Last week, 2K Games released Mafia: The Old Country. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.
For our benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, and RTX 5080. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 580.88, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.8.1 drivers.
Hangar 13 has added a few graphics settings for PC players. You can change the quality of Textures, Shadows, Reflections, and more. The game also supports NVIDIA DLSS 4, Intel XeSS 2.0, and AMD FSR 4.0 from the get-go. But, Global Illumination only has two options: High and Epic. You can’t set it to Medium or Low. The devs said they did this so that the game can preserve its intended visual quality.
Mafia: The Old Country does not have any built-in benchmark tool. So, for our tests, I used Don Torrisi’s villa. This appeared to be one of the most demanding areas early in the game. As such, it should give us a good idea of how the rest of it runs.
At 1080p/Epic Settings, the only GPU that can go over 60FPS is the NVIDIA RTX 4090. Interestingly enough, this new Mafia game appears to favour AMD’s GPUs. As we can see, the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the RX 9070XT are able to match the performance of the NVIDIA RTX 5080. Similarly, the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT manages to beat the NVIDIA RTX 3080.
At both Native 1440p and 4K on Epic Settings, there is no GPU that can offer a 60FPS experience. The NVIDIA RTX 4090 manages to push a minimum of 42FPS and an average of 51FPS. So, I’m pretty sure even the NVIDIA RTX 5090 is not able to offer a constant 60FPS experience.
This should not come as a surprise, though. As I’ve already said, Lumen is a form of Ray Tracing. So, you cannot expect an RTX 4090, or even an RTX 5090, to run Lumen with 60FPS at Native 4K. Since there are only two options for GI, I assume we get Hardware Lumen on Epic and Software Lumen on High. In other words, Lumen is always enabled in the game, even when you select the Low preset.
By dropping the settings to High, we got a 28-48% performance boost at 4K on the NVIDIA RTX 4090. Our minimum framerate was raised at 46FPS. Thus, it was now possible to use TSR Quality and get a constant 60FPS experience.
Sadly, the game doesn’t get much faster when you use Medium or Low settings. This is because GI stays on High. I didn’t see any performance difference between High, Medium, or Low on the NVIDIA RTX 4090. So, if the game runs slow on High, you only have two ways to improve performance. You can either use a different setting for TSR/XeSS/DLSS/FSR, or enable Frame Gen.
As I wrote in my previous article, there are some visual issues with DLSS 4. I’ve tried AMD FSR 4.0, and I can report that it looks as good as TSR. AMD FSR 4.0 does not suffer from the visual issues of DLSS 4 and looks better than it. At 4K/High Settings, the AMD Radeon RX 9070XT was able to offer framerates over 60FPS at all times with AMD FSR 4.0 Balanced. That was without Frame Gen.
Graphics-wise, Mafia: The Old Country looks great. Thanks to Lumen, the environments look great and consistent. The character models look good too, even if they could be a little better. Still, they do their job well. Another cool thing is that most light sources cast shadows. Believe it or not, in a lot of games, a lot of light sources do not cast shadows. So, we at least get more dynamic shadows in this title. Honestly, there’s not much to complain about. Yes, this game needs a powerful PC, but it looks great. So, that’s a good thing. My biggest gripe with Mafia is the awful pop-in issues. I don’t know if this is a bug, but there are a lot of pop-in issues with distant objects. This shouldn’t be happening. So, here is hoping that the devs will fix it via a patch.
All in all, Mafia: The Old Country is really demanding on Epic Settings. On High Settings, it runs like most other UE5 games. For gaming at 4K, you’ll still need an upscaler. In my opinion, the game looks great. So, there is nothing wrong with using TSR/XeSS/DLSS/FSR to get the benefits of Lumen. Sadly, the Medium and Low Settings feel a bit meaningless, as they do not do much to the game’s performance. This is due to Lumen being enabled on all presets.
There is definitely room for improvement here. Still, this isn’t a “disaster” like some people claim. It’s nowhere near as bad as the launch version of MindsEye. I also didn’t experience huge stutters like those I’ve seen in Oblivion Remastered. So, while this isn’t the most optimized PC game, it’s not among the worst either. It’s a mixed bag.
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.”
Contact: Email
>Yes, this game needs a powerful PC, but it looks great. So, that’s a good thing.
