The Astronauts has just released Witchfire in Early Access. Powered by Unreal Engine 4 and supporting NVIDIA’s DLSS 3, it’s time to test the game and share our initial performance impressions.
For our initial Witchfire benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and NVIDIA’s RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit and the GeForce 537.13 driver. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D. We should also note that we’ll have a proper PC Performance Analysis when the game leaves its Early Access phase. Until then, this article will give you an idea of how the game currently performs.
Witchfire appears to be well-optimized, even in its current Early Access state. At Native 4K/Ultra Settings, our NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 was able to push a minimum of 91fps. With DLSS 3 Quality, we were able to get a minimum of 154fps. And when we enabled DLSS 3 Frame Generation, we were able to get a minor 13% performance increase.
Now the good news here is that the extra mouse latency that DLSS 3 Frame Generation introduces is very small. This was mainly due to the fact that the game was already running with over 144fps. We also did not experience any visual or graphical artifacts. So yeah, for high-end GPUs like the RTX 4090, DLSS 3 Frame Generation is a free performance boost.
It’s also worth noting that Witchfire comes with a lot of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Shadows, Textures, Foliage, Effects and more. The game also has an FOV slider, and it supports AMD FSR 2.0 and Intel XeSS. Additionally, we did not experience any mouse acceleration or smoothing issues.
Graphics-wise, I’m not particularly impressed with Witchfire. Back in 2017, the game looked gorgeous. However, that was six years ago. Since then, we’ve seen numerous games that pushed the graphical boundaries of PC games. And now, in 2023, Witchfire looked OK. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad-looking game. At the same time, though, it’s not a game that will “wow” you with its graphics.
Lastly, here’s a video, showcasing the first 15 minutes of gameplay footage from the PC version!
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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Feels like we’ve heard about this game for a long time and when they finally drop it it’s in Early Acces, bruh 😀
One more overhyped POS game then 👎
John, I suggest adding information about Shader Compilation Stuttering if they are any to your Performance Reviews.
It is crucial information and not many sites are writing about it.
You must be new here.
I played it for a few hours and didnt notice any stuttering to be honest. 12900k with 4090 and installed on a nvme SSD. Maybe some sort of outdated hardware?!
No stutters here as well. And I tested it on very outdated hardware.
Wait for the PC release in 2024
Agreed. This early access version is buggy. I also don’t like the damage to enemies – when you’re close you do an insane amount of damage to them (a bit too much), but if you are at a slight distance, you hardly damage them at all. The AI doesn’t do much as well, you would think that with their numbers, they would try to flank you, but they just maintain their distance and wait for you to pick them off.
B*chfire
@JohnP, how are the graphics not upto snuff? As indie game dev in spare time, I can clearly see a lot of effort has been put into textures, models, level design.
“Indie dev in spare time”. Oh please, this is their full time, main profession.
@EveUnit02, I was fereing to me when I commented about being a game dev in my spare time.
Yup, theres also shader stutter, after playing through the stutters, the next time i played the same area was a lot smoother (Rtx 4070ti, 13600k, 32gb 6000mhz here), but i also agree that yeah the game looks ok but not that great, seems theres slow texture loading and texture pop in even though iv the game on a gen4 nvme m.2 ssd
Seems to take frame gen some 5.4 ms or so to generate a 4K frame, as I don’t think I’ve seen a game using frame gen go above that 180-185 framerate mark at 4K.
The rogueshit aspect put me off instantly.
Good thing they put a lot of options to use (right, Starfail?). Still don’t know the appeal for “film grain”? Why?!?!?!?!?!
And yes, the game is very well-optimized, played a couple hours and it amazing in ths aspect. Nothing to catch your attention gameplay-wise, though.