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

Core Scaling – How many cores does Dragon Quest XI require?

To test out Dragon Quest’s CPU performance, we decided to first play the game for an hour or so with a simulated dual-core, quad-threaded processor, just to see where we would see the largest performance dips. 

Surprisingly, there are many areas within Dragon Quest XI which places relatively little demand on modern processors, with battles never dipping below 60FPS in our short playthrough. Moving into populated areas, however, is a different story. As soon as you enter a location like Gondolia, which is the third major city that is playable within the game, we see framerates take a nose dive as CPU utilisation rises. 

With our simulated dual-core setup, we maintained an average framerate of 51.5FPS and a minimum framerate of 41, a clear sign that the game had become CPU limited. Moving on to a simulated quad-core quad-thread setup, we found that both our Intel and Ryzen processors were still unable to achieve a solid 60FPS framerate, with both systems seeing minor performance dips to around 55FPS. These dips are of little consequence in the grand scheme of things, but they are far from optimal. 

It is only when we move to a Quad-core, Eight Thread setup that we start to maintain a full 60FPS framerate, the highest framerate that is allowed by the game without a little modification. Dragon Quest XI loves having additional cores and threads at its disposal.