The review embargo for Remnant: From the Ashes has just been lifted, so we can finally share our PC Performance Analysis. Remnant: From the Ashes is a really addictive third-person looter shooter. However, the game currently suffers from some optimization issues on the PC.
For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i7 4930K (overclocked at 4.2Ghz) with 16GB of DDR3 RAM at 2133Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580 and RX Vega 64, NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, GTX980Ti and GTX690, Windows 10 64-bit, GeForce driver 431.60 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.8.1. NVIDIA has not included any SLI profile for this title, meaning that our GTX690 performed similarly to a single GTX680.
Gunfire Games has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Shadow Distance, Shadows, Anti-Aliasing and View Distance. There are also settings for Textures, Post-Processing, Effects and Foliage. Thankfully, Gunfire has also added a setting that minimizes input latency.
Unfortunately, Remnant suffers from the same issue that plagued Darksiders 3 (regarding upscaling). To play the game in 4K on a 1440p monitor, you’ll need to first set your desktop resolution to 4K. Then, you’ll have to press “alt+enter” while you are in-game (not in the title menu). This is the only way you can enable 4K in these two games on non-native 4K monitors. However, this also breaks G-Sync support, meaning that the game may not appear ultra smooth even at 50-60fps.
Remnant: From the Ashes is only using DirectX 11 and appears to be limited by it. Take a look at the following two screenshots. As we can clearly see, both our CPU and GPU were underused. Our guess is that there are a lot of draw calls in these scenes that are obviously bottlenecking the API. DirectX 12 or Vulkan would have easily fix these issues. Alas, and since the game lacks support for them, players will have to use newer PC systems in order to overcome this optimization issue. Yes, the game can run faster on newer systems but that’s mainly due to the additional raw power of current PC systems, and not thanks to the game’s PC optimization.
Do note that since the game lacks an in-game benchmark tool, we’ve used two of the most demanding areas of the game. While the first areas appear to be running great, the HUB area and the area after finding the Keeper are among the most demanding areas. As such, those were the scenes that we used for our benchmarks.
In order to find out how the game scales on multiple CPU threads, we simulated a dual-core and a quad-core CPU. As we can clearly see, Remnant: From the Ashes is mainly a single-threaded game. Yeap, we’re talking about a DX11 that is mainly using one CPU thread/core. Still, the good news here is that even our simulated dual-core system was able to provide an enjoyable gaming experience.
What’s really surprising is the game’s GPU requirements. Our AMD Radeon RX580 was simply unable to offer a smooth gaming experience at 1080p/Ultra. Our NVIDIA GeForce GTX980Ti had some drops below 60fps at 1080p/Ultra and, to be honest, the game’s graphics do not justify these GPU requirements.
At 2560×1440, the only GPU that was able to offer a smooth gaming experience was the powerful NVIDIA GeForce RTX2080Ti. However, even NVIDIA’s top gaming GPU was unable to run the game with constant 60fps in 4K. We were able to get away with 60fps at 3325×1871, though there were some drops below 60fps during some boss fights.
Graphics-wise, Remnant: From the Ashes is not particularly impressive. The character models look outdated and the lip syncing is mediocre. Thankfully, the game has some cool environments but interactivity is limited. Its art style, on the other hand, is interesting and that’s perhaps its saving grace. It’s also worth noting that all animations are fluid and smooth, something that has a positive affect on its gameplay.
All in all, Remnant: From the Ashes suffers from optimization issues on the PC. Seriously, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX2080Ti should be running this game with ease in 4K (considering its visuals). Instead, it struggles in 4K and AMD’s Radeon Vega 64 can’t even run the game smoothly at 1440p. Remnant is a really fun, addictive and enjoyable Souls-like game. However, Gunfire Games needs to further polish and optimize it. A proper DX12 or Vulkan implementation could greatly benefit this particular game, so here is hoping that Gunfire will implement something like that via a post-launch patch.
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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