Ryse: Son of Rome releases tomorrow and Crytek was kind enough to provide us with a review code prior to the game’s release. Ryse: Son of Rome is powered by CRYENGINE and uses some new advanced techniques that the team introduced to it, so it’s time to see how this game performs on the PC platform.
As always, we used an Intel i7 4930K with 8GB RAM, NVIDIA’s GTX690, Windows 8.1 64-bit and the latest version of the GeForce drivers. Unfortunately, the green team has not included any SLI profile for Ryse. By using Crysis 3’s and Star Citizen’s SLI profiles, we managed to enable SLI, however scaling was not ideal and there was a lot of flickering. It’s quite obvious that NVIDIA will have to release new SLI bits for Ryse, so here is hoping that the official SLI profile will arrive sooner than later.
Ryse: Son of Rome is – surprisingly enough – easy on its CPU requirements. In order to find out how the game performs on a variety of CPU configs, we decided to drop our resolution to 1152×648 (while keeping settings at High). Our simulated dual-core system was able to push 50fps, while our simulated quad-core system performed similarly to our six-core machine (and ran the game with 100fps). There were some framerate drops while gaming on our simulated dual-core system to 40fps (and to 30fps on the ‘Forest’ level), however Ryse: Son of Rome was perfectly playable even on such a system.
Now contrary to its relatively low CPU requirements, Ryse: Son of Rome demands a really high-end GPU to shine. Our review code featured a number of graphical settings, and three quality values to choose from: Low, Medium and High. We don’t know whether Crytek will rename the High settings to Very High or whether it will provide a new setting just for enthusiasts, however we do know that a single GTX680 is simply not enough for 60fps at 1080p with High settings. In order to hit constant 60fps, we had to lower all of our settings to Low (while maintaining our 1080p resolution). And that’s on a single GTX680.
Moreover – and as our comparison showcased – there are not big differences between Low and High settings. Yes, there are square-ish shadows on Low, shading quality is far worse, cosmetic physics effects are reduced, etc. However, we’d expect more ‘dramatic’ changes between them. As a result of that, those with weaker GPUs will either have to lower the game’s resolution (which will obviously bring additional blurriness) or lock the game at 30fps.
But does Ryse: Son of Rome justify its really high GPU requirements? It certainly does. While there are invisible walls, there is some pop-in and there is limited vegetation interaction (a Crytek game in which players cannot bend grass, where only specific plants bend, and where most bushes have invisible walls? Blasphemy. Blasphemy I tell you), Ryse: Son of Rome looks gorgeous.
Crytek claimed that by using Physically Based Shading (PBS), it was able to achieve more believable surface materials. And that’s certainly true. The lighting system is simply amazing, most of the textures that have been used are of high quality, grass and trees look better than those of Crysis 3, and the game’s main characters are some of the best – and most detailed – we’ve ever seen. And since the game’s levels are smaller than those of Crysis 3, Crytek was able to enrich them with more details.
All in all, Ryse: Son of Rome performs great on the PC platform, though we’d expect more graphical options from Crytek (AA options are quite limited if you compare them to those of Crysis 3 for example). While the game does not require a high-end CPU for a 60fps experience, it does certainly require a high-end GPU for that. And while its GPU requirements are really high (in fact they are pretty close to those of Crysis 3), it does sport some of the best visuals we’ve seen to date.
Enjoy!
Forgive to forget and forget to forgive. Now that’s one hell of an endless cycle.
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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Dont know if it’s only me but a look at those screens and I have to say, it look pretty garbage!
Was expectiong way more but hey it still just a port from an underpowered little toy box!
To sad these days Crytek have MS D***K up their a*s!
Start over Crytek and go Pc as this SH*T wont cut it!
i agree. i odnt undesrtand how some people think those screens look amazing, some even said it looks cg. gtfo.
Yeah it’s funny, I guess they have never seen anything else then a PS2 game ..LOL!
It’s hard to believe anyone would actually say those screen shots “look pretty garbage”
Compared to what?
The game looks gorgeous, even running at only 1080p.
i don’t think they are amazing, i played it a bit when it came out and it was nice, overall it looks great, if you start nit picking you start to see low poly buildings, flat building surfaces, low poly secondary environment clutter, low poly interior items, npc’s that look alike, and after mordor it seems so much more obvious, no tessellation, no semi transparent vegetation, low poly environments and i could go on. But seen as a whole i think it gives a very cinematic and movie like atmosphere. And the combat is brutal, still i have not seen all the moves, the combat in mordor is so good it set a new standard for me.
the graphics are pretty good though
John how is more demanding crysis 3 or ryse for gtx 680?
