Death Stranding 2: On the Beach PC Performance Review
Death Stranding 2 has arrived on PC
Nixxes and Kojima Productions have brought Death Stranding 2 to PC
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is now available on PC, and it is breathtaking. Visually, this is one of the most graphically impressive games available, with PC taking Death Stranding 2’s visuals beyond the game’s PS5 and PS5 Pro versions.
Nixxes and Kojima Productions have worked together on this PC version. With 32:9 and 21:9 aspect ratio support, the game is more cinematic than ever. Beyond that, the game supports all of the latest PC technologies. This includes DLSS, FSR 4.1, and XeSS. Even Multi-Frame Generation is supported. Add on optional ray tracing support, and it is clear that Kojima Productions has taken Death Stranding 2 to the next level.
In this article, we will be looking at Death Stranding 2 across a range of PC hardware configurations. We will also test the game’s scalability with its graphical presets and upscaling. We will even test the game’s optional ray tracing features.
PC Visual Upgrades
On PC, Death Stranding 2 offers graphical settings that go beyond those of the console versions. In the game’s graphical options menu, Nixxes states that the High preset is “roughly equivalent to that of a console”, with “Very High” taking it a step beyond.
While “Very High” is Death Stranding 2’s highest graphical preset, there are graphical settings beyond that. PC gamers can enable ray-traced ambient occlusion. Additionally, Reflections has a “Very High” setting, “Ray Tracing High”, and “Ray Tracing Very High” options. Note that on consoles, Death Stranding 2 does not use ray tracing (even on PS5 Pro).
GPU Drivers
To test Death Stranding 2’s PC version, we used the newest GPU drivers available from AMD and Nvidia. These are AMD Software 26.3.1 Driver, and Nvidia’s GeForce 595.79 “Game Ready” driver.
OC3D Gaming Test Rig Upgrades
We’ve made a lot of new additions to our gaming test setup over the past few months. We now have Nvidia RTX 50 GPUs as part of our GPU test suite. Thanks to Nvidia, we now have their RTX 5070 and RTX 5080 Founders Edition GPUs in for testing. This will allow us to test features like DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation and better look at the newest RTX showcases.
In August, thanks to Sapphire, we also upgraded our gaming test suite with AMD RDNA 4 graphics cards. Today, we have a Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT Pulse and a Radeon RX 9060 XT Pulse. All of these new GPUs are great for playing modern games, as you will soon see in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.
Test System Specs
Below are the full specifications for our GPU/Games testing system, along with links to all the components we used.
OC3D GPU/Games Test System Specifications (Affiliate Links below)
CPU – Intel i9-13900K
Cooling – Corsair iCUE H150i Elite CAPELLIX XT
Motherboard – ASUS ROG Strix Z790-F Gaming WiFi
Memory – Corsair Vengeance 2x16GB (32GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory
Storage – Corsair MP600 PRO NH 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD
Case – Corsair iCUE 5000T RGB
Power Supply – Corsair HX1500i
OS – Windows 11
See the other pages of this article for image comparisons and performance testing.
