Cities Skylines 2 will release in a few days and from the looks of it, it will be one of the worst-optimized PC games of 2023. According to some early benchmarks, this new city builder runs with 7-12fps on an Intel Core i9 13900KS with an AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX at 4K/High Settings.
PCGamesHardware got access to the game and shared some early benchmarks. And, as we can see, the game performs horribly on AMD’s most powerful GPU.
At 4K/High Settings, the game can drop to 7fps and usually averages at 12fps. Even with AMD FSR 1.0 at 50% resolution scale, the game cannot come close to 30fps. Let me repeat that. With AMD FSR 1.0 at 50%, so basically with an internal resolution at 1080p, Cities Skylines 2 runs at 25fps on the AMD RX 7900XTX. Ouch.
Cities Skylines 2 is using the Unity Engine and from what we know, it does not feature any Ray Tracing effects. So, I’m curious to see how PC gamers will react to this game which appears to look and perform worse than any of the recently released Unreal Engine 5 titles. Oh, and all the UE5 games use Nanite and Lumen, two features that can provide a huge visual improvement over what Unity Engine is currently capable of.
For what it’s worth, Paradox Interactive has not provided us with a review code. Given the game’s poor performance though, I’m not that surprised. Still, we’ll be sure to test and share our initial performance impressions when Cities Skylines 2 comes out.
It’s also worth noting that Colossal Order warned everyone about these PC performance issues. In a shocking statement, the team stated that while it has not achieved the benchmark it was targeting, it will go ahead and release the game. And, to be honest, I really feel sorry about the developers. This decision was made by the management and not by the ones working on it.
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.”
Contact: Email
Well done team! game’s ready to set world record.
Seriously, 2023 is shaping up to be the year with the most poorly optimized PC games.
-$10 indie and old-school games on GoG
-no DRM
-run at 60fps on a $50 GT 1030
vs
-$60 “AAA” games on Steam/Epic
-full of DRM/Denuvo
-stutter at 30fps on a $600 RTX 4070
So Nintendo Switch quality.
What’s the problem?
Nintendo finishes their games before releasing them.
You don’t find NPC all getting stuck at the same point in Zelda or Mario games:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/880bc42d607f43a15a8bcbd522de2f5474245924c418359afcd2e42cc75b05ac.jpg
Sure, but damn, get some capable hardware for Switch 2… I mean it doesn’t have to Ray Trace, but 60 fps+ should be mandatory for real.
Switch 2 “development consoles” are apparently already in the hands of 1st party developers (IGN). Switch 2 will likely be released in 2024.
Will likely be ARM based, which I like. Steam deck has very poor battery life, and it has a lot to do with their x86 AMD hardware.
It has far less to do with x86 vs. ARM than you think, but rather with overall power consumption:
A fully charged Switch only consumes 9 Watts in handheld mode, while AMD’s Van Gogh APU inside the Steam Deck consumes 15 Watts by default, all by itself.
Thankfully, Valve’s SteamOS allows adjusting the TDP of the APU on the fly, all the way down to just 1 Watt, meaning that less demanding PC games (comparable to Switch games) can be played for about equally long on the Steam Deck as you could on Nintendo’s Switch.
🤦🏻♂️
They don’t provide you with review code because you are a joke of a journalist John Papadopoulos
Yet another alt account because you are still bitter about John rejecting you as a Game Reviewer/Moderator here for 2 years now. Can you not fathom why he would pass you by? You aren’t competent to be a moderator here.
I’m looking forward to your review of this game. Can’t wait to see it.
How’s the clown car riding today?
If you are not a peasant, and get a good gpu like RTX 4080 (like I do), then the game will perform great (like I do).
Are you really this stupid? Do you believe that the threshold for ceasing to be a peasant is a $1,200 card? Really?
Change your alias to A*SWIPE. It suits you better.
So what you’re saying is you’re too poor to afford an RTX 4090.
If you waste money on 4090 you are an epic failure of a human being.
4080 is the only good gpu.
Wow, you really are not the smartest knife in the drawer. 4080 is one of the worst value GPUs ever released, and 4090 is actually decent value (just expensive).
Spoken like someone completely clueless about the current state of GPU….. How do you continue to fail through life so badly?
It’s reportedly getting the same performance on a 4090
“With DLSS 3 FG + FSR3”
It’s cinematic enough for a console release.
No problem. We simply need DLSS 4. Maybe DLSS 6.
Lol
DLSS is all we need. Paired with God Teir Lumen & Nanite you can’t lose. DLSS 7 will fix it all up.
lol
Yeah! Love to pay 1000€ HW for just an upscale software solution!
-$10 indie and old-school games on GoG
-no DRM
-run at 60fps on a $50 GT 1030
vs
-$60 “AAA” games on Steam/Epic
-full of DRM/Denuvo
-stutter at 30fps on a $600 RTX 4070
a 4070 can run everything at 60+ even at 4K
4070 is strictly for the peasant class and 1080p
You have brain damage huh?
4070 drops below 4k/60 fps in many games, not just Cities Skylines 2.
A 4070 in Lords of the fallen (native without DLSS) averages at 24fps in 4k (high settings).
If Alan Wake II is any indication, a 4070 will be lucky to get 30fps without DLSS trickery.
PC gamers with 40-series cards are getting screwed. And it’s not just due to the ridiculous price of the GPU, the games coming out are not properly optimized for PC at all.
While this will likely lead to backlash from PC gamers (although few have a spine left), by the time developers get the hint that this horrible performance followed by a litany of patches is no longer acceptable, another generation GPU will be out.