Are you out of your mind? There are better looking UE5 games that also run better than this. Hellblade 2 for instance looks half a generation ahead and also runs 30% better. Seriously, stop simping for poor optimization, it's utterly embarrassing. You did this for Wuchang and you're doing it again here.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/196bcee50b6470dd9c6bcaa5c6cd6a0570cc6d588a6e7df8d72ba75eae7e6f81.gif
Hellblade 2 is a piece of art in terms of graphics/performance, and remains one of the most optimized games on PC. You should never expect this amount of expertise in smaller studios that do not have the resources Ninja Theory had. As I said, Mafia is a mixed bag. If you can’t understand simple things like these, you are simply delusional.
So optimization can only be achieved with big studios full of money? That's pathetic Johnny! There's nothing stopping you from writing toughtful articles other than your own ignorance. Same with these "smaller studios".
tsop writing bullsh*t to justify your ignorance.
optimization definition is not dependent on the studio. Your personal low level wrong perception of optimization, is not the reality john.
Really, then how do you explain the utter mess that is the Oblivion remake (also used UE5 BTW)? That was also funded by microsoft, and I'm sure it received more funding than Hellblade 2. Conversely, Robocop also runs better than this and they're a small team that I'm sure didn't get as much funding as microsoft studios do. Same with Expedition 33. And with the Alters. It goes on and on. It's almost like… No amount of dollars can solve a competency crisis. BIG SHOCK!
Seriously man, instead of getting uppity, take a step back and do some retrospection. I think one thing that can help you with this is if at the end of the year you did some sort of mega-benchmark with a slew of 2025 Unreal Engine 5 titles and compared them to see which are good and which aren't.
Oblivion Remastered has major issues with the way it loads its cells. It's the same issue from which the original version suffered. You'd expect the devs to fix this, but they dropped the ball. And no, that remaster did not receive more funding than Hellblade 2, which was a major exclusive game to Xbox (a "killer app").
Also, take a good look at the screenshots in this article. If you believe that this game looks worse than Clair Obscur, you really need to see an eye doctor (everything, from characters to the environments, looks better in Mafia).
Robocop has amazing environments, but it falls apart when it comes to its characters. They are bad, especially the secondary characters. The lip-syncing is also atrocious. I've finished Unfinished Business before playing Mafia. In terms of performance, though, it runs way better. But you have to keep in mind that it has smaller environments without grass (grass can hit performance hard).
Thank you for your concern, but my eyes work just fine. Technically clair obscur only looks a little bit worse than mafia. Certainly not enough to warrant the performance difference. Same with the other Unreal Engine 5 games. Face it, the visuals in mafia do not justify the massive performance hit.
I've already said there is room for improvement in terms of optimization. You are acting like I said <<This is a masterpiece of optimization>>. Did you even read the whole article?
I did. That still doesn't counterbalance the other part that I quoted your article on (i.e. "Yes, this game needs a powerful PC, but it looks great. So, that’s a good thing").
John…Mafia is nice to look at and no one doubts that, but it's simply too, TOO heavy to run!
Period.
I don't know if the problem here is UE5's poor optimization or the developers' laziness (because DLSS and Frame Gen will solve everything, right?), but a 5080 CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT GENERATE 55 FPS ON AVERAGE AT 1080P!
PERIOD AGAIN.
Ignore them, most don’t even have a decent PC and just sit around being toxic and complaining.
This is bait isn't it? Not even an rtx 4090 can maintain a steady 60fps at 1080p. Come on man.
we have a decent pc and it s obvious that a lot of games lack optimisation , what does having a decent pc has to do with this if we dont ?
i have 9800x3d + rtx 4090 , do you think 39fps is acceptable when as stated hellblade 2 runs 50% better at 4k and 90% better at 1080p and 1440p , while looking better ? devs dont make any effort to optimise games , this is a fact
On my PC (7800X3D, 4080S) both Mafia and Hellblade 2 runs exactly the same. I get between 40-55fps in both at 4K DLAA and actually hellblade 2 might run even worse after recent upgrade that added even higher settings preset.
People with high end PC's should be elitists and not low IQ baboons like yourself. They should be getting like 300 fps on 4k highest settings without upscaling or AI filters, or at least they would in the past decade, before they drank the Nvidia/AMD/Epic kool aid..
ninja theory is not a AAA studio either.
"stop simping for poor optimization"
John has been like this for a long time. He is not going to change. He is delusinal and he loves it. he doesn't know what optimized means at all
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UD1-oVJlU4M
Johnny is infected with the disease called "access journalism". He finally got big enough for these companies to send him expensive graphics cards and in exchange he will shill for absolute slop.
