S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, GPU Benchmark

[@korana6308]

Everyone is being upset about the 8 GB 4060... wait till we get 8GB 5060 lol. I would not be surprised...

[@lynackhilou4865]

Watch nvidia give us a 9gb 5060 and claim it's more than enough

[@Nixy23]

With the recent leaks from yesterday which are looking accurate (still take with a grain of salt) the 5070 will only have 12GB VRAM. So yeah.. it's highly likely the 5060 will be stuck on 8 again.

[@independentthought3390]

@@lynackhilou4865 I mean, if it's at least 9 GB, that would be a welcome surprise.

[@DizzyAndHigh]

Nvidia made a woopsie with the 3060 12GB and will now make 8gb xx60 cards out of spite (and market segmentation)

[@yaldabaoth2]

$20 worth of more vram would result in nvidia charging $300 more for the customer.

[@LukeValentino]

"Are ya winning son?" -"I'm compiling shaders"

[@QuietQuest0909]

[@johnsmith-i5j7i]

Taking ten minutes reticulating splines 😅

[@drupiROM]

This game will probably be like Cyberpunk, a few months to get big patches and a v2.0 that will fix most of the issues in about 2026 or so.

[@red.46]

I increased the shader cache size in nvidia panel and now i dont have compiling shaders

[@demonfedor3748]

​@@red.46 I did the same. Set it to unlimited. Still compiling every time.

[@alrecks619]

>compiling shaders >persistent stutters >diminishing graphical quality improvements over previous gen releases it's UNREAL ENGINE 5 time, baby.

[@leviathan5207]

The full name is: (It's) Unreal (how made another shit) Engine (for the) 5 (th time , holy shit)

[@JohnnyBg2905]

​@@leviathan5207😂😂😂

[@wulfgarpl]

And I bet TAA

[@sonnyankau9239]

gamers showing their armchair engineering expertise again

[@MrLilredmachine]

​@@sonnyankau9239 eh? Do some research on UE5. Modelling an empty room with no high end features turned on (essentially pre baked lighting) UE5 is between 20-30% slower than UE4 was. It's mid development, unfinished, not optimised, yet Unreal have released it and it's getting slower with every .1 revision, not faster.

[@beershifter]

GUYS, PACK IT UP. NO ONE CAN TOP THIS THUMBNAIL

[@Alexandra-Rex]

I think that's just a pictrue Steve took while working on his property.

[@PossiblyPouseh]

Steve Richter 😂

[@JomeFromWork]

​@Alexandra-Rex It's true cuz how much he talked about his lawn on the recent HUB podcasts

[@dormanthero]

Lol I came here not for the video but to comment about the thumbnail holy shit

[@ZeRO65432]

Damn, I didn't even realize 😂

[@ClarkWasHere1]

This man tests 372 different hardware and settings configurations in the course of a week, and here I am posting a "Thanks Steve" bit.

[@Vekstar]

Back to you Steve

[@MikaelKKarlsson]

And you Steve!

[@Logical]

60fps we meet again.

[@itsmeurboi]

* ̶6̶0̶ 30

[@Crazzzycarrot-qo5wr]

I see you're just got into the game menu...

[@DM-dk7js]

My 3080 is hitting 60 at 1440 with DLSS OFF using TAA. It’s not bad at all.

[@datingsim]

@@DM-dk7jshow? please tell me. I cant get above 50 without godawful dlss and the horrible input lag from Frame Generation

[@DM-dk7js]

@@datingsimI will try my best to post my settings but it may take a while. Won’t be able to get on until tonight. Of course that big Valisya town still chugs, but I was shocked how well it ran last night after putting ON TAA. High settings too. I only played this way for about an hour but even in combat it was pretty amazing! Cyberpunk also ran great for me on day one 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@BigAirCot]

That moment when your 3060 12gb is better than a 3070

[@sarpp69]

Yeah, not like someone with a 3070 is going to lower one or two settings and get infinitely better frames than you.

