Shift Up has just released the PC demo for Stellar Blade. The demo supports DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Gen, and is protected by the Denuvo anti-tamper tech. As such, it will give you a pretty good idea of how the full version will run. Thus, we’ve decided to test the game on the NVIDIA RTX 5090 at both 4K and 8K. So, let’s see whether 8K gaming is possible with this Unreal Engine 4 title.
For these benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition. I also used Windows 10 64-bit and the NVIDIA GeForce 576.40 WHQL driver.
Shift Up has added a respectable number of PC graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Shadows, Textures, Lighting, Characters and more. The demo also comes with the 4K Texture Pack that is exclusive to the PC version. Plus, there is support for both NVIDIA DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 3.0. Sadly, though, there is no support for Intel XeSS.
Stellar Blade does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, we used the Prologue/Beach area. This appeared to be the most demanding area of the demo.
At Native 4K, the NVIDIA RTX 5090 can push framerates over 145FPS at all times. By enabling DLSS 4 Quality Mode, we were able to get to 175-192FPS. Then, we Frame Gen, we got some pretty crazy results. With MFG X4, we were getting framerates over 450FPS.
Sadly, even with X2, Frame Gen introduces noticeable visual artifacts during quick camera movements. Now, while I was able to spot these artifacts immediately, other people may not notice them. Moreover, MFG X3 and X4 do not bring additional visual artifacts or ghosting issues over MFG X2. Thus, image quality appears to be on par between MFG X2, X3 and X4. So, if you don’t notice the artifacts at MFG X2, you can use and enjoy MFG X3 and X4.
At Native 8K, we were getting framerates between 40FPS and 46FPS. With DLSS 4 Performance Mode, we were able to get over 70FPS at all times. So yes, even without Frame Gen, it is possible to game at 8K with smooth framerates. Well, that is if you use DLSS 4. As I’ve showcased, 8K with DLSS 4 Performance looks better than Native 4K. So, if you have the horsepower, you can experiment with 8K.
It’s also worth noting that since our base framerate is over 60FPS, Multi-Frame Gen is a viable option here. With MFG X2, we were able to get over 100FPS at all times. Then, with MFG X4, we got over 180FPS at all times. I did not experience any major input latency issues, and I was able to parry a lot of enemy attacks.
On an NVIDIA RTX 5090, I believe the best way to play Stellar Blade is at Native 4K with DLAA, or at 8K with DLSS 4 Performance and MFG X4. You can consider these the “Performance” and the “Quality” modes, only for PC.
Before closing, I should note that I did not experience any major stuttering issues. There are some shader compilation stutters, but they are not as bad as those we’ve seen in other recent titles. For the most part, the game runs smoothly on PC, even with an unlocked framerate.
Sony will release Stellar Blade on PC on June 10th. So, expect a PC Performance Analysis for it on launch. In this article, we’ll cover multiple GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
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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I don't look like a pasty virgin who jerks off to women with fake nails and makeup nor do I like to touch little kids so this game is not for me.
And just look at its enemies and how extremely reytarded, horrible and inconsistent they look. To me, they literally feel like as if they brought a $5 model generator from their local dumpster, programmed them in the game and called it a day.
Horrible, horrible game that some people only hype because of its MC that doesn't even look that good in the first place because of the talentless modelers.
I played the demo, and while i didn't notice before, the characters have really really young faces, it's f*cking unsettling, the general design and gameplay are generic, and that K-pop is destroying my sanity, what an overrated crap…
So here we are now, woke people defending sh*t games just because they include a black or a lesbian and right wing people are defending sh*t games that include big cakes, i lived long enough to see the gaming community destroy the little bit of credibility it has over politics…
I concur.
While the game performed really well on my Steam Deck with a SteamOS 3.8 development branch, the actual gameplay of the demo doesn't do anything interesting enough to sell it for me.
Yeah, I get that the characters should be attractive, but god damn, the extremely young overly beautified faces and, um, ultra big chest assets are so cringe. Eve should be reeling over with back pain with assets those big.
It's made by Kukreans, what did you expect?
They find their own mothers and sisters hawt, and they gr0pe them.
MFs are one level above the japignese when it comes to depravity.
And they know the white western man loves that sha1tssa.
You've absolutely 100% nailed it.
