Last week, Sony released its latest PlayStation game on PC, Ghost of Tsushima. Powered by Sucker Punch’s in-house engine, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC.
For our benchmarks, 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 552.44, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.5.1 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
Nixxes, who has handled the PC port, has added a respectable number of graphics settings. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Shadows, Terrain, Ambient Occlusion and more. There is also a Field of View slider, as well as support for pretty much all PC upscaling techniques. As such, you can use Intel XeSS, AMD FSR 3.0 or NVIDIA DLSS 3. And, as we’ve already reported, this is the first game in which you can use AMD FSR 3.0 Frame Generation with NVIDIA DLSS 3 Super Resolution.
Ghost of Tsushima does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, we used Castle Kaneda (and the open-world environment after it).
To see how the game runs with different types of CPUs, we simulated dual-core, quad-core, and hexa-core CPUs. And, to my surprise, even our simulated dual-core system was able to push over 60fps at all times. Without SMT (Hyper-Threading), there were some stutters on that dual-core system. However, when we enabled SMT, we were able to eliminate those stutters (and increase our overall performance).
Here’s a 4K screenshot on Max Settings, captured on our simulated dual-core system. And, honestly, I don’t remember when was the last time that PC system was able to push 82fps on Max Settings.
At 1080p/Max Settings, you’ll need at least an NVIDIA GeForce RTX2080Ti to hit 60fps. That’s on the NVIDIA camp. From what we can see, though, the game runs better on AMD’s hardware. Look at the gap between the NVIDIA RTX 3080 and the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT. Not only that but the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX was able to come really close to the performance of the NVIDIA RTX 4090.
At 1440p/Max Settings, our top four GPUs were able to offer framerates higher than 60fps at all times. As for Native 4K/Max Settings, the only GPUs that were able to provide smooth framerates were the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
Graphics-wise, Ghost of Tsushima is a mixed bag. For instance, the game’s art style and design are incredible. Tech-wise, though, GoT looks really dated. Textures are nowhere close to what we’ve been getting in the latest triple-A games, and the grass can sometimes look really flat. The character models are also old-gen-ish. Nixxes has added support for XeGTAO, but everything looks so dated. Contrary to Horizon: Forbidden West which looks incredible, Ghost of Tsushima is, graphically, a bit disappointing. As I said, though, its art style is what basically saves it from any harsher criticism.
All in all, Ghost of Tsushima is as polished as Horizon: Forbidden West. The game does not suffer from any stuttering issues and it plays wonderfully with mouse and keyboard. The addition of a FOV slider is also a nice welcome. However, the game would benefit from some Ray Tracing effects so that it could improve its lighting and global illumination. It looks like a PS4 game but hey, at least it runs great on PC. And, with the inclusion of XeSS, DLSS and FSR, you can further increase your performance.
Enjoy!
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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“Tech-wise, though, GoT looks really dated. Textures are nowhere close to what we’ve been getting in the latest triple-A games, and the grass can sometimes look really flat. The character models are also old-gen-ish.”
Its a PS4 game … not even cross-gen like Forbidden West … so obviously it’ll look a bit dated compared to HFW.
As long as the game is fine story and gameplay wise, I could care less.
Chasing shiny graphics led us to where we are at now.
I should specify – it attracted mainstream people who in turn completely ruined the industry.
“Chasing shiny graphics led us to where we are at now.”
A small correction: Chasing shiny console graphics. In a alternate universe, Crysis ushered in a golden age of high fidelity games exclusive for PC.
“I should specify – it attracted mainstream people who in turn completely ruined the industry.”
Big money demands mass market appeal, so there’s that.
Big money also attract suits and ties with predatory practices in mind. Sadly most of the “modern” gamers are gullible as all hell.
Big money also attract suits and ties with predatory practices in mind. Sadly most of the “modern” gamers are gullible as all hell.
“Its a PS4 game”
It’s supposed to be a PC game releasing in 2024. That is the bar. Imagine if Doom 3 came out with trash graphics and horrible performance at the same time and John Carmack went, “well, it’s an Xbox game”.
Nightdive has been remastering older games & releasing them in 2022/2023/2024 on PC … and we say “well, its an PS2/N64/3DO game”
They do offer some huge improvements, like dynamic shadows for shadowman remaster, it’s way better than the original games.
$1000 GPU + $60 game + required PSN account for co-op.
Just to watch the game drop below 60fps during the 6 hours of unskippable cutscenes of this trash.
As a bonus, it has wildly reported memory leaks, so be ready to restart the game just to watch the cutscenes all over again.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d0ff47533c4c3f5011e6934100914d24440d5a6a705d4b69dcfec328f962c933.gif
Yeah these games practically play themselves. I usually skip every cutscene in a game because I just don’t care. That’s the only thing I liked about doom 2016, ZERO CUTSCENES! You start playing immediately as the you press start.