+ Mafia ToC is super linear.
– No world sim, and physics.
– No interaction with the world.
– Static vegetation and trees, both made from cocreate
– 99% of the NPC are the same height
– 3/4 of NPCs are the same models with slight re-touch and cloths change.
– Every character eyes are soulless.
I think there is some basic interaction with grass and the vegetation does sway. What's more important is that there are invisible walls everywhere which is ridiculous for a game like this.
UE5 games like Hellblade 2 and Black Myth: Wukong look better, but they are on a much smaller scale. Mafia: The Old Country is an open-world game and I noticed inconsistencies. Real-time global illumination (GI) is often incredible, especially indoors but I also saw poorly lit objects, as if dynamic GI wasn't even working. This is especially noticeable with dynamic objects, such as cars. The draw distance is very impressive, but sometimes the textures on distant mountains can look blurry. Overall, though, Mafia 4 has good graphics for an open-world game.
Mafia the old country performance is comparable to other UE5 games. With high settings and 4K DLSSQ I get between 62-85fps (average 75fps) with FGx2 120-140fps and I didnt noticed many stutters on my PC unlike other UE5 games. With DLSSP and FGx2 framerate is about 150-170fps and the image still look 4K like (I however recommend using E preset, because default K preset has bad shimmering around the grass in this game). I can even play this game with DLAA with around 60fps (using high settings), and that's not bad for a RTX4080S PC and game with RT.
This game doesn't exactly have traditional RT like some other titles though, it's more like a half-baked solution. And mafia isn't really open world, it's got invisible walls everywhere. And even in the screenshots that John posted, you can see that the INDOOR sections are dipping down below 50FPS. Utterly unacceptable.
Almost all open-world games have invisible walls.
John was probably using Epic settings. Mafia is much more demanding when fully maxed out. Also for some strange reason indoors can be more demanding.
For example, in this indoor scene I have 54 fps at 4K DLSS Quality (default settings/epic settings, except for shadows). I need to use the high preset to boost the framerate by 10–15 fps and achieve an average of over 60 fps (although I prefet to use DLSS FG).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/507f6e11bacc3dc8f75cae1738f70cdbc07b1526c431b59485356e10baa2d924.jpg
outdoors 70fps with the same default settings are much higher even without changing settings to high.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c605de8d54a9bedb91d0a331db69767bf0a0fada0fe49d276db0a7b55d46566d.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/99a8edd928e723937bc4f99459b4afac2610ac7da4224d0987f0508f71e6b823.jpg
The invisible walls in most open world games are nowhere near as bad as they are in mafia the old country. These frame rate values are still pretty awful given the high end gpu you’re running. This game is just poorly optimized, simple as.
Whether people consider Mafia to be a true open-world game is irrelevant, because the difference in scope compared to the best-looking UE5 games (such as Hellblade 2 and Black Myth: Wukong) is still massive, therefore, people can't expect the same level of fidelity in mafia. For example there's a noticeable difference in nanite quality between Mafia and hellblade 2. However, compared to other open games, the geometry in mafia is still very impressive. The rocks and ground surface in Uncharted 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 don't look nearly as detailed compared to Mafia The Old Country.
My RTX 4080S is a solid GPU and I'm very happy with it. That being said I'm not so sure if I can call it a high-end GPU, because the 4090 was the fastest GPU available when I bought my GPU, and now we have the 5090, which is often twice as fast as my RTX4080S (and three times as expensive :P). I think as of now my GPU is somewhere between midrange and high end.
So I'm using upper midrange GPU and keep in mind I'm playing games on 4K 240Hz QD-OLED monitor.
https://i.ibb.co/TQycSNL/DSCF0126.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/tQwN627/20240807-164729-2.jpg
Even PS5 ports using raster graphics are very demanding at 4K and "mafia the old country" is using Unreal Engine 5 that relies on software RT and nanite. The combination of 4K resolution and UE5 is brutal. As John has demonstrated many times, even the RTX 5090 cannot run these UE5 games at 4K with a high refresh rate without the help of AI.
Considering all of that I feel like I'm getting good performance from my GPU in Mafia considering the graphics fidelity in this game (I can nitpick things like lighting inconsistency, but still not many open world games have better graphics). Other than Robocop, UE5 games don't run any faster, and they often stutter when you're moving around the map (traversal stutters). Mafia on my PC is fairly smooth in that regard.
