A lot of PC gamers were worried about The Medium the moment Bloober Team revealed its official PC system requirements. After all, and instead of targeting 60fps gaming, those requirements targeted 30fps gaming. And, similar to Bloober’s previous game, Blair Witch, The Medium has major performance/optimization issues on the PC right now.
Before continuing though, it’s worth mentioning the PC system we used for these initial tests. As usual, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4/3800Mhz, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founder’s Edition. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the latest version of the official GeForce drivers.
The Medium uses both Ray Tracing and DLSS, and NVIDIA has provided us with a review code for it. However, and even without any Ray Tracing effects, the game cannot run smoothly on NVIDIA’s high-end GPU, the RTX3080.
For starters, the game suffers from major stuttering issues. Even though we’ve installed the game on an SSD 970 PRO NVMe M.2, we had major stutters in each and every room. These stutters are so annoying that they will undoubtedly put off a lot of PC gamers.
And then we come to the game’s performance. There are numerous scenes in which The Medium drops below 60fps on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX3080, even at 1080p/High settings and without any Ray Tracing effects. We seriously don’t know what’s going on here. What we do know is that the game’s graphics do not justify these ridiculously high PC requirements. Again, these underwhelming performance numbers are WITHOUT Ray Tracing.
For instance, here is a scene when you first use the game’s dual reality system. The image on the left is at 1440p/High Settings/Ray Tracing & DLSS, whereas the image on the right is at 1440p/High/No RT/ DLSS On. As you can see, and even with DLSS, the game runs below 60fps. Not only that, but the performance hit of Ray Tracing is only 7-8fps (which is abnormal as RT usually has at least a 30fps hit in this game).
The game also runs below 60fps at native 1080p/High settings (without Ray Tracing and without DLSS).
Lastly, I should note that these underwhelming performance figures are not due to the dual-reality system. Here is a dual-reality scene WITH Ray Tracing at 1440p/High/DLSS Quality. As you can see, in this dual-world scene the game runs with more than 80fps.
We’ve already informed NVIDIA and Bloober Team about these optimization issues. Thus, let’s hope that Bloober will address them via a post-launch update.
Stay tuned for our PC Performance Analysis, as well as our DLSS & Ray Tracing benchmarks.
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
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“Thus, let’s hope that Bloober will address them via a post-launch update.”
Haha, don’t hold your breath, John.
More like Boomer Team.
But games were often better when it was boomers and gen X making them imo ?
Yeah, you right, but on Bloober there must be some boomers around on the team. Im liking the game more than i thought, really enjoyable.
Looking at the insane requirements i am not surprised by this one bit.
Another unoptimized crap.
Well having a game running so bad is an achievement in itself. A new category is needed. What about shitimized?
Crap game that will be forgotten in less than a month. Idiot devs.
It sure does look like another dreary walking simulator..
You will probably never play it even it was amazing. No one asked
Crap graphics, can’t run for sh!t… Look at those polys man… Reminds me of Halo Infinite’s brute face joke.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0e624ce397638649da2e5049f62e0346fa842d123627ee2e4a9099223d25a06.jpg
I’m pretty sure if we look in the steam formus and you’ll see some clueless oblivious nuts claiming it runs perfect for them. I mean we’ve got people that are so damn stupid they actually claim Star wars Jedi fallen order doesn’t stutter it all for them even on the loading areas lol. It’s pretty clear that game developers do not even test their games one bitor either they’re tested by clueless idiots like you see in the forums. I’m guessing this game uses unreal engine as pretty much every game that uses unreal engine has some stuttering or frame pacing issues.
Jedi Fallen Order ran perfect for me. Not every issue or bug happens to every single person/configuration
Exactly. The mistake is passing off anecdotal evidence from either side as if it’s the same for everyone.
On launch Jedi Fallen Order was a mess in regard to loading areas. With that said, i ran the pirated version a couple of months a go (was an early version AFAIK) and was fine on a regular disk.
Interesting. Did it have Denuvo in the legit version?
Yeah, i remember comments bringing D as a cause for the stuttering back then.
Yeah me too, despite buying the game on EGS for its cheaper regional price (+ discount) in my country, Im ended up using the repack (thus cr*cked) version of the game due to smaller download (compression) and install size (with optional component). And its run fine on my core i3 6100 and 1060 6GB hovering around 40-60 FPS @1080p Freesync monitor without annoying stuttering many site mentioned at the time. The annoying thing is of course that bug that prevent the game to launch if the date past 31 December 2019
Fallen order also ran fine for me lol. So far this game does as well and I’m playing at 4k with it maxes out. Yeah I have DLSS on but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not having these issues.