No joke, while modeling a character to look as good as possible is, without a doubt, indeed a difficult task and requires a lot of experience to model characters properly to make them look good, I've literally seen a fair amount of fan-made models from freelance artists about recreating characters that don't have official 3D models that are accurate 1:1 recreations of what these characters look like in their official artworks or merchandises (since these characters were from pixel games or games with hand-drawn graphics).
Even these freelance artists would do a better job at modeling characters than these stupid no-name Korean hack jobs at Shift Up (more like Shit Up).
Guess what? These freelance artists do it only for freelance commissions while the Korean hack jobs at Shit Up literally do it for their full-time jobs. Yeah, let that sink in for a moment.
On the one hand, we're getting below average games like Stellar Blade that are basically trying to cash in on some people's hormones, when deeper inside, these games are nothing short of 🤮
And on the other hand, we're getting "games" where they were made for literally no reason other than to push Sodomite agendas and brainwash the simple-minded normies that are mostly failing as of late (thank God! And I only hope it continues like this until all companies like these go bankrupt, every single one of them).
I just wish if maybe later we could get more masculine sci-fi shooters with futuristic suits like what we used to get back then like Crysis and others. Yeah, sci-fi shooters with futuristic suits are for masculine men that's why I noticed that games like these have completely disappeared lately thanks to the effeminate soylent faggots who proceed to buy a noose and tie them around their necks over something as simple and harmless as a comment on the internet calling them by their natural biology before these pussies mutilated themselves.
The "right wing" that defends the coomer bait aspects are really just lolbertarian degenerates that feel the need to justify their vices. Actual right wingers cringe at this crap. Personally I felt second-hand embarrassment at times when playing this demo because there were moments where it seems like they're trying to cater to girlie girls as well, not just to coomers.
Don't get me wrong, I like my characters to be attractive and would rather take this over the manjaw stronk wahmmens that the industry had been pushing on us for several years now, but I'd rather have designs with some class. It is possible to have sexy designs without appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Lastly, Eve's face is unsettling to some because her face isn't really based on any IRL actresses or models IIRC (just her physique). She's basically the ideal face according to these South Korean weirdos at the studio, which is a rather unrealistic one (the opposite of manjaw, i.e. nojaw) which would explain why its off-putting. It's even more stark when there are other characters on screen as I do believe some of them are based on IRL people, so it really stands out.
Yeah the game was super overhyped after trying it myself.
The % improvement from MFG is always so underwhelming.
barely 2.5x boost.
FSR 3.1 FG + AFMF is universally faster.
Best solution is actually using a second doner card like an RTX 3060 with lossless framegen. Run the framegen on the 3060. Render game on your main card. Otherwise your GPU has to give up some native rendering performance to do the frame generation magic.
An RX6400 works for secondary card up to 1440p 82 fps x2 fixed framegen. No extra power connectors needed and also cheap.
Reason I mentioned something like an RTX 3060 (might not be strong enough even) is that applying 2x framegen at 4K increased power draw on a 5090 by about 150W. For a 2D game that itself was using under 150W to render. Which is a lot. So I’m assuming it does still take a significant amount of processing power especially if you want to use the higher quality resolutions. Unfortunately I have 0 available pcie slots to add another card so won’t be able to take advantage of this brilliant fake-sli hack.
AMD cards perform better than Nvidia in FP16 calculations using in LSFG. Hence RX6400 hits way above its weight. An RX6400 actually outperforms a 3060 quite significantly for LSFG at 1440p and especially so at 4K. Search for "Secondary GPU Max LSFG Capability Chart".
My experience of the demo is that it looks fine, plays fine, runs fine. It feels like lots of other games that I have played before. Nothing exiting, nothing original other than boob physics. It feels most like DmC (2013) to me but with the dubstep replaced by eastern pop.
My experience of the demo is that it looks fine, plays fine, runs fine. It feels like lots of other games that I have played before. Nothing exiting, nothing original other than boob physics. It feels most like DmC (2013) to me but with the dubstep replaced by eastern pop.
I can confirm that FSR4 via Optiscaler works. Didn't really notice any issues other than the in-game DLSS sharpening setting being not that great. It either looks too blurry at lower numbers, and too sharp at higher ones. Some more granular control over this setting instead of whole numbers would've been more helpful.