If I would still use 1440p monitor my framerate would be much higher. Here's my comparison between 4K and 1440p with default settings (everything on epic except for shadows) and my custom high settings (high settings preset but with draw distance and textures on epic)
4K DLAA, Default Settings – 53fps
https://i.ibb.co/b56zzGTb/4-K-DLAA-default.jpg
4K DLSS Quality, Default Settings – 80fps
https://i.ibb.co/YBYkWnFg/4-K-DLSSQ-default.jpg
4K DLSS Quality + FGx2, Default Settings – 131fps
https://i.ibb.co/rGGn1NSb/4-K-DLSSQ-FG2-default.jpg
4K DLAA, Customized High settings – 61fps
https://i.ibb.co/Swdt0WVz/4-K-DLAA-high.jpg
4K DLSS Quality, Customized High Settings – 89fps
https://i.ibb.co/MkyTmTFR/4-K-DLSSQ-high.jpg
4K DLSS Quality + FGx2, Custimized High Settings – 142fps
https://i.ibb.co/6cvFCCSM/4-K-DLSSQ-high-fg.jpg
4K DLSS Performance + FGx2, Customized High Settings – 164fps
https://i.ibb.co/rRStswj7/4-K-DLSSP-FG2-high.jpg
1440p DLAA, Default Settings – 96fps
https://i.ibb.co/V0CrN7kS/1440p-DLAA-default.jpg
1440p DLSS Quality, Default Settings – 124fps
https://i.ibb.co/gxZyjxv/1440p-DLSSQ-default.jpg
1440p DLSS Quality + FGx2, Default Settings – 197fps
https://i.ibb.co/8LVQVyK1/1440p-DLSSQ-FG2-default.jpg
1440p DLAA, Customized High Settings – 107fps
https://i.ibb.co/k6sv7gZc/1440p-DLAA-high.jpg
1440p DLSS Quality, Customized Settings – 136fps
https://i.ibb.co/R4cL79fH/1440p-DLSSQ-high.jpg
1440p DLSS Quality + FGx2, Customized Settings – 215fps
https://i.ibb.co/KpV9t5zv/1440p-DLSSQ-FGx2-high.jpg
What the fck is wrong with dark mode toggle on this site?
Just tested it. Seems the same way it has been since I added it. Feels fine to me.
It just doesn't work for me at all, the button is not responsive at all.
I did disable my extensions before you ask
Nevermind, the root cause of it was an extension called magic actions for youtube
Update, it happened again with all extensions disabled, chrome is sh*t.
I'm using Chrome (no extensions) and I have no trouble enabling/disabling it. It also works on Firefox and Edge without any issues, as well as on all mobile browsers (at least on my end).
Something is wrong with it because it stopped working for me on the main page where the article synopsis are but when you click on the article the full version works just fine again
I thought I was the only one, Joe's problem is exactly what I'm experiencing.
I was able to replicate the issue. I'm working on a fix right now.
Edit: Should be working fine now. Thanks man 🙂
Still not working John.
There is something really wrong with the plugin, so I'll remove it. Don't know why this suddenly started happening. So, we might not have a Dark mode for a while.
Its working now.
John, I think it would look better if you set the content’s background color to black just to match the layout’s background color
I think that’s how it was before
I think there's another issue here:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d73f313cac1f217c8e9fd7a65f74fcb3b170b790f0e4d48f6aea1cde756876d3.png
I don't think this padding or whatever it is existed before?
Nyah, that was how it was and before. You'll get ads at that place (as shown here). Notice the image is perfectly aligned with the Twitter image (which is the first element of the right widget menu. The same happens on the main page, too. Notice that the first image of the first article is perfectly aligned with the Twitter image.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/78fec349f7cc5adcc5934911f066012e3fe9ad618f3487f776de9930704b371d.jpg
As for the colors, I've changed the plugin, and it doesn't have the same settings that the previous plugin had. It sucks, but at least this Dark Mode now works.
It is not working correctly in Chrome for me.
Delete cookies?
I vouch for starting a retro benchmark series where you test performance of some of the notorious games back in the decades and see how they perform now. Would be interesting read than the boring usual UE5 articles coming every month.
I've done this for some of them. But, since we have a "Worst Optimized PC Games" yearly article, I could test those games two or three years later. So, at the end of 2025, I may test the worst games of 2022.
