Bloober Team has now lifted the review embargo for its new third-person survival horror game, Cronos: The New Dawn. The game runs on Unreal Engine 5 and supports both Ray Tracing and DLSS 4. As such, we decided to test those features first before doing our full PC performance review.
For these Ray Tracing and DLSS 4 benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and NVIDIA’s RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 581.15 driver.
Cronos: The New Dawn does not feature a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our tests, I used the first building you find in the game. From what I could see, this was one of the most demanding areas early in the game. So, it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of it runs.
Cronos: The New Dawn takes advantage of Software Lumen by default. Once you enable its Ray Tracing setting, the game switches to Hardware Lumen. This is similar to what we saw in Silent Hill 2 Remake. Thus, you’ll get higher quality AO and reflections.
At Native 4K/Max Settings with Ray Tracing, the NVIDIA RTX 5090 pushes a minimum of 33FPS and an average of 36FPS. For comparison purposes, the same GPU pushes 50-54FPS at Native 4K/Max Settings without Ray Tracing.
By enabling DLSS 4 Quality, we were able to get to a VRR territory. In other words, our framerates were between 55FPS and 59FPS. Then, by enabling Frame Gen, we were able to get to 100FPS. For most gamers, this will be the best way to play the game. Owners of an RTX-50 series GPU can also use MFG X3 and X4. With MFG X3, we got to 138-154FPS. Then, with MFG X4, we went over 175FPS at all times.
The DLSS 4 MFG implementation is quite good. Since this is a slow-paced game, you won’t notice a lot of visual artifacts. I was able to create numerous artifacts by moving the camera as quickly as possible. However, you won’t be moving the camera as wildly as I did in the following screenshots. To be honest, MFG looks fine here. It’s not among the best implementations I’ve seen, but it’s also not among the worst. Personally, I believe the best option is MFG X3 as it can provide a smooth gaming experience with minimal visual artifacts.
For those wondering, I did not experience any major input latency issues. Let’s not forget that the base game was running with 55-59FPS. Not only that, but this is a slow-paced game. So, if you own a high-end RTX-50 series GPU, you will be able to enjoy MFG X3 and MFG X4.
Our PC Performance Analysis will go live later this week. So, 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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Any stuttering John? Last years Silent Hill 2 was rough.
It's better than Silent Hill 2 Remake. There are some traversal stutters. Sadly, though, there are also some shader compilation stutters (even though the game has a shader compilation process before starting it. Apparently, that process does not catch all the shaders).
Good to know before going in, thanks man!
30fps on a 2000€ GPU, ok.
Just the usual UE5 disaster.
30fps Buhahahaha
ah that old UE5's smell. reeks of smeared TAA and bland GI.
That new* UE5 smell.
Game is running UE 5.5.
how long till we reach unreal engine 6 and they still fixing broken features on 5?
UE4 released in 2014 and we’re getting new games still released on UE4, 11 years later
for those wondering yes performance is bad & yes there is stutter, stutter will mostly occur in loading new areas & yes it is kinda frequent, except same stutter like dead space remake
Those native numbers are downright f***in abysmal.
What an embarrassment the 50 series is.
Multi FG = Multi F**king Garbage !!!!!!!!!!!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dd8df3256149a887950e32e66b99c67b3540dfb1f9ad44d641cc1921abaa9a9c.png
In this minimal room, I get 115 fps in 4k with DLSS Balanced and Framegen. Without Ray Tracing.
So the real fps is around 55.
On an RTX 4080 Super…
Congratulations Bloober and Epic.
Game actually looks worse than Mass Effect 2/3 "a lot of texture mods" I was running at 4k upscaling via GeDoSaTo in 2013 on a R9 290. The funny thing is that game also ran stupidly better with frametime/latency.
Unreal 3 games btw.
*modified unreal engind 3 games.
The only mod was texturepacks an ini edit and we had to do a DX 9 large memory address patch cus you would run out of memory without it. The old engine is still streaming them in though.
DLSS doesn't exactly double the FPS; it usually provides a boost of around 80%. Your framerate without FG was probably around 63-65fps.
John's most anticipated mouth watering game rocking glorious 33 fps on a mere 5090. Truly Unreal gaming experience
just posting it again how accurate this is lol https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4e4acedd0f352816f12bbca21be827c712ea8370cef20dff39752caa77997d24.gif
Totally off-topic, I see that GOG is adding lots of mods recently.
And nope, this isn't a picture of the official website.😅👍
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b8943f1a8fa8c3614219b231341ab012010c70e43188b952262f3cea1ca47544.png
I went to gog to check if this is indeed the picture they used for ashes 2063, that gun is from the new episode that has not come out yet. Also gmdx is there but not revision because that guy has not updated the gog version of the mod for ages.
