Square Enix has just released Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade on PC. Powered by Unreal Engine 4, it’s time now to benchmark this new FF game 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 3800Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti and RTX 3080. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 497.09 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 21.12.1 drivers.
As we’ve already reported, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade comes with the most barebones graphics settings. PC gamers can only adjust the quality of Textures and Shadows. Hell, the game has more options for HDR than for adjusting its graphics settings. Not only that, but Dynamic Resolution Scaling is enabled by default, and there is no option to disable it. This is a big letdown, so that’s a yellow card.
Contrary to Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy 7 Remake does not feature any in-game benchmark tool. For our GPU benchmarks, we used the first area in Chapter One. For our CPU benchmarks, we used the first area in Chapter Two (which has a lot of NPCs on screen). We also used the Dynamic Resolution Disabler Mod which is a must for gaming at higher framerates at native resolutions.
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. And, as we can clearly see, the game does not require a high-end CPU. Without Hyper-Threading, our simulated dual-core was able to offer framerates higher than 60fps. However, we experienced major frame pacing and stuttering issues, which were resolved once we enabled Hyper-Threading.
We should also note that FF7 Remake uses mainly one CPU thread. As such, this may introduce additional stutters once this one thread maxes out. A workaround to this problem is to disable Hyper-Threading. When we disabled Hyper-Threading on our quad-core, hexa-core and octa-core systems, we experienced better frametimes and fewer stutters. Thus, and for most PC systems, we strongly suggest disabling Hyper-Threading for this game. We should also note that we are always running our games without any other program running in the background (which may explain why we don’t experience any additional stutters).
Most of our GPUs were able to provide a constant 60fps experience at 1080p/Max Settings. Hell, even the AMD RX580 came close to 60fps experience. So, even though the game does not provide a lot of graphics settings to tweak, we can rest assured that it will run with high framerates even on dated PC hardware.
At 1440p/Max Settings, our top four GPUs were able to provide a 60fps gaming experience. It’s worth noting that the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 runs significantly faster than the NVIDIA GTX980Ti, even though this game uses Unreal Engine 4.
As for 4K/Max Settings, our top three GPUs had no trouble at all running it. However, we should note that the NVIDIA RTX3080 was noticeably faster than the AMD RX 6900XT. This shouldn’t be happening, and AMD will have to improve the game’s performance via future drivers.
Now it’s time to address the big elephant in the room, the stutters that a lot of gamers have reported. Unfortunately, we did not experience any major stutters other than the traversal stutters that occur in most games. There were a few additional stutters after some cut-scenes, but we did not experience any stutters during combat or while standing still and panning the camera. And, to be honest, the game felt smoother than a lot of other PC games we’ve tested. For instance, it has way fewer stutters than Far Cry 6, Halo Infinite, or ICARUS.
As we’ve showcased, the game mainly uses one CPU thread. Therefore, we suggest disabling Hyper-Threading, which will increase your CPU threshold. We also suggest using high-speed memory modules, as well as running the game at 120fps (with the Dynamic Resolution Disabler). Do not limit it to 60fps as that may introduce some side effects. And if those fail to resolve some of your stuttering issues, we then suggest running the game in DX11 mode. You can do so by adding “-dx11” as a launch option to EGS.
Below you can find a video from the Slums area. As you can see, there is one major stutter at 1:03 and then two stutters at the end of the video. These are traversal stutters as the game loads new stuff during these scenes. So, while the game is not stutter-free (we never claimed such a thing), it’s nowhere close to a “stutterfest“.
Graphics-wise, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is absolutely beautiful. The game has some of the best character models we’ve seen, and Square Enix has managed to get really close to the CG models of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children. The environments also look great. Furthermore, players can interact (destroy or move) with some environmental objects. It’s not up to what other triple-A games have achieved, but it’s definitely something as its world does not feel as static as the ones in some other games.
Before closing, we should note that the Keyboard and Mouse work great in this game. Thanks to the mouse, you can easily move the camera during combat. We also did not experience any mouse acceleration/smoothing issues, and the game displays proper on-screen indicators.
All in all, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade runs pretty great on the PC. The game does not require a high-end CPU or GPU, and plays wonderfully with the mouse and keyboard. However, this does not mean that it’s a perfect product. The game has traversal stutters, and barebones graphics settings. Not only that, but it’s priced at 80 euros.