Man doom was one of the very really optimized games too. Now days, we get crap one after another.
I think the graphics are great.
Not using state of the art but it looks great. And not BOTM (NINTENTO) – great, but actualy good.
The grass for example, i like the waybit was set, looks pretty natural.
Plus its easy to the eye, unlike AW2 for example whicj rather felt tiring at times (too great of details maybe?).
About stuttering, there is no stuttering during gameplay but there’s still some traversal stuttering.
I recommend checking out the optimization guide by BenchmarKing on youtube as there are substantial performance gains that can be had at the cost of a small visual quality loss. Screenshot of his vid with his recommended settings (I recommend using XeGTAO instead of SSAO though): https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a885d360e61b682bdf1c805c62fe48661266f63775fa9b3f25b732b37db64206.png
With those settings, his 3060 Ti ran the game at an average of 60FPS at 1440P and with DLAA, whereas with the very high preset the game ran at around 45 FPS or so.
Nice heads up, most of the time max settings are a waste of resources.
This game pushes my 4090 temp to 58, is this normal for a PS4 game?
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to compare Horizon Forbidden West to Ghost of Tsushima. The former was developed for PS5 as the main target platform from the outset (despite launching alongside a scaled down PS4 version also), while the latter was a PS4 exclusive that was later ported to PS5 and PC.
Way too demanding for what it is. I think many PC gamers are not truly aware of what their hardware can do.
Considering that it runs pretty great on the Steam Deck with SteamOS 3.6, I’d say it’s a good PS4 port by Nixxes.
Keep in mind that the best hardware in the world is worthless if you don’t have optimized software making the most out of it…
It should run better considering its old gen nature
“It looks like a PS4 game ”
because it is, this is why i dont agree this game is well optimized, for new systems that came in 2020 or high end 2018 systems? Sure but for a ps4 game its really demanding and not optimized for hardware that run ps4 games of that era maxed out.
“From what we can see, though, the game runs better on AMD’s hardware.”
Case an point it runs better on hardware that is more similar to consoles they did not optimize the game for old systems or nvidia,, its not a broken mess with stuttering or anything so its not a bad port or anything, but clearly at this points its hardware that cost more than a ps5 that are bruteforcing this game through and not some magical optimization.
Well said and my thoughts Exactly!!
another pointless max settings benchmark
Hey John, write something about this Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ft0N5oLfCc
https://www.nexusmods.com/ninjagaidenmastercollection/mods/292?tab=description
Holy sh*t this is awesome. They really turned the Ligma version into the real Ninja Gaiden 2.
I only played the Sigma version for the PS3, now i’m interested in trying this one out.
Enemy count reminds me of Musou game levels, except they strike hard.
This game pushes my 4090 temp to 58, is this normal for a PS4 game?
I read some of these comments and think i bet half of them havent even played the game on pc grass if flat been playing now for a couple hrs where is the flat grass need to go to spex savers textures are crap looks worse than hfw not one of tthe best looking ames out there even though the water texture could of done with improving and
I have strange issues with my Rtx 4070 using Dlss frame generation 4k dlss balanced i have cut sceanes crashes and broken graphics looking at the floor but if i use fsr frame generation i have no crashes no notable input lag and no broken graphics i did add Reshade and used Dlaa to stop the shimering of the grass but what a fantastic game.
Yeah at least there’s no denuvo so you can test it out for long time for free see how it runs on your pc. There are mods for cpu priority, async off for pascal- cards and such which help I’d think have not tried it yet. As far as hw usage for what you get visually it seems to be pretty badly optimized regardless of no bugs, fan bois etc
I think there’s still plenty of room for optimization considering how it runs compare to other PC games on the same hardware. But saying graphically it’s disappointing..? I think that’s very disrespectful. It’s not RDR2 it’s simple yes, but beautiful and the wind effects, cloth, vegetation physics are some of the best I’ve seen in videogames.
The ultra shadow setting eats the fps in some areas.
The game does run well. No stutters. Fairly consistent frame rates. Fully maxed out settings at 4K with DLDSR 2.25x and DLSS Quality gets around 90fps. While the engine itself is dated and characters don’t look anywhere near as good as in Horizon Forbidden West, I find the art style actually creates much more beautiful scenery that I have to stop and stare at because it’s a work of art.
Also using DLDSR + DLSS Quality combo at 4K makes textures on armor and such look stunning. Been having a blast playing it on OLED with HDR. Only real gripe I have is that I’m getting some black crush that I was able to alleviate in HFW with the black adjustment slider, which this game is missing. So in darker scenes you end up having to wash out everything to get rid of the black crush. Or just run around kinda blind. 😛
Every time I read the comments on this site, I laugh, but then I realize how truly silly and dumb the majority of PC gamers are, and I understand that there's nothing to laugh about.