Of course I believe others are and that sucks but this is a bloober team game so it should be expected.
Lastly… If you have studder in Jedi it’s because you were trying to get more I/o out of your system than it could handle.
A faster SSD would help there and the speed of your gpu memory is also a factor. I have a 2080ti running +1400 mem in afterburner. Game is also on an intel pcie ssd which is really damn fast.
Like any of us actually have a 3080 to be outraged over this.
I know!
*Looks at his 3090.
*looks at his mortgage payment due….
Look at his monthly card bill …
Looks at his pet Llama…
No, but if the last high end cant keep up with decent framerate at 1080p, imagine how is going to be with weaker GPUs…this is a mess.
That’s bloober team!
blair witch also had problems
Exactly! Hell so far it’s running fine on my 2080ti at 4k max settings.
Silent Hill wanna be walking simulator that copies a gimmick from The Mansion level on Dishonored 2…trainwreck incoming.
This game seems like it also struggles from identity crisis. That constant shifting of camera perspective, rendering two scenes at once and basically no gameplay to speak of.
I’d rather watch a movie like that or a tv show but not sit 4 hours occasionally pushing one button and watch the whole thing play out practically irrespective of player input.
This thing looks like a Netflix miniseries turned into “videogame”.
Being a Netflix miniseries would only do this thing good.
Will be playing this for free on Game Pass tomorrow. Shout out to Pizza Pop’s for the 2 week code LOL. Is the performance bad because it’s rendering 2 worlds at the same time? Will report back tomorrow what my frame rate/performance is
Thank goodness that’s justified by being the best looking videogame to date…….. lol. Oh and old SDKs on Xbox, yeah that excuse still works.
The “old SDKs” thing appears to be legit, though, considering games more recently optimized for the newer hardware like Jedi Fallen Order and Hitman 3 run a good bit better on XSX than PS5.
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Looking at whats presented and that spec… geez! They defiantly need skilled PC coders!
Its not just PC that suffers.
Sloppy optimization.
Excellent.
Probably to make the sh*tbox version looks better ,being a microsoft exclusive they need a reason to sell their sh**ty console.
To be fair, every game of theirs I’ve ever tried has ran horribly on PC. I think they just struggle with it.
It is the only exclusive the Series X has at the moment. Your theory could be possible.
LMAO you wouldn’t be saying that if you knew the XSX version also has similar issues with huge performance drops and resolution downscaling to 900p (and 600p on XSS) at times.
What?!! Bloober team cannot optimize..Blair witch,same unoptimized garbage..
Named “The Medium” after the graphics settings required to hit 60fps, lol.
P.S. Xbox Series X version is capped at 30fps, has dreadful frame-pacing issues and drops to ~22fps in cutscene transitions as shown by Digital Foundry.
There is no drop, it’s frram pacing error that makes a freeze frame for a split second, on only graph will catch this.
Game still is badly optimized, maybe even worse than BatmanAK
LMAO
Xbox Series X have raytracing enabled at 4K 30fps – what hardware do you have?
Eh? It never drops to 22 fps., and the freeze frame issue doesn’t last long enough to cause problems or disrupt gameplay. It’s a minor issue noted by Digital Foundry. Nice try to spin things though. Here is your cookie.
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This kid is a known Sony pony. Pay him no mind.
It runs fine on Xbox Series X. Frame pacing is nearly non-existent, not at all “dreadfull”. This kid doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about, regurgitating DF’s John Lineman “who is also a known Sony pony shill.”
Seems like it actually runs much better on the XBSX than the PC…weird.
It does not seem that at all. It runs at 30 frames with framepacing issues. So its the same on all platforms
It runs at 30 fps, but at twice the resolution (1440p ish) and also with raytracing enabled.
To me, that seems like higher overall performance considering 1080p 60 and 1440p 30 require similar performance levels.
It has dynamic resolution on console, and it drops to 900p.
Damn, i hope to play this so it better have big performance fixes coming
Wow, what a nice piece of trash! It does’nt surprise me for a developper who gave his last big game for free @ Tencent store!! Garbage in garbage out.
LOL gave away for free? They took the chinese money more like.
Yeah lol when a game is free on epic the devs still get paid. Tencent.. aka china pays for every copy someone claims.
Epic sold their souls long ago.
The game renders two scenes, hence the load. But yes it has some bugs.
