Bungie will release Marathon tomorrow. Powered by Bungie’s in-house engine, the game seems to run great on PC. As such, I’ve decided to test it at 8K on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and see how it runs.
For these 8K benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and an NVIDIA RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 591.86 driver.
Bungie has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Shadows, Ambient Occlusion, Environments, Characters, and more. The game also has a FOV slider, and it supports AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS.
Marathon does not have a built-in benchmark tool. And, since this is an extraction shooter, it’s a bit difficult to benchmark its online matches. So, for my tests, I used the training/tutorial area. This area is more convenient to benchmark as there is no fear of being killed by another player.
Since this is a multiplayer game, we won’t have a traditional PC Performance Analysis. This should not come as a surprise to our regular readers. Given how chaotic and inconsistent multiplayer games can get, it’s quite difficult to benchmark them. That’s why I’ve decided to share this 8K video and benchmarks.
At Native 8K on Max Settings with DLAA, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 manages to push 50FPS. This is mighty impressive for Native 8K. With DLSS Quality, we were able to get a minimum of 67FPS and an average of 73FPS. Then, with DLSS Performance, we got the 90FPS range.
Now, I don’t encourage people to game at 8K on an extraction shooter. Most of you will have to game at 4K with DLSS to get a really high framerate. This is essential for a competitive game. Still, these 8K stress tests can give you an idea of how well optimized it actually is.
Bottom line is that whether you are a fan of its art style or not, Marathon will at least run great on a wide range of PC configurations. At the same time, it does not push anything particularly impressive. It looks fine. But, there is nothing here to really “wow” you. This isn’t a graphical powerhouse.
As I said, Marathon will come out tomorrow. So, it will be interesting to see whether it will be a commercial success or a flop. As I wrote in my Highguard article, I don’t expect it to meet the same fate. At the same time, I also don’t expect it to be as successful as the Destiny games were.
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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