[@ajuiceboxxx]

@@sarpp69bros going to cry

[@lizardx6504]

@@sarpp69 6700xt and 6800 are better than both

[@MrAsus4870]

@@ajuiceboxxx are you upset about your GPU beeing called out? it's only hardware, chill

[@ajuiceboxxx]

@@MrAsus4870i have a 4070 so no

[@legodingseling]

Insane work on that thumbnail 💀

[@montreauxs]

What thumbnail? The blue box?

[@satyammohanlal2475]

AI doesn't reach this lvl of art

[@legodingseling]

@satyammohanlal2475 bhok bhok 🗣️‼️

[@50H3i1]

If I didn't saw that picture on the thumbnail I would've thought he was an ingame character

[@CrrzyFox]

That IS a in game character ......

[@m00nm00n]

Stalker 2 = stare at shader compiliation screen Flight Sim 24 = Stare at loading screen. Wow, gaming is really evolving ;)

[@yaldabaoth2]

Meanwhile gamers: "Let me preorder this!"

[@m00nm00n]

@@yaldabaoth2 yeah, sad but true.

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

"NEXT-GEN"

[@Superiorer]

FS24 is already performing way better. I would have been very mad if it was still unplayable. That game is expensive.

[@ChiekoGamers]

Learn how to pirate and stop giving $70 to these billion dollar corpos.

[@ApocDevTeam]

6:35 I like how you can instantly tell which cards have 8GB just by looking at the 1% lows and not even reading the VRAM amount. NVIDIA loves it too, terrible performance due to VRAM limitations means you're more likely to upgrade sooner.

[@Radek494]

There must be a reason they only give away this game with a purchase of 4070 GPU onwards

[@Aleksi723]

I "upgraded" my good ol 1080 to 3060ti and my god its bad. Now switching to amd and get 7800xt next week. I never even thought about vram until i got this stuttery mess of an 3060ti. Cant even 1440p a f'ing farming simulator.

[@GarethFairclough]

​@Aleksi723 lol and there's me with a 1060 running at 1080p xD

[@Aleksi723]

@@GarethFairclough After gtx everything went downhill. Been playing on 1440p for long time now and cant go down to 1080p anymore. Now this shitty ass 3060ti cant even handle newest farming simulator in 1440p.

[@ICeyCeR3Al]

The 3080 1% lows hanging on for its dear life lol. The AMD gpus below the 7900XT are really getting hammered but at least they have good mins because of the Vram. Upscaling+frame gen will make all the difference. As for Nvidia's terrible mins, that can't be really be fixed without sacrificing texture quality.

[@Madmeerkat55]

"I love my life. Well, that was sort of a joke" Steve with the self immolation right off the bat

[@Edward135i]

Sometimes I wonder if Nvidia made the 16gb 4060ti just so Steve could prove his point over and over against them.

[@Mcnooblet]

Or give people the option of "you get what you pay for". 8gb has been warned about for quite some time. Of course if there's one thing missing from modern day society, its accountability for personal choice. If I try to force a turd into my PC, is it the dogs fault for creating the turd or my fault for picking the turd up and trying to use it? Everyone views this differently, and no doubt many will blame the dog for creating it in the first place, because they lack individual thinking to make informed decisions for themselves. Dogs fault! To each their own I suppose. It is kind of embarrassing though that so many need to be shielded from making bad decisions, because if one possibility exists, they will pick it.

[@SemperValor]

4060Ti 16Gb still gets smoked by the 7800XT 16Gb they're both the same price... 4060 8 Gb or 4060 16Gb is probably the worst card ever made by Nvidia... Loses to everything at every price point and model 8Gb or 16Gb Ti or non TI doesn't matter.

[@scarletspidernz]

Even games devs are pissed of with the VRAM Gimping, for something that costs so littler int he overall costs of GPU's it's so dumb.