Graphic cards at the moment rendering 4k scenes won’t be when the the next lot of games come out, by that I mean. GTA6 etc. Current games are still using last gen tech. A few games using Raytracing and sparingly. This game uses Raytracing and cube maps. That’s why the rt doesn’t use much in fps.
Render two scenes not at full resolution.
Lmaoo this must be a new record for worst optimized game
Performance fix is never coming. Unreal engine and ray tracing make a terrible pair. Their previous game (observer system redux) suffers from the same issue although it happens in fewer areas but maybe because the game map is smaller compared to the medium. Same goes for deliver us the moon, bright memory, ghostrunner and the list goes on… they all run bad even on 2080 Ti.
Another new game with major issues who’d have thought it.
Yeah exactly what I was figuring , I read an interview and the game was ment to be played at 30fps to keep it near the movie 28fps experience. So I’m not surprised when they only listed 30fps as the requirements targeted frame rate.
First game comming out built from the ground up on new programming and there is issues ? Wow shocker ? it surprises me that all these people are still surprised that games are not fully up to what some would call optimized perfectly , even more so when it includes new software and hardware combinations that no one’s used before.
Movies are at 24fps, not 28.
? are you retarded?
> new software and hardware combinations that no one’s used before.
And those are? The game uses Unreal Engine 4 (the Toyota of game engines) and…what hardware? consoles are dumbed down cheap PC’s now.
And for rendering two “worlds/scenes” simultaneously….is nothing new.
Visually is nothing impressive…you can tell is made in UE4.
That’s all nice on paper, i have yet to see a actual game running UE5.Just because is new doesnt make it better or worse, it depends on how all that technology is implemented. Velicity architecture is another marketing gimmick so far to sell new consoles that discovered SSDs in 2020.
I really dont understand why people brings DF as some authority when it comes to PC when they are clearly console fanboys and find 30fps aceptable as a gaming experience. AFAIK a PS5 GPU power is closer to a 2060 at best. But barely any game uses raytracing (and not even close to what a PC can offer in terms of features or quality)…so a 1070 would be more fair.
The argument of you need X amount of money to build a PC that matches a next gen is bullcrap honestly, a PC for starters is not limited to games only, and the difference of making and optimize a game for a fixed specs like in consoles and the difference and complexity of doing the same to the PC ecosystem with all the variables that includes are widely different. On the long run a PC is a better investment, but who i am to tell people what to do with their money?
You can’t compare the experience you get playing a game on a console vs a high end PC, if you want quality you pay more for it, is not that hard.
What settings? you honestly believe a next gen console is running games on “ultra” quality? and 4k native resolution?
No, with a console you usually get a game running at 1080-1440p at medium-high settings (even tho, plenty of games use low settings that you cant even lower on PC, like in Legion) at 60fps tops. There’s plenty of examples of games running on medium tier PCs running at better framerate and quality than on consoles at the time (talking about previous gen). And this next gen consoles, outside of exclusives they are running just ports of previous gen games…again is all theory so far, i have yet to see a “next gen game” on the new consoles.
Like i said, you get what you pay for…
If you have a rush to experience games on that quality, thats fine…but you are talking to somebody that waited a decade to play the original Mass Effect trilogy just to experience it at reasonable performance/quality on PC.
What im trying to point out here is that you dont need a high end PC to run games at settings above what a next gen console offers and at better performance (specially if you dont care about raytracing). I usually build my PC aiming to a midtier cause i know that would cover my standards for at least 5-8 years…and that for me is a lot of value.
Sure, you can spend a lot to get the best experience, but if you want something above what a console can offer, a PC is not far off price wise.
bloober team is much worse than ubisoft. lol
They should pay another studio to optimize the game.
They should fired the team who handle PC port. Every game they released on PC always had performance issues….
Bloober Team’s programmers are sh*t. They don’t know how to optimize their games. I am trying to play Observer: System Redux and it suffers from the same stutters and still has not been fixed.
ROFL!! Here’s an article from July with Bloober team promising that it runs at 60fps@4k…..
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/layers-of-fear-devs-explain-why-their-next-game-is/1100-6479309/?utm_source=reddit.com
PCGamer never fails to amaze me. They talk about the excessive hitching and the game turns into a slideshow at times and then rate the game a 92.
Gamespot rated it a 9 saying it was superb.
Playing it 4K 60fps maxed with RT on and DLSS at medium. Some stuttering in some scene transitions but locked at 60fps 99% of the time. EVGA RTX2080Ti.