And, to be honest, this is the main reason why most people are disappointed by it. Final Fantasy 7 Remake is the first game that costs 80 euros on PC (at least in its standard version). So, for 80 euros, you’d expect some premium features. You’d expect some extended graphics settings, a benchmark tool, or some PC-only features like Ray Tracing or DLSS. Instead, the game feels like a quick cash grab. It’s inexcusable for an “80 euros” game to not even have an option to disable Dynamic Resolution Scaling (which was most likely carried over to PC from the PS5 version). And while the game performs great on PC, we do not recommend getting it… at least until it drops to a more reasonable price.
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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“Unfortunately, we did not experience any major stutters other than the traversal stutters that occur in most games”
How’s that unfortunate ?!
It is for those that are convinced that the game has major stuttering issues. For everyone else, this is good news.
John, the stutters start in chapter 3, when you reach the Slums, and later another bad area is Wall Market. Benchmarking the opening stages was, sadly, useless. Still good work tho, but ultimately irrelevant because nobody has had any problems with the opening areas. You could consider doing a brief little “re-test” once you reach the Slums in chapter 3, as it is impossible to miss the big freezes and hiccups.
Just beat Chapter 4. There are some stutters in the Slums in daytime but those are traversal stutters (the game loads stuff), and they are similar to those of KENA and Halo: Infinite. This is nowhere close to a stutterfest.
Alright. I found those stutters pretty egregious, but it’s not something worth arguing about. Enjoy the game!
If you found them egregious, you should stay away from KENA, Halo: Infinite, Far Cry 6, Sonic Colors Ultimate, ICARUS and The Medium. All of these games have WAY WORSE stuttering issues. We’ve tested all these games and I know for a fact that all of them have worse stutters.
I also don’t know what’s wrong with Alex’s PC system, but Rivatunner catches ALL of the stutters we’re experiencing in FF7R (he claims that it does not, that’s inaccurate). Rivatunner even caught some minor stutters that you wouldn’t be noticing them unless you were looking directly at the frametime graph.
Never understood what people find soo special in these FF games TBH . I tried FF XIII & few others and they are all boring , dialogues are lame and the story doesn’t even makes sense to me . Can someone explain what these Final fantasy games are about ?
7, 8 and 9 were good, 10 was mostly graphics, it sold so well it got a sequel x2, but it sucked. 11 was the mmo that sucked and was later re launched and renamed 14. 12 was so much different than the previous games so some like it some dont. 13 was awful everyone hated it and how linear it was, even more than 10, for some stupid reason they turned it into an entire trilogy. 15 was a dumped down open world game. Long story short if you dont find the story in 7 8 or 9 good, dont bother. 8 has a stupid junction upgrading system which means that if you dont customize your character right you cant finish the game, it doesnt matter how strong you are as enemies are capped to your level.
Incorrect. 11 is 11. 14 launched and did horrible then relaunched as Reborn.
Hmm I remember beat FF VIII on plasytation and have no issue regarding to player build to beat the game (im not using any guide by the way, internet is practically inexistence back then in where I live, and I just playing it too late ,circa 2000,for any magazine Im subbed to of having guide about it). So im curiously didnt knew that customization matter in FF VIII to beat final boss because Im just doing it blindly (Im lucky probably). What dissapointed for me with FFVIII is the non-existence of chocobo mini game (its using that pocketstation memory card to raise chocobo, that I didnt have) after having so much fun with FFIX chocobo mini game (that ukulelel theme is awesome). Oh, and yes I finished it backward FFIX, FFVIII and then FFVII as the last for one reason which is I got my Playstation pretty late (Feb. 2000). But Im lucky of that because I can get many games for cheap back then compared to when it being released for the first time.
Final Fantasy games are among the most AAA JRPG’s in history, they are the equivalent of the COD games in the west when it comes to budget, if you like the genre is most likely that you like at least one game in the series.
I think Dragon Quest qualifies more as the japanese COD. FF tries something different now and then, probably due to the fact that there are more western based fanbase.
For sure, is up there too in the JRPG classic series.
My comparison with COD besides the budget (which is quite high for japanese standards) comes for having the balls to have a Final Fantasy 15 (even when there’s like..30+ games in the series with spin offs and all)
It comes to a point where numbers only matter compared to the game’s budget. The FF spin offs are sequels to the mainline entries… mostly.
And one funny thing about DQ 11 is that some times they give you yes/no choices, but you can only advance by choosing yes, so i always choose no to see an alternative cutscene.
The stories are independent of each other. Plus they take several hours of playing before even starting to make sense. If you dont like them I recommend staying away from japanese style RPGs as they typically follow the same patterns for gameplay with variations.