Sorry but it can’t compete with Crysis 3 and it’s grass. All the blades of long grass had physics, blew in the wind, reacted to objects round them, reacted to explosions and each blade of grass had a shadow. technically Ryse uses newer tech but it just doesn’t have the advancements of Crysis 3 because it’s too CPU intensive for the consoles. The only way they got this to work on the XB1 is advancements in their engine, no the power of the XB1.
Just imagine if Crytek used PBS in Crysis 3, holly sh*t, no wait, all this tech in a Crysis 1 remake. Crysis 1 didn’t even use deferred lighting, so the newer tech would make it look insanely good.
When Crysis came out I played with the smoke particles for quite some time. I threw grenades at smoke columns and watched in awe as the explosions scattered the smoke apart.
I thought the tech would be widely used-think of the tactical potential when fighting a smoke grenade crazy player in mp games-but sadly it is often overlooked by the shinier effects like lighting and shadows.
Is this true? I haven’t played the game yet. It would seem odd for such a compute-heavy game to not feature such rudimentary physics simulation. Crysis 3 had it for sure, this newer engine should support more things, but I could be wrong.
I think Ryse still looks better. Sure, it may lack a whole lot other things such as area lights, more realistic grass simulation, water caustics and bigger environments. But its lighting is the most realistic I have ever seen in a game. Crysis 3 is shiny, but it’s blocky. There’s low poly models everywhere. Ryse is pushing more polys while looking more realistic. Also the physics, you should just see Marius’ armour when he’s walking or running.
All the detail is on specific characters, all the detail in Crysis 3 is everywhere.and it’s a lot more open. Also, what low poly models everywhere? Crysis 3 uses tessellation.
Tessellation doesn’t mean that it has CG-quality models. Even on Psycho it’s apparent that it’s shackled by the last gen consoles. You can even count the edges on his head. Not to mention his ear, would you even call that an ear? http://cubeupload.com/im/t7s9a2.png
Crysis 3 has great textures though.
art direction in ryse is miles better in my opinion.
gameplay is still a*s though.
hi dude, i can creat remake for Crysis 1 if you want, with the lasted Cryengine (3.6.8) with PBS/PBR etc, and i add tessellated models etc, actually, i create Crysis 2, but the probleme is: for have PBS/PBS on the game, all the texture must be re creat… the probleme is….i have no time for this ><.but, when i have more time, i creat Crysis 1 with Cryengine 3.6.8. contact me at " driguest@gmail.com ".
ryse uses POM on grass texture. crysis 3 don’t. and that long grass on crysis 3 isn’t demanding…. it was made for last gen consoles in fact. Ryse is so much better than crysis 3 overall…. texture resolution and mesh detail is very much higher.
It is demanding, it’s just on consoles it’s not. The grass has physics and a shadow for each blade of grass and also each blade has specular lighting. Nothing new about POM.
Lol , Marius looks like Cevat Yerli .
Shocking XD
A single gtx 970 on a 1440p monitor on high settings would be enough?
So you ended up getting yourself a 970? Damn that’s an amazing card for the price. I couldn’t hold out much longer and I ended up getting myself a R9 270x. LoL I was too greedy 🙂
Hey man. You could sell it on EBay as the Msi 970 is a beast! In fact, I’m buying a second today. I bought an Asus ROG swift so needed Nvidia for Gync. How’s the 270x been?
The 270X has been really great. It’s my first AMD card so I was a bit hesitant to get it at first but it’s been a really great experience so far. I was surprised that it gives both the new consoles such a pounding. The performance is satisfying so I honestly don’t think I’m gonna sell it. And while the 970 is indeed amazing for it’s price, it’s quite expensive here in South Africa. If the price is good, I might get myself a 960.
The R9 270X is a superb card. I’ve used the ASUS DirectCU II version that’s factory overclocked and it ran every game with great performance.
I’m glad you’re enjoying your card.
@Admin does this one have option for very high texture resolution and very high shading ?
Did you enable it while playing?
If they would’ve made this for pc first, the textures would have twice the resolution, grass would be a lot better and the charakters would have up to three times the polygons.
And about a thousand other things.
PC cutscenes are rendered in real -time ?
nope
No, but Ryse characters looks good not only in cutsceens 🙂
Hm I’ve expected a some more substantial benchmark for a “performance analysis”.
Yeah, DSO’s performance analysis are getting more simplistic and insubstantial each time.
Crytek give us a new Crysis Just like the 1st. but exclusive to PC.
But what about VRAM usage?
