Published: March 15, 2017 | Source: OC3D Internal testing | Author: Mark Campbell

Styx: Shards of Darkness PC Performance Review

Introduction

The stealth genre is something that has not been seen in big-budget games for quite some time, with most recent releases like Dishonored 2 falling more into the action category than pure stealth. Â Â

Yesterday marked the release of Styx: Shards of Darkness, the sequel to Styx: Master of Shadows, bringing the thief/assassin Styx into the modern era with enhanced graphics and large sandbox levels which were built in the Unreal 4 Engine.

This game is not about combat, but using yourÂ abilities in intelligent ways to avoid detection and kill your targets without engaging in head-on battles with large opponents. Â

Today we will be looking at how well this new game performs on PC, playing the game on a range of both old and new GPU hardware at various resolutions and graphical settings. Now without further ado, let’s get started!

DriversÂ

For this game, we will be using the newest drivers that were available when the game released, which is Nvidia’s Geforce 378.78 driver and AMD’s 17.3.1 driver.

Test SetupÂ Â

We will be testing this game on our dedicated GPU test rig using both high-end and mid-range GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia.Â

Game Test Rig
Intel i7 6850K
ASUS X99 Strix
Corsair Vengeance 4x8GB DDR4 3200MHz
Corsair HX1200i
Corsair H110i GT
Windows 10 x64Â

Â Â Â Â Â Â

Nvidia GTX 980TiÂ (Left),Â AMD R9 Fury XÂ (Middle)Â GTX 1070 Founders EditionÂ (Right)

For the high-end, we will be testing AMD’s R9 Fury X, the GTX 980Ti and Nvidia’s new GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 GPUs. Â

For the Mid-range offerings, we will be testing the new RX 480 and GTX 1060, both of which will be the ASUS Strix Gaming models.

Â Â Â Â Â

ASUS GTX 1060 StrixÂ (Left),Â ASUS RX 480 StrixÂ (Right)

To represent AMD and Nvidia’s lower-end GPU offerings we have decided to use the AMD R9 380 and the Nvidia GTX 960. Both of these GPUs will be the ASUS Strix models.Â

Both of these GPUs offer very similar performance in most scenarios and come in at very similar price points, so it will be very interesting to see which GPU will come out on top.Â

Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â