[@MrHendrikje]

THey made it for content creators, like videographers, photographers, etc. Priemere doesnt necessarily render a video faster becauseyou have a 4080. It will be faster but not that much faster, so instead a lot of these workstations have xx50/60 class in them so its has A gpu that isn't just a video adapter. 8GB is much too low, so they increased it to 16 so they don't lose this market to AMD or Intel. Ofcourse Nvidia rather have them buy a Tesla or Quadro GPU but they also know that lots of these people are one man operations and aren't willing to drop several thousands on a GPU. Nvidia cares about money, this GPU proves that. Furthermore, xx50/60 class GPU's are also used for surveilance purposes and put in NVR's. HEre too having a Stronger GPU doesnt matter. I have seen tests where a measly 1050/1050 TI beats a single 2080 sinple because it could handle more video streams. Why? This can be amounted to better driver support. It wanst that many more, I think one or two more but given its a 150 dollar card vs one that was closer too 1000, that is telling. And given these Security camera's are also using 4K thesedays having more VRAM is definitely helpful. Granted I have seen this data coming from Hikvision.. and Hikvision isn't exactly a stellar company.. But what this tells you is that this GPU solely exists to satiate a nicher section of the market Nvdia doesnt want to lose because I think they get quite a bit of sales for the 16GB model through SI's and OEMS. But unlucky for Nvidia it clearly proves that them being stingy with VRAM is actually harmful and that AMD's approach is much better.

[@xboxnerd4759]

10% work GPU test 90% thumbnail

[@Cosmodjinn]

All work and no play makes Steve a dull boy.

[@CossackHD]

Looks a bit like Zelensky in the thumbnail

[@valentinvas6454]

If you think this doesn't look that bad let me remind you that this was done with a high end gaming CPU. When Digital Foundry tested the Ryzen 5 3600 they were experiencing frequent drops to the low 20s in towns. When lots of NPC are nearby the performance absolutely tanks. Even with the 7800X3D it dropped to 40 FPS when all the stalkers hid in a bunker from the storm. And that's just unacceptable.

[@Crazzzycarrot-qo5wr]

im gonna try it on gamepass with my 3070 and 10400f, on ultrawide 1440p. Wish me luck.

[@F1neW1ne]

I have not experienced that yet. At least not on a 7900XT and 7800X3D so far. We’ll see though. I am only 4 hours into the game.

[@K31TH3R]

I am running a 5800X + 4x8GB 3866MHz C16 and despite the 7800X3D usually being 30-60% faster than my setup in AAA games, I'm noticing in Stalker's worst areas the 7800X3D is only ~8-10% faster than my setup. So this doesn't seem to me that it's actually CPU bottlenecked in those conditions, but there is bugged code smacking into UE5 engine limitations. Considering that the devs are saying that "A-life" is currently not working as intended (and there's evidence that it may not even actually be implemented at all going by the Cyberpunk 2077 police like insta spawning) I think these areas are probably fixable. However, the current state of the AI is very concerning, and while this often looks and feels like a Stalker game, it's missing a key aspect of what would make it a Stalker game (without A-Life this might as well be Fallout with a Stalker skin).

[@basmus]

Yup, I'm on a 5700X and I hover between 30-45 FPS in that town. It's literally insufferable.

[@skinscalp222]

@@F1neW1ne Why did you say "we'll see" as if you're not going to be dropping to the 40s too? You don't believe Digital Foundry's video?

[@PredalienatorX]

I'm scared and curious of the eventual thumbnail when Stellar Blade releases on PC

[@AlaiasAlias]

LET HIM COOK

[@rhoharane]

scared? Did you mean excited?