See my newest comment above with 2 shots and fps, VRAM usage. What a POS game. lol
I have a hard time believing you had to drop to low for a GTX 680. I’m thinking you were looking for not even a single frame below 60fps. I’m sure that if you let it go between 50-60 you could do medium-high at least.
It isn’t surprising to me. Crysis 3 had four presets: Low, Normal, High and Very High. It seems to be a little different with Ryse. It looks like Low is out so Low = Normal, Normal = High, and High = Very High. A single GTX 680 gets 44 FPS in Crysis 3 on Very High at 1080p. And it gets 48 FPS in Ryse on High at 1080p. The FPS also matches up on Low and Normal.
Here’s some other cards DF tested, R9 280,290 prices have come down as well. Note the R9 280 can hit 60fps but not keep it.
http://i.imgur.com/8l5VAS4.jpg
Looks like my 780m won’t be able to run this all too well…the disappointment…
Yes but the world is static in Ryse thanks to the crap CPU on the XB1.
Again, Ryse main character is only detailed and have you seen the other characters in the ”
Ryse: Son of Rome – Low Versus High Screenshots Comparison”? Most are repeated and nowhere near as detailed as the main character.
You sure?
http://i4.minus.com/iZF3RJ0jkNIZV.png
http://i3.minus.com/ietrHPspBnaDm.png
These ‘other characters’ look more detailed than in any other game.
Based on screenshots it was not that easy to decide, but after playing Ryse I also must admit, that it looks better compared to crysis 3. Clear improvement in lighting, surface materials, and character models are on whole different level now. Before I thought that Ryse characters looks good only in prerendered cutsceens but I was wrong :), nero and his detailed skin looks almost like Nv demos, but not only his model is detailed, enemies looks like humans too and they all use believable cloth materials, it’s not just simple texture like in crysis 3 :).Also levels are very detailed, especially that forest :).
Sean@ If they had to tweak that grass for performance reasons that’s ok, moving grass in 2’nd level was so demanding, that even good CPU’s like 3770 were droping down to 45 fps in few instances. Grass in Ryse is not tesselated and probably use worse physics compared to crysis 3, but it looks fine. It also moves on the wind, has shadows, and reacts to character movements.
BTW- There’s one thing that I really dont like in Ryse, that temporal AA looks ugly. 1080p with this AA looks like upscaled picture, there’s no sharpness at all. Without that temporal AA ryse looks much better 🙂
I’m sure http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/1356/8160/original.jpg
?
That’s a compressed to hell screenshot. I don’t see what your point is. I could post compressed Avatar screenshots and claim that it has the worst CG graphics of any animated movie ever.
I suspect “weaker CPU, stronger GPU with 6+ GB of dedicated video memory” is going to be the song and dance from here on in with the Xbox One/PS4 generation of ports to PC.
That’s why the current cards by nVidia and AMD (though at least AMD’s cards are all basically old tech designed years ago and trickled out over 3 years) are not going to cut it. Not even the Geforce 970/980.
Not because the GPU isn’t strong enough. Because the amount of memory, even at 4GB, is too small. We need cards with 6 or more. Preferably, to be BETTER than the consoles we’re getting ports from, we actually need 8GB or more.
Yet nVidia saves THOSE cards for next year when they need to sell more cards.
The consolers doesn’t have 8GB for textures alone. A 6GB graphics card has more space for higher res textures than any of the consoles does.
It’s weird that they used an R9 280. The R9 280X is much more popular and it’s usually factory overclocked.
The R9 280 has come down in price a lot and even more lately, that’s probably why.
Glorious PC, max settings, textures very high, 1080p.
http://i.imgur.com/TnRl5tc.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/XEOyICb.jpg
Compare that shot to the in-game cinematic, there is a massive difference with his father’s face and look how simple his face looks compared to the cinematic. The cut scenes are pre-rendered anyway with supersample.
The jpg compression has nothing to do with anything.
You sure that they are pre-rendered? Because in order to show you that level of details in a single cutscene, they don’t even need to do that.
When developer control a camera they know what you will looking at. They can cut off everything except for two character in a frame, and make them as detail as they can through streaming.
Although that doesn’t change anything. Pre-rendered or not, it’s obvious that it’s not fair to post a screenshot from a cutscene and say that it’s in-game graphics.
Crytek already stated that the cut scenes are pre-rendered in Ryes and they use supersampling for them. Crysis 3 isn’t.
“The jpg compression has nothing to do with anything.”
I rest my case.
So you’re saying that face in that screenshot looks good hey? How about you compare it to the pre-rendered face in the cut scene.
Looks better than Crysis 3.
I should think so given it’s a newer version of CE3 with newer tech but the game is static and doesn’t even have the physics and object interaction or breakage of Crysis 1.