IF you had real game journalism (unlike that clown RT evangelist at Digital Foundry) they would tell you that all this real time lighting is not about better games or even better looking games. It's about quick development time, maximizing CEO and suit bonuses and passing the expense to the gamers in the form of absurd performance overhead compared to baked lighting and shadows.
We are now at the point where 2017 games like Battlefront 2 look quite a bit better than modern games and can run at 4k on a toaster, with much better latency, no stuttering and frametime problems caused by all this real time BS that doesn't even look good half the time.
This game looks like dogsht@, just like the Metal Solid remake. A GTX 4060 can produce better visuals than the 5090 does in this game, if the games companies and GPU makers weren't fleecing the users. IF you had companies and publishers that game a single f@%^ about gaming and gamers you would see a push for AI to help with the baking/development tools instead of passing all the cost on to the gamer as if we are a special effects firm creating scenes for a movie.
These games all suck. Let the entire industry go under until they figure it out. Go play Doom 2016 again at 4k and wonder how the actual f@^# baked lighting looks more impressive than this and since it does why in the he@# are we running all this in real time.
yup, its about fast development fast porting and not bothering with placing fake shadows everywhere.
Cronos looks average at best and has much higher requirements than a typical UE5 game. However I'm surprised you think that MGS Delta looks unimpressive. I played this game and it offers an incredibly detailed jungle environment thanks to Nanite technology and looks photorealistic at times.
Tree in MGSD
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e3889b0346b1585546d156ffe3f22607aeee3bf119954e1c58c612faac7742c3.jpg
Can you find more detailed tree in battlefront 2?
As for the aforementioned Doom 2016, I played Doom Eternal lately and this game supposed to look even better. There's a reason why this game runs at 600fps even with maxed out settings. Doom has dated graphics by todays standards.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c1fe54e1c9204e371b3129b3befbf14c381e173b41ac79e754de234a21af99a9.jpg
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https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d23512cb395e47fa88d162536c6818e8639c07522f838b0bd34e4cdbbffff4ed.jpg
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You can youtube search a video from NINE YEARS AGO "Star Wars Battlefront Real Life Mod – 4K 60FPS" from jack frags. I would link it but they don't allow links here.
1080Ti's look better than the games now lol. The fact that one is a multiplayer game with 40 people running around and the other is a stuttering SLOW stealth game is the icing on the cake.
Also texture packs exist. Using textures/vram hit as proof a game looks good in a zoom situation is laughable. That's like me picking some stupid8k texture from a Skyrim mod and saying it>Metal Gear remake.
Doom didn't use insane textures because it was pointless when you are playing at the FPS you are playing at and Eternal was you running around parkouring at the speed of light and install size is also a thing.
People were not accepting of gigantic games back then with textures and even then BATTLEFRONT STILL LOOKS BETTER lol. The lighting is better, the overall picture is better, the shadows are better.
No person would sit there and look at both games and say Metal Gear Remake>Battlefront 1. The fact one is played on 1080ti's and the other is played on a 5090 just makes you look even dumber.
People played these games with the vanilla textures, and I haven't heard of a texture pack for Doom Eternal that replaces all of its textures. But even the best texture pack will never make low-poly models look as good as the ones found in UE5 games, which can use almost unlimited geometry to model small details.
As for that Battlefront 2 video you mentioned, I found it and the scope of this mod seems to be limited to just SweetFX for contrast and colour adjustments. Battlefield 2 features beautiful scenery and plenty of on-screen action, but what makes MGSD stand out is the quality of its assets and the real-time lighting that grounds objects in the scene realistically. It's very difficult to judge the quality of assets in Battlefront w based on heavily compressed YouTube video, especially if the person recording the video shows fast gameplay and wasn't looking at the assets up close.
if you would share screenshots from Battlefront 2 showing assets from up close they would look no better than shadow of the tomb raider.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2b8afcc08cdcc3fadf4fe12f32861b7c924fda4d53bd0d56400c43537466f264.jpg
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Here's for example I managed to grab a screen capture from that Battlefront 2 video when terrain was up close. The rock details are made from bump mapping, while the underlying geometry is limited. PS4-era games like battlefront 2 often looked great when you were just admiring the scenery, but close-up details revealed limitations. There's a reason why battlefront 2 runs at 4K eveon on the 1080ti.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2146f48dd2e014fe3f05d9a55d5293be4d272687671e253f910f64814f889bff.jpg
I might even download Battlefront 2 and create my own comparison to demonstrate this game's true quality, as compressed YouTube video only hide it's asset quality.
MGSD has much higher requirements becasue it use high polycounts and real time lighting. Those who know where to look can appreciate the attention to detail in MGSD graphics. Also MGSD doesnt need the RTX 5090 to run at 60fps if you only use the right settings. I'm using 4080S and I'm playing MGSD at 4K DLSSQ with high settings preset at around 75fps and 120fps with FG. I saw YT videos and even 9600XT can run it at 60fps with the high settings (1440p FSRQuality, high settings). MGSD also has ZERO stuttering on PC as confirmed by digital foundry analysis. You made things up just to prove your (false) point.