40-series is a lost generation. Overpriced GPU and PC games that are an unoptimized mess that need non-stop patches to make them half playable.
just buy 4090 and stop crying
BUT THE RTX THOUGH!
I like how it’s already running at only 15fps in the menu.
Single static background JPEG and the engine drops down to 15fps.
Btw, why does the game turn everything in a complete blur when the environment moves.
The UI and MSI Afterburner overlay are still sharp, but the game is just a blur.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7ac37ce85cccaa485fdf09493f82f02f4a14a9b05553e235027cffd7e98e9a0e.jpg
Motion blur blends between past frames. At 12 fps the frames are far apart so motion blur gets more aggressive trying to cover the gap.
Wow,just wow, this one’s creates a new underground floor for negative qualify scale.
No John, just crank all settings to low @640p & crank DLSS to max. Then watch the fps flow right though your eyes. Once you have DLSS, you don’t need anything else to be optimized. DLSS the will fix all problems. No need for developers to do any work anymore, DLSS will fix it all up for you man. Especially since as it’s using the lumen & nanite God Teir engine features.
If you get 4080 then you don’t need DLSS
Did he forgot to mention it runs horrible on 4090 as well?
You talking to a NVidia fanboy, which is why he didn’t even dare to post the official source for his claims.
The RX 7900 XT has exactly the same performance as the RTX 4090, if you check the source.
Imagine how bad that would look on NVidia, and John claims of the RTX 4090 being the best bang for buck.
The best thing I ever did was leave nvidia back in 2018 when my b Titan X died. While with nvidia for over a decade I never fanboyed. Because I started to notice what AMD did with their technology, they shared and made everything available to the competitor. The situation with Tomb Raider 2013 made me respect AMD and paved the way for my switch over. Because everytime nvidia have a new tech, the whole industry suffers
I honestly don’t care what other people use or like, we all free to do whatever the hell we want.
I however hate misinformation, John article is misleading cause he pretty much targeting AMD, despite the issues affecting NVidia even worse.
That type of fanboy nonsense is frustrating to see, especially in websites like DSO Gaming.
EuroGamer does the same with Sony, they always hating on Microsoft, is just disgusting.
I’ve used Intel, AMD and NVidia on multiple builds, and I guarantee you’ll never see me going around spreading nonsense, all brands have their strengths and weaknesses (I would never use AMD on a production machine, cause NVidia CUDA is just vastly superior).
so what happened with them gtx 1060 master race boys, they got very quiet lately or did they quit gaming already?
I would love them to be around tbh, but devs would have to optimize their games and who bothers lately?
DLSS is the future. With the Advent of God Teir Nanite & Lumen paired with DLSS 7 you don’t need devs to optimized. A change is gonna come to my fellow agents of stutter.
I’m GTX1060 master race and until today I play all games in high seettings, zero issues. Including Dyson Sphere Program that for what it does (much more than Cities Skyline 2) should be very heavy.
Not the GTX1060 master race fault, the devs are crapping on their coding.
No excuse. Devs are now willingly making sure their games are unplayable nowadays. Probably they are striking secret deal with nvidia
first devs hid their terribly optimized games. Now we got devs just blatantly announcing it’s going to be s##tty before release. LMAO! What a damn embarrassment how low standards have become for putting out games (garbage). I really hope nobody buys this. If the past 2 years hasn’t convinced people not to pre-order anymore, then there is no hope
As long as PC gamers keep buying these games, devs don’t care.
The new normal is that PC gamers will buy a game, regardless of technical problems. Developers know that PC gamers accept trash performance, with patches added later.
Cyberpunk proved it.
Lords of the fallen recently proved it too. It crashed, has major performance issues. But gamers were defending it on release, including on this site.
Cyberpunk 2077 proved a couple of things beyond a shadow of a doubt to anyone paying attention. It proved that the majority of gamers are heavily influenced by the hype from publishers and especially from gaming mainstream media.
The other thing is that the majority of gamers don’t even bother returning a game for refund even if it’s a turd so their thinking that they can always return the game for a refund isn’t relevant. For example CP2077 had around 8 million pre-orders. CDPR released a financial statement later that only 30,000 of those pre-orders were returned for a refund. That’s about 1 in 267 who pre-ordered returned the game for a refund. Incredible but true.
Yeah, that was a sad release for sure. Hope some “ohh a preorder button… lets press it” zombies wake up and think before they do it by habit and/or fomo… but ohh well who am I kidding!
Looks like John didn’t even dare to link the official source, cause the RX 7900 XT has exactly the same performance as the RTX 4090, the amount of BIAS on this website is getting ridiculous.
His fanboy eyes only see AMD when it comes to poor performance it seems.
Honestly this is within expectations these days. Where is the news value in this?
RTX6090 and 16900k will fix it. That’s the developer attitude.
“Welp, f*k it.”
Maybe by the time the backlash is over they can be finished converting it to Unreal… You know, if they abstracted their application code like good developers 😜.
Seriously though how is the LoD and dlss/fsr so bad? Where is nanite when you need it 🙁?
They really should just patch it with a “gimp” setting… Remove all details so much…. Ie. Cell shade it or something… The current graphics look fairly non-detailed as it is and it’s crippled.
So basically this….
* 350$+ of customer money piñata DLC’s down the road to get the complete game (Yupp skylines 1 total dlc’s break even that! Insanity v2.0)
* Crappy performance
So perhaps wait for a 400% discount to get a somewhat complete game by the time its optimized (if ever)
Do these people have no shame? How can you admit that your game is a pile of garbage and then release it anyways?
You can play in 1080p just fine is your hardware isn’t up for it. Truth is 4k gaming won’t magically work for all game genres soon. Optimization can only go so far.