Last week, Frogwares released a remastered version of The Sinking City for free to all of its owners. Powered by Unreal Engine 5 and using Lumen, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.
For our benchmarks, we 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, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 576.40, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.5.1 drivers.
Frogwares has retained the same settings for the remastered version of the game. The only additional settings are those for Upscaling and Ray Tracing. To be more precise, the game now supports NVIDIA DLSS 3 and AMD FSR 3.0. Now, while there is a Frame Gen setting for both DLSS and FSR, it does not work at all with DLSS. According to reports, the game is missing the DLSS Frame Gen DLL file right now. On the other hand, FSR Frame Gen works, but it’s locked to the AMD FSR Upscaling. In other words, you can’t use DLSS Super Resolution with AMD FSR Frame Gen. As for Ray Tracing, the devs have used it to enhance the game’s reflections.
The Sinking City Remastered does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our tests, we used this area from the starting level. This area appeared to be quite taxing, so it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game runs.
The Sinking City Remastered is a GPU-bound title. At 1080p/Max Settings/No Ray Tracing, you’ll need at least an NVIDIA RTX 4080 or an AMD Radeon RX 9070XT to get framerates over 60FPS. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, the game is using Lumen (which is a form of Ray Tracing). So yes, you’ll need to use upscaling to improve performance.
It’s also worth noting that the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT is noticeably slower than the NVIDIA RTX 3080 at 1080p. On the other hand, the AMD Radeon RX 9070XT is able to match the performance of the RX 7900XTX.
The only GPUs that could run the game with over 60FPS at all times at 1440p/Max Settings/No RT were the NVIDIA RTX 4090 and the NVIDIA RTX 5090.
As for Native 4K/Max Settings/No RT, there is no GPU that can offer a smooth gaming experience. Even the NVIDIA RTX 5090 can drop below 55FPS. As we can see, the NVIDIA RTX 3080 fell to its knees (most likely due to its 10GB of VRAM). Moreover, the AMD Radeon RX 9070XT was noticeably slower at 4K than the RX 7900XTX.
Now, the good news here is that you can significantly improve performance via the in-game settings. By dropping to High, we were able to get over 83FPS at all times on the NVIDIA RTX 5090. That’s a 62% performance increase. On Medium Settings, we were able to get to 120FPS. And then, on Low Settings, we got an average framerate of 157FPS. So, while the Ultra Settings are demanding, the game can scale well on weaker GPUs by using the High or Medium Settings.
Graphics-wise, The Sinking City Remastered looks better than its original 2019 version. Frogwares has used higher-quality textures, and the lighting has been overhauled thanks to Lumen. I don’t really have any complaints about the game’s graphics. Sure thing, this isn’t a graphical showcase like Hellblade 2. However, Frogwares is a small team. So, for what it actually is, The Sinking City Remastered looks great. The only downside is that the game still suffers from traversal stutters. This was an issue in the 2019 version, too. So, no. UE5 is not to be blamed for these traversal stutters. It’s just how the game was developed. So, it’s a bummer the devs have not done anything to fix them.
All in all, The Sinking City Remastered is quite demanding on Ultra Settings. Those who want to use them will also have to enable NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR. As said, DLSS Frame Gen is not working right now, and FSR Frame Gen is locked to the AMD FSR Upscaling. Thankfully, you can significantly improve performance by dropping to High Settings. Those settings appear to offer the best visual/performance ratio. So, make sure to use them if you want to stick to Native Resolutions.
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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the 7900XTX showing that bus width really letting it breathe more compared to the 9070XT at 4k.
The RX 9070 XT is a 1440p GPU not 4K, so you only have yourself to blame.
yeah its crazy they advertise it that way with 4k benchmarks and then only compare it to the 7900 GRE or 7900XT.
That is meant to show architecture improvements, but I assume is beyond your comprehension.
You probably believe the RX 9700 XT is the best AMD has to offer with RDNA 4, which shows your ignorance to what AMD has in the backburner for actual 4K gaming.
Same way the RX 9700 XT is a replacement for the RX 6700 and RX 7700 and not the RX 7900 like you claim, which is why it only costs 500€.
That is meant to show architecture improvements, but I assume is beyond your comprehension.
You probably believe the RX 9700 XT is the best AMD has to offer with RDNA 4, which shows your ignorance to what AMD has in the backburner for actual 4K gaming.
Same way the RX 9700 XT is a replacement for the RX 6700 and RX 7700 and not the RX 7900 like you claim, which is why it only costs 500€.
I don't get your need for hostilities. On AMD's website the first benchmarks they post for the 90 series cards are for 4K results. The next set are comparing it to the 7900 GRE in 4K. I didn't invent the idea to sell the 9070 and XT as 4K cards. AMD did and is doing that themselves, regardless of the realities that you and I both understand. I was only trying to reiterate that with my original comment. Also its a 9070 not the "9700" and they haven't officially revealed anything beyond the 9070XT yet.
I just put shadows on high, everything else maxed out including ultra RT and on my 5070 ti oced to 3200core/34ghz vram with dlss4 balanced (swapped file) plus smooth motion from nvidia app I`m getting 100-130 fps in 4k, game is pretty good.
I just put shadows on high, everything else maxed out including ultra RT and on my 5070 ti oced to 3200core/34ghz vram with dlss4 balanced (swapped file) plus smooth motion from nvidia app I`m getting 100-130 fps in 4k, game is pretty good.
i dont get this new trend of taking games that are a few years old and "Remastering" them by putting them on unreal engine 5 for slightly better graphics and far worse performance."oh yeah the game runs fine on your system? Lets fix that" BUY A NEW PC NOW.
The only benchmark i wanted to see in remastered games was a comparison of peformance between the standard version and the remastered version. How many fps do you gain or lose by playing this game? FAIL
who cares aboout old version.
Dude i don’t care about both versions, you are not on my level. I’m just talking about remasters in general, most don’t bring nothing new to the table and with horrible peformance to boot.
If your computer is weak then play old version.
Or if i don't like blurry AI filters;
Or if i don't like bloated file size;
Or if i prefer more fps over marginal graphic improvements, if any.
But since John doesn't make the comparison, how i am gonna find out?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEoQxVMzBEg
The changes it’s more like they modded the game to look another way rather than just improve on things, but ok. Still no word on peformance tough, and obviously the marketing guys don’t want to touch that…
I even looked it up to see if a kind soul made some peformance comparison but there is nothing, no wonder game companies don't give crap about optimization anymore, all people want to compare is graphics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEoQxVMzBEg as for blur, I had to disable motion blur in ini file but still the game is rather blurry even in 4k, textures aren`t of great quality either. The game is quite engaging tho I planned to play the original anyway so the remaster dropped just in time.
Aaand this doesn’t adress the questions i asked. How demanding is the game compared to the original (and in theory you could adjust the settings to make the game look the same as the original)? How’s large is the file size compared to the original?
Funny enough, Steam download two games, they are in the one folder, good job Frogwares.
Speaking of Frogwares, they butchered the lore, those sea people are portraited as a poor, sad refugees looking for place to survive… freaking idiots.
why you never engage the dlss?
Heavy !