Baldur’s Gate 3 came out of Early Access last week and we weren’t initially planning to cover it (regarding a PC Performance Analysis article, not in general). However, after numerous demands, we changed our minds. So, it’s time now to benchmark the game and examine its performance on the PC platform.
For our Baldur’s Gate 3 PC Performance Analysis, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 536.99 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 23.7.2 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
Larian Studios has implemented a lot of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Models, Distance, Detail, Textures and more. There are also options for Dynamic Clouds, Ambient Occlusion, Subsurface Scattering, Bloom and God Rays. Baldur’s Gate 3 also supports NVIDIA DLSS 2 and AMD FSR 1.0. Unfortunately, the game does not support FSR 2.0 though Larian stated that it will add support for it in a future update.
Baldur’s Gate 3 does not require a high-end CPU. For our CPU benchmarks, we were planning to use the Goblin Camp (which has A LOT of NPCs on screen). However, as you can clearly see, the game runs with over 230fps at 1080p/Max Settings on our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D. So yeah, we can confidently say that the game will run smoothly on a wide range of CPUs.
For our GPU benchmarks, we used the crashed ship area (right after the game’s prologue). This area appeared to be quite GPU-demanding, so it can give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game will run. We’ve also used DX11 as we weren’t aware (at the time of benchmarking) of its stuttering issues that can occur after a prolonged period of gaming.
At 1080p/Max Settings, most of our GPUs were able to provide a smooth gaming experience. The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 was able to push over 60fps at all times, whereas the NVIDIA RTX 4090 was able to push framerates over 240fps.
At 1440p/Max Settings, our top five GPUs had no trouble at all running our GPU benchmark scene. And as for native 4K/Max Settings, the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX and NVIDIA RTX 4090 were able to provide a smooth gaming experience.
Graphics-wise, Baldur’s Gate 3 does not look particularly impressive. It’s definitely pleasing to the eye. The game sports some highly detailed character models, and it has a lot of high-resolution textures. You can also interact with some environmental objects (particularly for gameplay purposes). Strangely enough, your characters do not interact with the grass or the bushes while moving. There are also numerous pop-in issues, and some shadows can appear pixel-y when you’ve zoomed in (or during cut-scenes). The lighting is also not as advanced as the one we saw in Diablo 4.
All in all, the performance of Baldur’s Gate 3 on the PC is amazing as it can run smoothly on a wide range of PC configurations. For what it’s worth, we’ve not experienced any crashes on both DX11 and Vulkan. However, as we’ve said, we did experience some annoying stuttering issues in DX11 after a prolonged period of gaming. Other than that, though, there is nothing to report. The game works wonderfully with K&M, and it has proper K&M on-screen prompts. Not only that, but it has a completely different UI menu and controls when gaming with a gamepad. This is a polished PC game, though it would definitely benefit from RTAO, RT Shadows, and RTGI. It’s a shame that it doesn’t support these Ray Tracing effects given its low GPU requirements!
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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It’s remarkable that the GTX 980 Ti is still somewhat relevant today 8 years after it’s release. I had one until about 4 years ago and it truly was one of the best GPUs I have ever owned.
980ti is basically the same as a laptop 2060m just newer tech involved so dlss would surpass it afa fps. 1660 super desktop card equivalent but that has no dlss to help w fps. So it really helps that he keeps it and other older cards in there to guage perf of even somewhat modern cards and low end latest cards. A 3050ti laptop would be same or just above a 2060m. Much smaller audience uses 4xxx cards and most are 1650/1060.
people say that act III in Baldurs Gate itself the perfoamce is horrible. Steamforums are flooded with people crying out loud that game is unoptimized and very piss poor performance in Act III.. Larian is investing it. Framedrops are very heavy even with RTX 4090 drops down to 45fps in 1440p.
Im still wandering around act II so cant confirm..
I’m currently finishing Underdark so when I get to Act III, I’ll report back (if there is a severe performance issue, I’ll publish an article about it).
how is the underdark so far you? It crashes for me very often(5-10min intervall only in fights and dialogue) with a 7900xtx and the 5800x3d.
No crashes on our system. Yesterday, I was playing for over three hours (non-stop).
thats so weird. I just tried it again and it crashed after 5min at grymm forge…
i played around 10hrs with small breaks (game was always open) after 7hrs it started laging so i closed it about 15 minutes after that lag gone
I’m on Act 3 after playing for about 30 minutes the stuttering gets so bad and i have to relaunch the game. I’m on a 2080ti i7 8700k 32GB Ram. At first i thought it was vram related and that it was swapping but i checked usage and I never used more than 75%. CPU is also not getting maxes out on any cores.
Game engines need to be written in Rust.
If you say you reboot the game after X hours and the issue disappears, it indicates a memory leak.
