CODE VEIN is a new anime action RPG that is heavily inspired by Dark Souls. The game uses Unreal Engine 4 and since it just came out, it’s time to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.

For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3600Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580 and RX Vega 64, NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, GTX980Ti and GTX690. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce driver 436.30 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.9.2 drivers. NVIDIA has not included any SLI profile for this title, meaning that our GTX690 performed similarly to a single GTX680.

Bandai Namco has added a respectable amount of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Anti-aliasing, Post-processing, Shadows, Textures and Effects. There are also options for Draw Distance, SSAO, Motion Blur, VSync, Film Grain, Materials and Depth of Field.

In order to find out how the game scales on multiple CPU threads, we simulated a dual-core, a quad-core and a hexa-core CPU. Unfortunately, CODE VEIN is yet another game that relies heavily one CPU core/thread. While the game can use up to four CPU threads, it mainly stresses only one. Due to these mediocre multi-threading capabilities, the game does not scale well on CPUs with more cores/threads. This may also have a performance hit on older quad-core CPUs.

Now the good news here is that the game does not appear to require a modern-day CPU for gaming with 60fps. At 1080p and on Max settings, the game run with a minimum of 90fps and an average of 118fps on our simulated dual-core CPU. That was with Hyper Threading disabled. When we enabled Hyper Threading, we saw a noticeable performance increase.

As always, we also tested our older Intel i7 4930K CPU. Despite the game’s mediocre multi-threading capabilities, it was able to run smoothly even on that CPU. Naturally, we were CPU-limited at both 1080p and 1440p, however we were getting more than 60fps at all times.

CODE VEIN does not also require a high-end GPU. Most of our graphics cards were able to offer a smooth gaming experience at 1080p on Max settings. Even our AMD Radeon RX580 was able to push more than 80fps at all times.

At 2560×1440, all three of our tested GPUs were able to offer a 60fps experience. As for 4K, our AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 came close to a 60fps experience. On the other hand, our NVIDIA RTX2080Ti had no trouble at all running the game.

Graphics wise, CODE VEIN does not bring anything we haven’t seen in other UE4 games. There are some cool special/particles effects, however the game also suffers from a lot of low quality textures. Thankfully, its art style is amazing and makes up for all of its graphical shortcomings. Not only that, but the game at least runs great for what it’s displaying on screen, so that’s a plus.

All in all, CODE VEIN runs extremely well on the PC. While it does not pushes the graphical envelopes of current-gen third-person games, it looks good and runs great. We also did not experience any mouse acceleration or smoothing issues. And even though there is no FOV slider, we did not have any issues with the camera viewpoint. So while it may not be graphically impressive, CODE VEIN definitely performs well on the PC.

Enjoy!

John Papadopoulos

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