PS: The problem with this is that I was probably using another CPU back then. So, some improvements could be due to the new CPU.
Oh come on! John, now is the time. Add something interesting to your platter. You're already doing some good modding articles so it will be great.
A lot of games will peform better except for compatibility problems, so i suggest John benchmark all the Exclusive Physx games that Nvidia threw under the bus.
That's the point. It will be interesting and informative which can benefit players wanting to play old games on the new hardware. Folks will actually install and play it rather than just reading every UE5 news and go on saying "meh..again".
Which neither AMD or Intel ever supported …… and still don't support 64 bit PhysX
Which goes to show how low Nvidia got lately. Not interested in getting a 50 series without support for those games.
I can count on my fingers the games that use 32-bit PhysX. My old GTX 980M laptop handles them fine for retro gaming, and I’m not crying about my 50-series laptop GPU lacking support. Desktop users can just grab a cheap used GTX 960, throw it in as a second GPU in their PC, and run 32-bit PhysX games. Simple. You just have to select gtx 960 as Physx processor in ur Nvidia control panel settings.
Folks like you are the reason companies are squeezing all they can out of our money.
You’re just an idiot who overcomplicates simple problems. Am i supporting Nvidia for removing 32-bit Physx in games ? No but is the problem soo significant that my whole world is shattered ? Also no. So relax and stop worrying about minor issues which can easily be resolved.
If it can be easily resolved, why is it still an issue? Because you are still a shill, for starters.
If you think logically it is a positive thing actually becoz NVIDIA did make its PhysX and Flow SDKs, including the GPU source code, fully open-source under the BSD-3 license in April 2025, release of the GPU source code will now allows developers / modders to create compatibility layers or adapt older 32-bit PhysX games to run on newer hardware. Previously it was exclusive to Nvidia hardware only, in the future Amd and intel Gpus can run these games with Physx support.
There’s zero correlation with Nvdia ending support for PhysX and making PhysX open source. Most likely we won’t see official support for these games be it for Nvidia or AMD/Intel.
Just recently I benchmarked the OG Mafia 2 on my Linux workstation with a 4090 + AMD Threadripper CPU, and setting the PhysX option to high more than halved the FPS (yes, PhysX is GPU-accelerated on Linux, too).
Thankfully, there is already open-source work underway to not only bring 32-bit PhysX support to NV's 50 series, but also enable hardware acceleration on AMDGPU's as well.
As with all good things, open-source & patience is the key…
For the reason that the admin of this site is working, no uncertainty very quickly it will be renowned, due to its quality contents.
Stop defending broken games and engines.
" Still, this isn’t a “disaster” like some people claim"
*some people well well well… https://x.com/__silent_/status/1954590229727244701
I really don't understand why they still use this trash engine…
Probably for cost cutting reasons and being user friendly, but the end consumer ends up being the victim of lazy devs and trash engine.
feels like the requirements keep increasing but the graphics stay the same.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/delta-force-team-sabre-operations/news/delta-force-team-sabre-operations-august-2025-release well since new games are unplayable.
These performance analyses would be vastly improved by at least adding a batch of "high" settings. Especially for demanding games such as this. Instead all we get is "By dropping the settings to High, we got a 28-48% performance boost at 4K on the NVIDIA RTX 4090." It's always the dumb choice to chose Ultra, and even worse, Epic since the visual quality is almost always never worth the performance cost. None of the framerates shown in any of the graphs are playable for me, other than a sole 4090 result where it gets over 60 fps. Like 99% of the gaming population, I don't own a 4090. What's the point of filling graphs with lots of numbers under 60 fps? By contrast, I am certainly not in the "top 1%" for deciding not to play a game unless it can hit 60-90 fps native (I framegen to 120 or 180 fps using a secondary GPU with lossless scaling). So despite all the data above most of it is meaningless for 99% of people who don't own a 4090.
Too heavy for what it offers in terms of graphics! C'mon !!!!
55 FPS on a RTX5080 at 1080p!!! is really too low! It runs like crap at such a lower resolution for 2025 on a high-end GPU released a few months ago….it's really unacceptable John, you tried to justify this catastrophic performance by saying that Lumen is a form of ray tracing, but it still makes no sense that such a powerful GPU would struggle like this at such a low resolution! Come on, let's tell things as they are…and honestly, the game's graphics absolutely don't justify such disastrous performance! It's a mess, period.