[@riven4121]

StEve

[@OussaMeb]

​@@riven4121 You desrve the most *CreatEve* comment 😆👌

[@123Suffering456]

Suddenly really looking forward to this game's release on PC 😄

[@infidel6347]

0:12 That thumbnail is so clean i didn't noticed until I saw the comments 😮

[@Tucky2012]

Same 😁

[@TheDarksideFNothing]

Dude they have been killing it with the thumbnails

[@j195sclko]

I just walked over to my neglected RX 6800 and gave it a little pat on the back. "We will continue our 2k journey for a few more years my old friend, you are doing good."

[@floydster23]

It will be such a sad day when my 6800 can't cope with max settings 1440p. For now though, he soldiers on like the little trooper that he is.

[@bravoMike97]

I'm using a 6800 XT for 4k gaming. There's nothing worth upgrading to that isn't exorbitantly expensive

[@killerfugu2659]

Seems it can do okay at 1440p, no reason to go all the way down to 2k yet

[@predabot__6778]

@@killerfugu2659 I take it you mean 2K DCI (2048x1080)? That's so close to 1080p (1920x1080), that you might as well go with that. Side-note: usually, all resolutions around and above HD, is named according to the height of the image, so 720p, 1080p, 1440p, but for whatever reason, 2K is named after the WIDTH... which is confusing and dumb. Or maybe not, since standard 4K-UHD is called that, even though it's actually 3.8K... But even MORE annoyingly...! 4K-DCI is once more named 'correctly', since it's 4096x2160 - except, again, the WIDTH is the naming, not the height. GRRR!! Resolution-nomenclature is an inconsistent mess.

[@killerfugu2659]

@@predabot__6778 Yea I know, the op mentioned playing at 2k, which seems low for his gpu, I'd say go 1440p. The whole "2k" thing is odd as you say. I just call monitors usually by vertical res as it makes sense, and then aspect ratio if needed, like 1920x1080 is just 1080p, but 2560x1080 is UW 1080p of UWFHD.

[@DarthAsdar]

I hope Radeon gpus will increase their performance after the release of new drivers. Up to now, the only available version in Adrenalin is 24.10.1, released on October 11, month and a half before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

[@TooBokoo]

A driver update will, no doubt, help. It's just unfortunate that AMD drags their feet way more than Nvidia. Although, it's hard to blame them with the way they're slaughtering the CPU market.

[@05DonnieB]

​@TooBokoo the richest company in the just maybe has more resources. Also most of the bugs and problems in this game has nothing to do with drivers, just bad programming.

[@MrChriss000]

Another one of those games I buy about 7 years later for a fiver and play it on much later hardware.

[@zerocontent6890]

This is the way.

[@connivingkhajiit]

So true!

[@madgodzilla12465]

And way better optimization lol

[@123Suffering456]

Yeah, sounds like the smart choice. I find it shocking how many people defend this game's state at release.

[@RicardoSilvaTripcall]

Usually what I do, I'm not in a hurry to play games, take your time, save your money, and don't get stressed by the FOMO ...

[@MEMETIZER]

6:00 I bet Nvidia will make the RTX 5060 a *8Gb* card still, and it will sometimes perform worse than the RTX 3060 :D

[@jurgengalke8127]

it will be 10% faster than the 4060 and 15% dearer as usual

[@Stars-Mine]

They literally are locked into it because the 3GB chips are not out yet. Its not even on nvidia this time, the bus was designed around a chip that isnt out yet. the 3GB chips will be out for a refresh in Q4 2025, so just wait a year.

[@MEMETIZER]

@@Stars-Mine They KNOWINGLY designed these chips around a 128bit bus to make these cards 8GB. The 3060 was a 192 bit card. 4060 is really a 4050, 5060 is really a 5050. Also 8GB more of GDDR6 is like ~16$ for Nvidia.

[@Stars-Mine]

@@MEMETIZER Yes... they knowingly designed this around a 128bit bus... with the plan of 3GB chips to be out.

[@MEMETIZER]

@@Stars-Mine It would literally cost Nvidia ~10$ more to make 4060 a 16GB card. We all understand why they are making **60 8Gb cards. To make them obsolete in the nearest future. And in case of Stalker 2 here they are already obsolete. RTX 5060 8GB yet to be released but already obsolete.