Jrpg’s are quite stale as far as mechanic goes, i’m playing Dragon Quest 11 and the game is still the same simple combat mechanics from games from the 80’s or so. You can almost say they are retro games with modern graphics. I think FF15 at least tried to make things fresh with a fast paced combat, but ironically the jrpg mechanics did hold them back by making combat too easy. I find purist fans in this case funny because FF7 was never memorable because of combat.
I also played FF 4,6,7,8, 13, Vagrant Story, Phantasy Star 4, Wild Arms 2, Breath of Fire 4 and Xenogears. I think the golden era of them is on PSx or so.
I didnt reach that part yet (that it was in the og too, japs beings japs i guess)
But, the characterization of Cloud in the remake is really good, he is a likeable as*hole that is pretty much dead inside as he should, really good VO.
And Tifa is still hot regardless of the Ethic department (most women in the game are, the detail in the main characters is quite good), in her introduction Cloud clearly has a peak at her clevage and gets embarrased, but since she’s covered as a nun it doesnt make much sense, thanks nuSquare.
Barrett is the stereotype i was expecting like in the original (surprised by that given the current year), he’s still a funny dude.
Im liking what im playing so far, having in mind that this is a new FF7 (i like the OG but is not my favorite in the series), only in chapter 7 so far, we’l see how it goes.
“We should also note that FF7 Remake uses mainly one CPU thread.”
Ps3 game that was stuck in development h3ll, so they released it for ps4 but only the first chapter, it was filled with tons of blurry textures especially in long distance and you have to crawl through gaps in the walls due to wreckage ,this was done intentionally so the low ram of the ps3 can remove the previous area from memory and load the next one on it.
Don’t you mean PS4? It was FF15 that was in PS3 dev h3ll, and FF7R probabli shares some assets, or engine, i think they changed to U4 after a while.
disabling dynamic res and focing vsync though nvidia control panel fixed the stutter for me, 4k/60fps on a gtx1080 its not bad at all
It’s not that John’s work here was bad, it’s that he tested the wrong areas. The performance problems begin once you reach the Slums, and worsen in Wall Market. He didn’t reach those areas.
Alex Battaglia by DF says this is the worst porting ever made in recent years. The exact opposite is written here. What the f*k is the truth?
Stop taking DF word as gospel, the port is awful for multiple reasons…and you have plenty of those for the stutter too…like having low VRAM.
KENA, Halo: Infinite, Far Cry 6, Sonic Colors Ultimate, ICARUS and The Medium have way worse stuttering issues. That’s a FACT. My guess is that he’s disappointed about the lack of graphics settings, the price hike, the lack of PC-only features, and that it feels like a quick cash grab. However, if he’s saying it about the game’s stutters, then:
a) there is something really wrong going on with his PC
b) he is exaggerating because if FF7R is the worst port, what are the other games that have MORE stutters? Worst-worst-worst-worst ports?
He also said that Rivatunner did not catch some of the stutters he’s been experiencing, however Rivatunner’s frametime graph has been showing every stutter on our system (and I mean, EVERY, even those that were hard to notice).
Did you notice any difference in the game’s behavior between AMD and nVidia cards?
I haven’t tested the AMD GPUs in the Slums area, so I can’t comment for that particular area. However, there were no differences between the NVIDIA and the AMD GPUs in both our CPU and GPU benchmark scenes.
Well, yes, if you don’t only count the stutters.
Not only does it have stutters (can confirm it’s inducible), but it also has barebones options to fine-tune the experience for PC, including a way to at least disable DRS for systems with powerful enough hardware. I can forgive no advanced features like RT and supersampling, but all these missed expectations put it to very bad light.
Games like Koei Tecmo games (Atelier and Nioh) may not have many options, but then they run fairly well.
At the very least, games like Halo Infinite and FC6 have options, so some thought was put into making the PC versions accessible to more players…though I can also argue that having DRS in FFVIIR makes it accessible to even lower-end hardware in general.
Don’t get me wrong, as I wrote in the article, it’s a barebones port. We can all agree that its high price is ridiculous for this “PC game”. It’s ridiculous for SE to offer this game in such a state. And I sure as hell don’t encourage anyone to get it at that high price. But for $50, this is a must-have game. And, even without DRS, it runs way better than all of the other games. Hell, a mere RX580 without DRS can run it with 50-57fps at 1080p/”Max” details. Good luck running the other games I mentioned on that GPU, lol. And… it plays wonderfully with K&M (something that KOEI Tecmo has not figured out yet, with some of its games not supporting at all K&M and others having “simulated” mouse look). Performance is not the problem here, the problem is its high price alongside the fact that SE didn’t really bother with it.
