaling is better than it really is.
In some cases yeah – Cheap TAA that have kept ruining details since it was introduced, its even more fun they even need to sharpen the smudge afterwards. I hope the next conslow gen can handle some better aa or perhaps some ai based one like dlaa that's heads and shoulders better than taa
DLAA is not good enough either, because DLSS/DLSS tend to have fluctuating sharpness (sharpness increases when you stop moving the camera and decreases when you start moving again). DLAA only looks good on the static image. DLDSR (AI powered downsampling), however, can fix this problem because the game is rendered at a much higher resolution, so the sharpness fluctuation becomes almost unnoticeable at your native resolution, and because DLSS balance/performance improves performance a lot, you dont have to worry about performance penalty when using DLDSR.
If games have a good DLSS implementation, even DLSS ULTRA PERFORMANCE + DLAA image quality will look better compared to the native one, and you will get 2x better framerate at this point. This method is very easy to use because once you enable DLDSR, you just need to choose your DLDSR resolution in the game settings and use DLSS/FSR if you need more performance. In some games I might use reshade sharpening filters on top of that (CAS / luma sharpen). I get perfect sharpness (MSAA like) in all my games using this method, so image quality in modern games is really not an issue.
Thanks for the informative post. I have a 4090 but haven't delved into tweaking DLDSR. That's mostly because I haven't played any recently released AAA titles, so haven't run into situations in which I felt the performance was lacking. I am aware those games are quickly becoming the norm. Can you point me towards a guide or additional info on how to properly use DLDSR?
Its far from perfect but better than TAA that washes away everything, and with the hardware budget that’s available on the consoles (and weak pc’s for that matter) i bet we will see something like that instead of good aa unfortunately
DLAA basically is a form of TAA, but with A.I.
I haven't played this one but I don't get the graphical praise black myth wukong gets. The image quality is AWFUL even with 4k dlss quality. It's shimmery, soft, unstable. I'd rather have baked lighting or traditional rasterized lighting and play with DLAA (like I do in red dead redemption 2, the last of us, Spiderman, etc) than having to sacrifice 90% of my IQ for fancy RT effects that look marginally better and tank my performance.
I am running a 4090 btw.
we dont get either why ppl play these warhammer games
Wuhan Covid Myth was mostly hyped by chinese (what a surprise) and dotards no lifers on reddit who bought a 4090 to play CS:Go and got suckered in by the RT bs. Fk that garbage!
yep a Chinese boss rush with cute environment that you can't access due to invisible walls and with least amount of build variation this game is essentially an anime chick with skirt and big boobs that doesn't exist.
Black Myth Wukong looks amazing, but I had to use a mod that turns off excessive sharpening because it made the image look like a shimmering mess. I'm also using DLDSR2.25 (50% smoothness) + reshade (CAS + luma sharpening filters) and I'm getting an even better image quality than with DLAA (BTW. the game also supports DLAA). If you use DLSS performance + DLDSR2.25 you will get better performance than native and much higher image quality and with no performance penalty.
RT makes a big diffeference in this game and at 4K DLSS performance + FG I only get 22% performance penalty from using it. I get 85fps average in built-in benchmark and 80-90fps during gameplay. The game is joy to play and Image quality look stunning. Your RTX4090 is much faster compared to my RTX4080S, so you might use DLSS balance and maybe even quality instead of performance.
https://i.ibb.co/v3rwYNy/b1-Win64-Shipping-2024-09-01-00-25-53-709.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/g39CcfC/b1-Win64-Shipping-2024-09-01-00-30-46-747.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/N1vNYyc/b1-Win64-Shipping-2024-09-01-00-06-20-759.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/NZjzRHF/b1-Win64-Shipping-2024-09-01-00-07-05-687.jpg
My results at 4K DLSS performance + FG, using very high settings and fullRT
https://i.ibb.co/3BdHdgN/b1-Win64-Shipping-2024-08-30-12-52-30-605.jpg
1440p results using DLSSQuality + FG.
https://i.ibb.co/ZLkmp9D/b1-Win64-Shipping-2024-08-26-17-24-31-720.jpg
one of the best looking game that I've played was Bloodborne, yep everything was baked, every environment looked good, and the atmosphere was delivered immensely by the art direction. there is difference between looking good and being technically expensive on GPU and people tend to hype with the latter more.
yeah realize that early reviews that are "real" players on steam are overwhelmingly paid for and interested parties doing the reviews. Steam obviously has self interest in allowing shenanigans to sell, so likely even bots are allowed by approved parties to sell sell sell. Even the deranged folks of reddit are in on this and AI fake accounts can be bought. How many times I've scrolled way down saw someone who questioned why all the gushing reviews. Over 100gb required for that? nope saved myself a lot of hassle.
Lots of games I've actually played that were supposed to be so amazing and such were just monotonous and boringaf. I take Dave the Diver as a recent example but there are many games like this that likely put huge amounts of money into fake reviews, ai bots and such.
Wukong is quite a terrible game imo.
The Chinese are insanely nationalistic, even those who left China.
So they will downvote any Youtube channel into oblivion for years to come if they were critical of Wukong.
It is far far easier to just give a Chinese game a high score, than having your whole channel nuked by mass Chinese downvoters.
Wukong is quite a terrible game imo.
The Chinese are insanely nationalistic, even those who left China.
So they will downvote any Youtube channel into oblivion for years to come if they were critical of Wukong.
It is far far easier to just give a Chinese game a high score, than having your whole channel nuked by mass Chinese downvoters.
Swap out DLAA for DLDSR 2.25x + DLSS Quality fyi.