[@williamregal8503]

that moment a 3060 does better than a 3070 lol

[@Brent_P]

And 3060 Ti, 4060 & 4060 Ti.

[@Hennannice]

it didnt tho

[@rudy1999]

Damn the 4060ti is the biggest scam of all time though xD

[@3X73RM]

Yeah, I have a 3070 and thought it would serve me well for a few more years still, but maybe not 😅 Still getting 280fps in Doom Eternal though, they really optimised that game ridiculously well :P

[@richter0157]

im playing this on my gtx 1080(all low, fsr balanced), tell ya hwat, it feels EXACTLY like playing the first stalker game when it came out

[@SlyNine]

When stalker came out. No way it would play on a 8 yo video card tho.

[@nonenothing4412]

Authenticity!!!!!

[@fruitcake4910]

@@SlyNine lol that would be something that was meant to play Unreal Tournament.

[@richter0157]

@@SlyNine I think I had a geforce 6800 or something back then

[@mikehawk6918]

If it feels exactly the same, why not simply download Stalker Anomaly (FOR FREE) and play that with a bunch of graphical mods at 3x the FPS and BETTER graphical fidelity? Also, less bugs and way, WAY more content. I suggest the EFP modpack. You can then disable the mods you don't like, like what I did with the health system and crafting.

[@ColonelDutch]

Optimization left the chat again, and “fine-tuning the engine” hasn’t answered the phone for days. It's a shame, but not at all surprising.

[@olebrumme6356]

That poor 3070...

[@fruitcake4910]

Faster than a PowerPoint presentation

[@fireball2275]

remember when that killed the 2080ti... not so much these days

[@labiates]

​@@fireball2275im pretty sure it still does when vram isn't and issue lol

[@fireball2275]

@@labiates nah, the 2080ti is slightly faster, it was just the price that have the 3070 the edge

[@labiates]

@@fireball2275 in newer games and some old 3070 is like 1 - 5 fps faster, 3070 is faster mostly but not by a lot at all like 5% at most.

[@BUDA20]

so this game is the google chrome of vram

[@rhoharane]

and cpu

[@K31TH3R]

I have 16GB of VRAM and 32GB of DRAM. I have seen the game using 14.6GB of VRAM and 22GB of DRAM after a ~2 hour session. Seeing this, it appears to make more sense to start saying "Chrome is the Stalker of internet browsers". Considering how much user data Google is harvesting from Chrome, it also seems more colloquially accurate as well.

[@juanford55]

And Nvidia will likely keep same vram configuration from the x80 class and below for the 50 series... Another 2 more years with 12GB x70 class and 8GB with x60 GPUs... This is going to be fun.

[@BladeCrew]

Then go to team red, at least the 70 series in amd has 12 gb of vram. Like the RX 7700XT(12GB) vs the RTX 4060 TI(8GB).

[@juanford55]

@BladeCrew might think about it for my next GPU upgrade, we will see what they offer for the RX 8000 series, hopefully they release something decent enough on the midrange.

[@Definedd]

@@juanford55 hopefully, rx 8000 isnt gonna have a 5090/5080 competitor, and much improved ray tracing. rumoured to be around 7900xt level of perf with greater efficiency, so a 5070 level card with rumoured 4070ti super level RT and FSR 4 should be great

[@haukikannel]

Well 5060 is low end $500 GPU so you better keep on playing at low settings in anyway! So 8gb is just fine! 😂

[@BladeCrew]

@@haukikannel Or just don't play the latest games. I still have a list of old games from 2023 and back that I still want to play. I haven't even finished playing Witcher 3.

[@JasonMoon111]

After watching this, it's no suprise why they removed real time shadows and NPC AI at the last moment before release -which both were in the first stalker 17 years ago. And that game was so poorly optimized it started to work after year of patching.