MGSD look often photorealistic, especially with RTX HDR (15-20fps hit but it's worth it). Rock formation even in the distance has cleary visible details (polygons) instead of fake bump mapping and the lighting grounds vegetation perfectly with the scenery, so everything look natural to the human eye.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/98fa55231d63124b039b08ea6a15656e8dc6cdbe3380c155b1a667fe7eb0e0cf.jpg
Screenshots in SDR doesnt look as good, but people still can see how detailed assets this game has.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/16522d7477a7c4d87694d265b84634a5f28bda359772e3c195a4ddfa8073937c.jpg
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Battlefield 6:
Houses collapse, you can shoot everything, everything breaks, large open areas, and yet the game performance is good.
MGS Delta, Cronos, Silent Hill 2:
Linear, small areas with 1-2 enemies. Yet the performance is poor.
The graphics are also poor.
Honest truth right there
-1080p
-Lowest Settings
-Almost nothing on screen
-🚨UNREAL ENGINE 5🚨
Game drops to 45fps…….in 1080p low……on $300 RTX 4060….GPU at 97%:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c3b2264ce06b1907eefb1520794eff6eb4d37ca87b5fca318136d5631c99ee7c.jpg
Shame…
That video yours?
How do you get an overlay like that?
Custom overlay using MSI Afterburner+RivaTuner. You can ask @GeraltBenchmarks on YouTube for the sauce; he usually replies to comments.
when crytek made crytek they assumed that cpus will continue to get better, so they made it so the higher settings are for newer cpus, but then we found out that no, thats not possible, it took a long time to get over 4ghz so they use multicore rendering instead, crytek did not so it runs bad, same with old bethesda games like morrowind and new vegas. When epic made unreal engine 3, they saw how trash the consoles are and started ripping it apart with a crowbar, no dynamic lighting or shadows, the nerfed it so it runs on consoles. Well with unreal engine 5 they went the opposite route, they assumed that the new hardware will be much better but instead we got diminishing returns and absolute refusal to put more than 8gb of memory in the basic models while most console games use 10-12gb.
On top of that unreal engine 5 is terrible and this is how we got here.
I found this video, and that 45 fps dip was caused by traversal stutter during assets loading. With these settings, the game runs at an average of 70 fps on the RTX4060.
This is the problem with gamers. Look at this review.
"45 FPS on my $2,000 RTX 5090. But the graphics look cool. Thumbs up!"
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2c1102b85a1fe2ca1574117d59b1e6f3c094caba1fbca4f55f9f7503c1ea472.png
SH2 looks better imo
45 fps is unplayable, id rather have 30. Thats how bad it is.
Also people are like "muh graphics" but the game plays like a mediocre x360 game, it looks so boring and combat is so pathetic.
That makes no sense. A frame rate capped at 45fps with G-sync is still 50% better than 30fps.
So now people practically have to buy 50xx series cards JUST to use proprietary software that allows you to have PLAYABLE framerates?! If I wanted that kind of BS, I'd buy an Apple Mac. These publishers and devs can shove it where the Sun don't shine.
I'll happily go without their "bleeding edge stuttering crap" if I want to play any decent games. I reward those who put in the effort, not those who expect me to shell out $2K just to play a f*king game.
Bloobertards screwed another one.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/25a30f0ec351375f90753f0ce96c3c98416f430e36d831f87228fd21396e9260.png
Native 4k + RT. No comment…
The sound and music are awesome, and the atmosphere is spot on. I have however mixed feelings about the graphics. It doesn't look as bad as the YouTube videos suggested, but there are problems that affect my impression of it negatively. Blacks are lifted way too much and with milked contrast the perception of detail is negatively affected. Another problem is flickering noise around dim lights. I havent seen such strong flickering in other UE5 games, not even close to that. If these problems would be fixed this game would look decent.
Knowing that the game bring the 5090 to it's knees with maxed out settings, I selected high settings with software lumen, and at 4K DLSSQ I saw around 62-75fps (110-130fps with FG). Not bad for a game, that supposed to be unplayable. I also tested the HW lumen. The performance dropped significantly (to 48-65fps with FG) and although flickering / noise was decreased a lot I still saw these problems. On top of that HW Lumen caused stuttering in this game. Apparently (according to tech youtubers), precompiled shaders do not include hardware lumen, but just software lumen. I really dont understand why HW lumen looks so bad and run so poorly in this game. Even Path Tracing doesn't run that badly in Black Myth: Wukong.
4K DLSSQ + FGx2, high settings, software lumen.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4ca2ba6e91b9efa267e7b4348e42c310894d94dce34944d9674999f044ae8dec.jpg