Way to clickbait
Who do you think you’re fooling? We know you’re an outright liar and can prove you wrong with an easy search. Running this game at 4K DLSS & RTX On dips down to the mid 40s and even low 30s. https://youtu.be/rzZiM1_5vmQ?t=72
Way to lie
Stutters welcome to reality John Far Cry 5, Borderlands 3 , The Crew 2 are stutter fest yet people like to play with stuttering
Only Borderlands 3 has some stutter …. FC 5 and The Crew 2 have absolutely no problems
the crew 2 and far cry all series beside 3 are a stutter fest show
basically lagging even with a RTX 3090
In my case,with a RTX 2080 and i7 4790k,both games for me was more tha 100 fps average with 1440p res
In my case, with an RTX 2080 and i7 4790k, both games for me run above 100 fps @ 1440p
rtx 2070s stutters and rtx 3090 stutters unfortunately both run over 100 FPS with stuttering
same FPS with stuttering
and i also i got 2 different PC’s to confirm the stutter to bad considering DIVISION 2 runs butter smooth
I never experienced any stutters on Far Cry 5 or Borderlands 3. Maybe your computers are full of trash lol
nope it stutters and lags if u can’t see it get a pair of glasses
rdr2 , cyberpunk, gta v full with mods at 8k insanely smooth
far cry 5 stuttering as digital mentioned
Getting 60 fps in “single” gameplay and 50 in “twin”, ultra and RTX on @ 1440p. AMD 1600x, RTX 3080 and running on an older Sandisk Sata SSD, 32GB DDR 4.
Sounds about right. Xbox series X runs at 30fps. Should give u a general idea of what pc is needed for 60fps….it doesnt exist yet. Bear in mind xbox series x has to the metal programming…so u can squeeze alot out of it unlike the overhead of pc. But damn….not even a 3080. Looks like true next gen wont start till 40 series…where 30 series is where 20 series shoulda left off. God do i love tech 😉
Too much praise for nothing. Another walking simulator like Blair Witch, and MS.Store version is locked at 4k resolution.
I had no dips that major and I had it running at 4k maxed out. I do know bloober team is awful when it comes to performance though.
Of course you also have to consider it’s rendering both viewports at native resolution and down sampling them. So that’s 2 1440p frames it needs to render so for a locked 60 the game really needs to be running at 120fps.
I doubt bloober will do much to fix performance issues if their past is any indication. Hell both the observer and observer redux have the exact same bug with motion blur that absolutely destroys performance. It will be running at 120fps and suddenly drop to single digits… Turn around and back to 120.
Also ALL of their games have frame pacing issues. If you don’t have VRR but you do have an nVidia gpu you can kinda smooth it out if you force vsync to fast. I don’t know if amd has a similar setting for vsync
even with frame dips the game doesn’t have a moving camera so it’s not really a big deal. If you were to turn off your frame counter probably wouldn’t even notice. The real problem is the game is mindnumbingly boring. I played 2 hours then uninstalled it. It’s like Resident evil 1 with the 2 world gimmick and no action.
This game was not designed to run at 60fps…at least not on current hardware. To say the games graphics dont justify its hardware reqs is pure bull. The level of detail…the effects at play…the soft systems running here..not to mention the other world at play. This one new current gen game makes most last gen games look dated. Theres alot going on and it is trully a next gen game…but i believe running it all at high res with high frames just isnt possible yet without a top of the line card…and even then you need more. Its a fact of computing…you always need more power…….. i know Microsoft Flight Sim is a bad comparison but people who thought they had real powerful PCs learned real quick how little they actually are when they turned up the kn*b.
It’s a demanding game for sure, but even without DLSS it runs around 50-55 fps for me without DLSS enabled in 4K and everything maxed out (but RTX disabled). The FPS drops to 30-40 with ray-tracing enabled, jumps up to around 45-55 fps again with DLSS at the best setting and settles around 55-70 fps with DLSS at medium.
I don’t think my GPU is running optimally either, Monster Hunter World runs around 50 or so FPS maxed out in 4K, but others are getting around 60 fps with the same GPU. I either need a fresh reinstall or finally need to upgrade from my stock CPU cooler.
Nah I’m good. I’ll stick with the Xbox Series X version.
Thank God for game pass.
ya this game is really have a sh**ty programming. very heavy game with mediocre graphic. unfortunately this is what happened to the new 2021 games. half bake games with lot of issue and fps problem. just look at decima engine. very lite engine with great graphic.