[@Jack_Sparrow131]

Lol, yeah agreed.. shadows and NPC AI will hit the performance, especially for console & low to med tier hardware Am sure people will mod this game with shadows and NPC AI..etc But at this moment.. performance is bad.. this game needs an expert level of programmers to fix this mess, probably will this be playable for med-tier systems after 3-6 months of updates

[@bestrum1188]

Cant wait for Nvidia to release the 5060Ti 8gb starting at 400$

[@martinfindeisen5800]

There are also AMD an Intel 😉

[@syncmonism]

I think they might wait for the higher density 3GB ram chips to be available before releasing a 5060 ti. I think not even Nvidia would be greedy enough to try putting 8GB on another 5060 ti class card... But that's just my guess. I could be wrong of course.

[@JCTiggs1]

Steve looks like he literally spent the weekend in Chernobyl.

[@cxngo8124]

Chornobyl* That's the way the devs spelled it in the title 😂

[@K31TH3R]

@@cxngo8124 "Chernobyl" is the Russian spelling/pronunciation (Sher-no-bil). Chornobyl is the Ukrainian spelling/pronunciation (Chore-no-bil). Considering the Chornobyl NPP is in Ukraine, probably makes more sense to use "Chornobyl" spelling and pronunciation.

[@JohnDoeWasntTaken]

@@cxngo8124 Most people are going to say Chernobyl because that is the spelling 99% of Westerners have been exposed to for decades now. Even one of the previous Stalker games uses the Russian spelling. They may have switched to the Ukrainian spelling now but people can't be expected to suddenly switch after so long having "Chernobyl" in our heads. Especially people who aren't gamers and aren't even aware of Stalker 2, they still will use the Russian spelling.

[@luckinme.]

One more video with a CPU Benchmark would be nice.

[@skinscalp222]

Yes, this is badly needed because there are a lot of coping fans who say their weaker than 78003XD CPUs are able to maintain over 60 fps in settlement area even though there are already many videos showing the 78003XD dropping to 40s including one from Digital Foundry.

[@flxdrv5020]

What a disaster, just 100fps with a 4090 and a 9800X3D at 1080p native. Devs need to ditch unreal engine 5

[@fruitcake4910]

That’s unrealistic

[@zorbakaput8537]

Not the GPUs fault watch the video.

[@Kazuny]

@@zorbakaput8537 Nobody said it was

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

lmao and that'll solve everything wrong with gaming right ? CPU limitations and bad performance don't exist outside of Unreal engine right ?

[@lunchie80]

If only games would run on anything but epic

[@gaurd3]

8 Gigs cards was planned obsolescence.

[@barbusbogdan7]

Can't wait to get rid of mine. Nvidia scammed me one last time....

[@Zayran626]

same with 12 Gigs in the near future, 4070 Ti for $800 btw

[@tensorup6595]

And Jensen wants to give the 5070 LAPTOP GPU 8 GB VRAM. Just 8 GB in a chassis where you can't upgrade the GPU at all..

[@Veritas.0]

Everything in consumer computing is.

[@Extreme96PL]

Except 4060 all 8GB are 5+ years old you expected them to handle ultra settings in 1440p or 4k for how long? Also Stalker 2 is good example where medium settings looks good already while high and epic tanks performance with minimal improvment.

[@kockoklosharcheto]

Okay, IF this game is still CPU bottlenecked WHILE playing with the best GPU (4090) and the best gaming CPU (9800X3D) at the same time at 4K res (that's supposed to shift the balance to being the most GPU bound), doesn't that mean that frames would drop considerably lower just by having a different CPU? I mean they are already unplayable, but it seems to me that in reality they would be much much worse, because the CPU is bottlenecking, am I right?

