Death Stranding PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Death Stranding PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Death Stranding PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Death Stranding is now available for PC, another former Sony/PlayStation exclusive to grace the PC platform with its presence, offering gamers high framerate gameplay alongside true 4K resolutions, making the game both sharper and smoother on the platform. 

As the first PC gamer using Guerilla Games’ Decima engine, Death Stranding acts as an interesting glimpse into what we will see next month with Horizon: Zero Dawn, another former PlayStation Exclusive. With this game, we can see many things, from the engine’s reaction to new graphics hardware (such as AMD’s RDNA architecture) and see how PC hardware can boost the performance of formerly console exclusive titles. This could also be seen as a glimpse of what could be possible on Sony’s next-generation PlayStation 5 console. 

For Death Stranding, Kojima Productions and 505 Games have partnered with Nvidia to bring DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) support to their game, allowing the green team’s AI supersampling algorithm to deliver boosted performance on RTX hardware and visuals which are arguable superior to the game’s default TAA presentation. We analysed this in detail in a dedicated article, though an overview of our findings can be read in this piece.    

At its core, Death Stranding is about movement, reconnecting a devastated world through beautiful environments. With this in mind, PC’s ability to deliver smooth 60FPS and higher framerates allow the game’s animations to appear smoother than ever, and support for true 4K resolutions makes Death Stranding’s landscapes and characters appear more beautiful than ever before. 

The PC version of Death Stranding is truly the game’s definitive edition, but how does it run and what can you do to get higher framerates on your current PC? Let’s find out. 
 

Death Stranding PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide   

Contents


– PC System Requirements & Graphics Options
– Graphical settings comparisons
– CPU Performance – Incredible CPU Scaling
– Navi VS Turing – RX 5700 VS RTX 2060 (Low, Med Default and Max settings)
– DLSS and CAS Upscaling 
– Settings Scaling and Optimisation Tips
– 1080p Performance
– 1440p Performance
– 4K Performance
– Conclusion

 

GPU drivers

When testing Death Stranding’s PC version, we opted to use the newest drivers from both the Radeon and Geforce camps. These drivers are AMD’s Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 20.7.2 driver as well as Nvidia’s Geforce 451.67 driver.

Testing Methodology

OC3D is a website that is dedicated to PC hardware, so you better believe that we test every game on a wide range of hardware configurations. This commitment to variety means that we will be using both Intel and AMD based testbeds as well as a range of GPU offerings from both Nvidia and Radeon. 

Our primary test system uses Intel’s X99 platform, containing an Intel Core i7 6900K at a fixed clock speed of 4GHz. This testbed will use 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 memory and will be powered and cooled by an HX1200i PSU and an H110i AIO liquid cooler respectively, with everything sitting inside a Corsair 460X chassis. In this system, we are using an ASUS Strix X99 motherboard.

The system below will be used to conduct the majority of our game testing. This system will be used in this review unless otherwise stated.

 


Game Test Rig

Intel i7 6900K @4.0 GHz
ASUS X99 Strix
Corsair Vengeance LP 4x4GB DDR4 3200MHz
Corsair HX1200i
Corsair H110i GT
Windows 10 x64 “May 2019” Update

 


GPU Selection

No gaming test suite would be complete without a large selection of GPUs. At OC3D our current test suite covers Nvidia’s RTX 20-series and GTX 10-series alongside AMD’s RX Vega and RX 500 series graphics cards.

Starting with Metro Exodus, we began testing new PC games with Nvidia’s latest RTX series of graphics cards. In our testing, we currently use the mid-range RTX 2060 and uber high-end RTX 2080 Ti entering our graphics card lineup. In time we hope to have a Radeon RX 5700 graphics card for RTX 2060 VS RX 5700 comparisons. 

With this performance analysis, OC3D’s main review staff has been able to work together from across the UK to deliver wider levels of performance testing than is common for our gaming content. This has enabled us to add a wider range of GPUs to our test suite for this review. 


Radeon RX 5700 Series – Navi (RDNA)

– Powercolor Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Devil 
– Powercolor Radeon RX 5700 Red Devil

PowerColor Red Devil RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT LE Cooler

Geforce RTX 20-Series & GTX 16-Series


– Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition
– Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition
– Palit GTX 1660 Super StormX

nVidia RTX 2080 and RTX 2080Ti ReviewnVidia RTX 2060 Review


Geforce GTX 10-series

– Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition
– Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition
– ASUS GTX 1060 Strix Gaming OC

 

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AMD RX Vega Series

– AMD RX Vega 56

AMD RX 500 Series

– AMD RX 580 Strix OC Â