I generally agree. After modding the game to remove DRS + other visual tweaks (via the Devconsole mod), the game looks great and is quite a sight to behold. The performance issues are definitely pretty jarring especially since my target is 120FPS but during the loading stutters, it drops down to 60-70, mainly while running around in the slums. I haven’t tried DX11 mode yet, but even if that doesn’t fix everything, it’s an issue I can live with.
I can definitely say it’s not one of the worst ports. Bad, not not worst.
DF is quite frankly an insufferable joke at this point. They’ve developed into nothing more than OP-EDs at this point and less objective opinions.
Lol what a joke of an opinion you have my boy
Not to defend the porting job of this demake I wouldn’t play regardless, Alex of DF has already proven himself not too long ago of being a complete Soyny shill and feminist cuck and has destroyed any trust I have in that group as long as that piece of garbage remains in their employ.
“Unfortunately, we did not experience any major stutters other than the traversal stutters that occur in most games.”
John, the stutters start in chapter 3, when you reach the Slums, and later another bad area is Wall Market. Benchmarking the opening stages was, sadly, useless. Still good work tho.
Article has been updated with a video from the Slums area. While the game is not stutter-free (we never claimed such a thing), it’s nowhere close to a “stutterfest”. In fact, and as we’ve already said, there are fewer stutters than in other games like Halo Infinite, KENA, The Medium and Far Cry 6.
For this video we used DX11 mode (FYI, we have similar results with DX12) and used Rivatunner to limit our framerate to 117fps (for taking proper advantage of our G-Sync monitor). We are also loading a new save file, so this is the “worst” case scenario as it shows the first run of the area.
las time this happened was with watchdogs and far cry 4, solution was to get a videocard with more vram.
That’s just brute forcing it with powerful hardware, hardly a solution. It’s like those kids who brags about not having peformance issues with top of the line hardware.
What a disastrous year for gaming. Luckily I just got to watch from the side since there weren’t any games I cared for this year. Long standing franchises putting out their laziest sequels ever. Everything else was either buggy, deceptively marketed, lackluster or a remake. Modders have been fixing a lot of these AAA games this year so I am indeed grateful to them.
After some modding and configuration, the game can have be made to produce decent performance. Something the modders on Nexusmods have discovered (that most folks aren’t taking about) is the fact that Squeenix deliberately hid the UE4 ini graphics setting files inside compressed .PAK files that have to be unpacked in order to be changed.
This abysmal state of release screams contempt, for the customer – the higher price point is the cherry on top. Over all, this release is a slap in the face to any sucker dumb enough to support. At best, pirate this game.
After some modding and configuration, the game can be made to produce decent performance. Something the modders on Nexusmods have discovered (that most folks aren’t talking about) is the fact that Squeenix deliberately hid the UE4 ini graphics setting files inside compressed .PAK files that have to be unpacked in order to be changed.
This abysmal state of release screams contempt, for the customer – the higher price point is the cherry on top. Over all, this release is a slap in the face to any sucker dumb enough to support. At best, pirate this game.
if you have the means to buy the game but choose not to because of high price than wait for a sale pirating games is bad you should not steal games. going into navadia control settings does work and is something i recommend doing.
Barebone because they knew games don’t sell on the Epic Games Store.
For that price it should have upgrades and options on par with XV(A game that still seriously needs patches for a lot of problems), along with RT effects and support for both FSR/DLSS, 4k UHD BD quality FMVs and obviously better CPU Threading code.
This just reeks of another one of Square Enix’s typical lazy ports done by a few interns on the cheap. (Hyperbole intended).
This is essentially their flagship Japanese AAA game. And a remake of their most successful SP RPG of all time. They also took the huge lump payment from Epic on top of all that.
What a joke.
nVidia or AMD?
Also – cheers to that profile pic 😉
Does this game have proper keyboard and mouse controls? I pirated Nier 1 and coudn’t put keyboard to work in that pos port.
Wow I am getting around 90 fps at true 1080P via the mod with no res scalling on a RX 590… Not sure what your problem is with that RX 580…
There can be more than 50% performance increase between a GTX980Ti Nvidia and a KINGPIN Edition … A more precise description of the hardware is welcome.
Playing it now and it plays much better with Hyperthreading enabled (on an 8700K anyway). Perhaps a patch improved things.