[@araqweyr]

It does make sense, yes. I shudder at thought what FPS people's CPUs like R5 7600 (or some other popular normal 6-core model) are gonna get. That used to be enough to enable most graphic cards

[@AgentSmith911]

It's horrible optimization on the engine itself and the game. The graphics aren't even that good imho. It's sad that we need a 9800X3D and a 5090 in order to enjoy new games that don't even look amazing. It's like the game devs say "just buy a $9000 PC lol"

[@mondodimotori]

That's not how cpu bottleneck works. There's no actual "shifting" of compute need. If your GPU is fast enough to saturate the CPU, it will be a cpu bottleneck. The 4090 is that kind of gpu.

[@Jonathan-Roden]

I'm looking for the CPU Steve used for the bwnchmark. Dis he said he used the 9800x3D? Can't find

[@kockoklosharcheto]

@@Jonathan-Roden I tried to rewatch it but couldn't find the exact timestamp, I think he says it briefly and only once or I am going nuts 😭

[@VovanUA-]

Poor optimization for AMD GPUs. 6800 matching 4060TI or even slower? Bad joke for sure

[@McSluntTheSecond]

AMD haven't even released new drivers for a few weeks. You'd think they anticipated such a high profile release. The game itself has that eurojank level of optimisation

[@VovanUA-]

@McSluntTheSecond The game is sponsored by Nvidia. Nvidia released drivers for Stalker a week before launch, while AMD still hasn't released theirs even a few days after the release. Not a surprise at all.

[@AKK5I]

Unreal Engine is notoriously bias to Nvidia cards

[@Typhy7]

Its not because of optimization. Its because of lumen RT reflections always being enabled. If it had RT for more things or if it had hardware RT, the AMD cards would've looked even worse. This is also why the 1080 Ti gets less fps than a 3060 in this game.

[@RedEverything]

Just part of PC gaming. Some games come out favoring one brand over the other.

[@denisruskin348]

No way to sugarcoat it, if a 1800 EURO card can’t deliver 4K60 native at maxed settings, the price of 2.5x PS5 Pros, then what are we doing?

[@jrm8206]

We are PC Gaming. No way you can become a console pleb. Not for a million.

[@torchbearer3784]

We are being scammed.

[@rudy1999]

The card is more than 2 years old though and this is a brand new game.

[@kristoffer3000]

@@rudy1999 biggest cope of the century

[@Silentguy_]

@@rudy1999that is no excuse at all. The 4090 scales incredibly well across every other game released this year and will continue to perform well for years to come, the issue is that Stalker 2 is forcing SOFTWARE ray tracing that cannot be toggled in game. Software ray tracing is atrocious because it means that ray tracing isn’t being offloaded to dedicated hardware accelerated RT cores on the GPU and is instead being processed alongside every other asset per frame.

[@Spentalei]

I'd love a simple CPU performance scaling benchmark. Nothing too fancy.

[@HeretixAevum]

A 3060 outperforming a 3070 is absolutely wild, lmao. Nvidia are such conmen.

[@Hennannice]

the game is horribly optimized

[@mungojerrie86]

​@@Hennanniceit's the VRAM issue, not the game issue.

[@AndreFreitas91250]

This is the type of game to show people that the current GPUs lineup is overpriced 😅. Sure it could be better optimized, but having to spent $500 or more to play at 1080p seems to be too much. Not even mention the CPU requirements.

[@JohnDoeWasntTaken]

I spent $350 on a GTX970 in 2014 and it maxed out everything I threw at it @1080p, and only started to slow down around 2023. Absolute BS what GPU prices are now.

[@tensorup6595]

Finally! A reviewer testing the VRAM by playing/running around for a while longer. This is the most crucial and most annoying problem you have with low amounts of VRAM and this behavior is observable in so many titles. Many revierwers just benchmark one scene where 8 GB seems fine at first, leading to the problem not getting the attention it deserves. These reviewers fail to acknowledge that the longer you play, the more likely your VRAM fills up and causes stutters and lower frame rate like we've seen here. On my 6 GB GPU, I'm seeing this behavior in many titles so don't blame developers for "poor opimization", blame GPU vendors for not giving the cards enough VRAM.