Why do we even need to ask such a question? It's a piece of hot steaming garbage.
Sire!!!
Mi'Lord
Good to see you again sire!!!
but all is garbage to you, even garbage!
nah garbage is garbage, this is a hot steaming pile of crap. Just like hack n slash, fight me!
Sorry I am a pacifist
I love pacifists, I salute you!
So you have love in you. Interesting.
i just appreciate what doesn’t piss me off by choice. Appreciation is a strong principle that many lack due to vanity.
I totally agree. It takes maturity and self-awareness to appreciate things without letting ego or vanity get in the way. Sometimes, it’s about choosing to focus on what adds value to your life rather than getting caught up in what irritates you.
I totally agree. You sound like a very good and old friend of mine. His teachings are a blessing.
That’s really nice to hear!
the game got a big downgrade
Early build
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c1b16c20b7e56f2102b7ff60a992e543bd90b0163e151ed1814b14276ac35bee.jpg
Official build
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/300543ca9d63d4c0c9166d7f64af2f76b0f51807e5ba851c7a00583c0ff2fa50.jpg
Meaningless without knowing what the settings are.
There is no change to the assets if you take a good look at it. The bluriness is most likely due to upscaling (so check your settings).
No, that makes too much sense.
It is a conspiracy where the developer deliberately downgraded the game's graphics. I can tell with my magnifying glass. Those bastards!
No, that makes too much sense.
It is a conspiracy where the developer deliberately downgraded the game's graphics. I can tell with my magnifying glass. Those bastards!
Just a different time of the year, lad.
LOL
One shot has upscaling, one is probably DLAA. Lighting is different Upscaling sucks compared to DLAA, always has. Upscaling was only competitive with native TAA which is a blurry mess. Upscaling with a sharpening pass or TAA with a sharpening pass is "ok". Use something like reshade CAS.FX (or amd sharpening in driver since it's the same thing) if you don't have Nvidia or can't deliver native 1440 or up. DLDSR can be better as well but it all depends on the game. Usually DLAA native in game or DLSS Tweaks Nvidia is fine.
In this particular game, it's the other way around. DLAA looks blurrier than both Native FSR 2 and Native TAA. Even with the latest DLL file for DLSS, DLAA is blurrier than TAA.
It's cus Nvidia removed the automatic sharpening filter from DLAA and DLSS for some reason. Been that way for awhile. Started in 2.5 I think and it's up to the developer to add it and fine tune it.
I just throw reshade cas.fx on top and it ends up better than before to be honest. cas.fx was the one really good thing AMD has done in the last few years.
FSR sucks but cas.fx being so good at bringing out detail is prob why it looks clearer. Temporal AA prob uses cas.fx to cus it's open source.
If I had to guess why Nvidia did it? To push sales people don't need. When the competition sucks you have to create competition in your own product stack.
You gotta love when a game "releases," but then gets delayed for anyone not willing to pay for the premium version, and they claim the real release is on the delayed date. But honestly, these days most people who aren't "I-need-it-now" types just wait for the first discount anyway. By that time, the game’s usually in better shape—bugs are fixed, some quality-of-life updates are out. It’s like the companies want people to wait. Early buyers often end up being unpaid beta testers.
>Early buyers often end up being unpaid beta testers.
And we thank them for that, jannis of the gaming industry.
Why pay for QA when you can exploit the FOMO of losers to do it for you?
The game is absolutely amazing! I’m not usually into Warhammer, but seeing it in motion is a whole different experience compared to the compressed screenshots on this site. It’s truly impressive. I’d recommend keeping an open mind because this could very well be one of the best third-person shooters of the year. You really won’t know until you try it yourself. In the meantime, keep an eye out for reviews!
Never played any game from this series, gonna take a gander on this one, since it's free.
For the next benchmark article, AMD has a hotfix driver out with Space Marine Support, newer than 24.8.1:
https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/release-notes/RN-RAD-WIN-24-10-37-10.html
I think it looks great, they've nailed the aesthetic. The game looks like a good time.
Its always cool when a game comes out like this and reminds us of how far we've come graphically. Some of those screenshots of in-game footage look like pre rendered footage cutscenes for games in years past.
I see virtually no drop in performance using Alt-F9 from GE Force Experience when recording on my 4070 Ti or from the 3070 Ti I used to have. Sounds like the Nvidia App Beta needs some more time in the oven if it is causing a 5 FPS loss @ 75 FPS
every engine apart from UE5 now interests me, i'm so tired of the same looking lighting and motion blur and stutter that every UE5 title has. proprietary engines have more protentional in delivering certain aesthetic hand-tailored for specific games.
It's not because Epic uses nasty overblown highlights and HDR, that every developer using Unreal Engine would simply copy this behavior….lol. Developer are not that lazy.
wait…….
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/99c29bf7bb713cf88186e6d5279bb4a185cb56b40c75aac0afe11e4beeb4d193.jpg
How nasty, pay more to play it days earlier, they got the hard core addicts hooked though. On the other hand unless they use denuvo it's an early way to get the free version, in that case I wish that nullified the benefits of the nasty pay to play earlier drug lord tactics.
I finished the campaign in 7 hours, it's wwz with a warhammer paint. 7/10 from me
I hope this is not the case for the KOTOR remake
Bro why dat 4090 running at 2670MHz in the 8th pic do…is that the actual stock boost clock? Cuz it's only at 419W. Thought 4090 stock TDP was 450W?
The Cult of Steam strikes again
The game is getting Review Bombed on Steam because it contains some Epic software for cross play purposes
This game is having seks with my hardware. I'm seeing temps I've never seen before.
The game itself is also not a good sequel (but fun overall).