DRAGON QUEST XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age PC Performance Review

Impact Assessment – Settings Changes – RX 580 VX GTX 1060

When comparing AMD’s RX 580 and Nvidia’s GTX 1060, one thing is clear. Dragon Quest XI performs best on Nvidia graphics hardware, no contest. While it is fairly common for Unreal Engine 4 games to run best on Nvidia hardware, it is rare for the performance levels to be this far in Nvidia’s favour. 

With Dragon Quest’s turn-based nature, it is one of the few games where low framerates don’t have a huge impact on the game’s playability. If you can play the game with a framerate of 30FPS or over, you are likely to have a great time, yes a smooth 60FPS is a nice bonus, but it is far from essential. 

Our test scene for our graphics card testing is from the “Helidor Region – Parting Place” region, where we can quickly gallop through the area on horseback to place a reasonable amount of stress on our graphics card. If you can maintain 60FPS here, you will be able to run at 60FPS in most of the game, aside from a few problem areas. 

Lowering Dragon Quest’s shadow quality can have a notable impact on the game’s performance, though we can see a larger performance impact on our GTX 1060 results. If you looked at page 5, you will know how much lower shadow quality settings will negatively impact Dragon Quest XI, making it hard to recommend the graphical downgrade if you want to access higher performance levels.

Turning off Dragon Quest XI’s Anti Aliasing can deliver a performance increase of around 3-6%, making it a performance difference that will be difficult to notice. The main difference here will be in graphical quality, as the game’s AA tends to blur the final image, drastically increasing the amount of aliasing the game presents while increasing image sharpness. It’s down to personal preference whether or not you prefer less aliasing and a blurred image or a sharper image as the cost of increased aliasing. 

One of the biggest problems with Dragon Quest XI is how scene dependent many of the game’s largest performance drops can be, with areas like the Heliodor Region camp having huge shadow-related performance issues while places the city of Gondolia can place much larger strains on processors than other locations.