Of course Larian probably already detected this issue with profilers, and will release a fix monday-tuesday.
Still, C++ need to be phased out. Microsoft is rewriting the Windows Kernel in Rust and Linux added Rust kernel support. Linux DE environment like PoP!OS are being rewritten in Rust too. Why are games still using a language like C++ that is incredibly prone to memory leaks in 2023, it leads to issues.
Memory leaks are not not the fault of the programming language, they are the fault of the developers (if that’s even what’s happening here). Memory leaks are a bug due to mistakes in code, and if it is really something that’s happening then it’s something that QA should have caught if it really is as simple as play the game for extended periods of time and a memory leak happens.
That being said, unless you actually see the memory usage of the process increasing over time and never decrease, then you shouldn’t just assume it’s a memory leak. The comments on their article made it sound like this isn’t actually a problem, so it could be something unique to DSOGaming’s equipment. Maybe the VRAM on their graphics card gets unstable with prolonged use, or maybe they have another application on the system causing issues.
It is the fault of the programming language.
C++ is not memory safe.
Everyone from Microsoft to the US government and NSA have adivsed to use memory safe languages instead of C++. (Rust, C#, etc).
What you’re mistaking for a fault in the programming language has to do with something called “garbage collection”. C++ doesn’t do this automatically in order to improve application performance, leaving it to programmers to write their own garbage collection into their code. If programmers make a mistake, and forget to do garbage collection here and there, that leads to issues such as memory leaks.
Now as for promotion of these alternative languages, C# is a Microsoft .NET programming language, so of course Microsoft promotes it. As for Rust, you’re the only one I’m seeing promote it, although I’m sure Mozilla promotes it as they were the ones who created it.
The so-called “memory safe” programming languages that the NSA was promoting were ones that are less susceptible to certain security vulnerabilities, and they were promoting them for things that need better security by design (software that handles important data, financial systems, etc). That being said, code written in C++ can also be “memory safe” if developers take proper security into consideration when they write their code. In single-player games this is not really an issue, although in multiplayer games it becomes necessary to ensure that tampering with the game isn’t easy (granted that’s often left up to an anti-cheat rather than good game design).
That just tells me you have no idea what you’re talking about. Critical Windows 11 kernel parts are all programmed in Rust.
If you’re looking at your screen right now on a Windows PC, you’re looking at Rust code, since the Windows GDI was reprogrammed in Rust.
You can find all these Windows system files coded with Rust on your own Windows system yourself, they’re the *_rs.sys files. If you’re on a Windows 11 PC, you’re running Rust code, simple as that.
I’m on Windows 10…
You also seem to have read some news article somewhere, and misunderstood quite a bit of it. Or maybe the article was written by someone who didn’t understand the topic. Either way, Rust doesn’t seem to be automatically better than C++, it just makes it easier to avoid making memory related security mistakes when writing code and has better debugging.
Performance-wise it doesn’t sound like Rust is any better than C++, and as long as proper QA is done memory leaks are going to be discovered and squashed before an application (such as a game) is released. When that doesn’t happen, it’s the fault of the development and QA processes, and not the fault of the programming language. C++ has been used to make games for more than a decade (possibly more than two) and memory leaks have not been a major problem, because until recently game developers have actually debugged and fixed such issues before releasing their games.
What a random take.
the game is super woke but under overwhelming content you may not care to notice it
in the last 10 years there is “wokism” inserted into any western game in subtle ways and not subtle ways, but if the game is great then I can live with that, my mind is not that feeble that some devs(or whoever shove those stuff in) opinions will change my mind when I play their games.
You shouldn’t support them though. Always pirate and never purchase their games.
The game is very good, so am i can forget these anoying wokism moment.
Anyway i have mostly kill all woke compagnon in the games
Yup, game’s so good that the usual right-whiners have remained quiet.
Give your money to Larian! champs of LGBTQIA+ inclusivity!!!
You really should kill yourself
How many furry chads have fokd u while playing the GOTY, mate?
Ok 🙄
Your wrong but it’s ok if you believe that. Am happy for you
no really liking the visuals a bit too last gen and oversaturated colors that dont feels natural, but at least it runs well so i guess we got that.
in the last 10 years there is woke inserted into any western game in subtle ways and not subtle ways, but if the game is great then i can live with that, my mind is not that feeble that some devs opinions will change my mind when i play their games.
Thnx for share.. Very best post. Ty.
So is this similar game to tw3? thought I’d pass since I’d have to find 100gb+ room but if it’s that good might give it a go eventually. Not into turn based if it has that though. dx11/vulcan really helps lower end and older cards nice they included that.
no its not similair in any way. The witcher is a hack and slash game. This is more of a tactical turned base game. 4 party members. The witcher is just Geralt and you need to press buttons to attack. In BG3 you give commands. So totaly different.
Review without Act 3. Clown post.