[@ninele7]

Also important note is that VRAM can be used by other software running on PC. Something reasonable like streaming your gameplay to friend in discord also consumes VRAM. So mobile 4070 with 8gb of VRAM freezes even on low preset quite quickly. And that happens on 2000$ laptop.

[@tensorup6595]

@@ninele7 Yeah that's a really good point. I'm feeling bad for buyers of 4070 laptops, they can't just upgrade their GPU. This is planned obsolescence at its best.

[@GarethFairclough]

Why not both? Can't just continually say "throw more vram/clockspeed/cores/whatever at it!". The devil bear some responsibility for this.

[@Hennannice]

the gpus with 8gb of vram also ran the game sluggishly, so its not like if they just had more vram it would be fine. u would want to lower settings and use upscaling anyway. clearly the game is badly optimized outside of vram usage, CPU usage specially. the vram usage is actually quite reasonable compared to how hard the game is to run.

[@ninele7]

@@Hennannice On lowest settings at 1440p DLSS quality it runs at reasonable framerate on 4070 laptop. But with discord stream, after like 30 minutes of playing it turns into stuttery mess. If 50-60 fps is sluggish for you, it doesn't mean that it sluggish for everyone.

[@Carstuff111]

Man, there are times I do not envy the amount of work you folks have to put in for all this testing. People just assume that something like this would be easy, all you are doing is testing a game, how hard can that be, right? Not taking into account all the numbers you have to crunch, all the time wasted just waiting for shaders to rebuild between changes in settings, changing out video cards and drivers when needed.... there is A LOT to keep track of. I can barely keep myself organized working on cars at times, I would end up swamped doing this kind of stuff, at least for a bit. This is why I stick to working on cars, and I let you folks with WAY more patience than I have do this kind of testing lol. Thank you to all of you KZbinrs that work your butts off to give us these detailed break downs of new games on various PC hardware!

[@Gustaviustwinkelberry]

Another golden steve thumbnail😂

[@radu1006]

Good job, but I still want to see 4K with quality upscaling, since it was the result of your poll.

[@avancult]

look at thumbnail, OMG it's him

[@maxmad4771]

So you're telling me I bought 165Hz, 1440p monitor for nothing?

[@haukikannel]

It is good for Excel and Word usage!

[@scarletspidernz]

Its for Counter Strike 2

[@exqziMOI]

My 7600 and RX 6800 XT feels like a budget build now

[@firstname9845]

it is a budget build tho

[@A.Froster]

​@@firstname9845 a 6800xt is not budget bro. People actually think everything below a 4080 is a budget build 🤡

[@firstname9845]

@@A.Froster if u get a low-mid tier amd card you are going for a budget build

[@tomstech4390]

A $3000 PC has a budget... the budget is $3000. Cheap?no, but it's a high value (cost vs reward) build for sure and probably a sweet spot.

[@MrRafabro]

Yup, upgraded this year in AM4 to 5700x3D and 7800XT and see myself now having to turn on upscaling to play a 1440p, it's ridiculous. AMD cards are being done dirty aswell with all this lazy UE5 games coming out with in-built RT illumination

[@cucumbermainline]

Can it run Crysis? Can it run Cyberpunk? Can it run STALKER 2?

[@haukikannel]

There allways will be games like that! Eventually even kitchen sink can run Stalker 2… But it will take many, many years…

[@roastinpeace2320]

Can it run [insert any unreal engine 5 game]

[@flemmingelbech-madsen3166]

Hopefully Optimization is gonna happen, im not ready to part ways with my rig just yet. 5700x, 32gb ram, and RX 6800xt - was really looking forward for this game, but looks like i will have to wait buying it

[@Jamal-mq6xn]

Your PC is great, and it would be wasteful to upgrade imo. This game just sucks.

[@jako997]

What you have it's Perfectly fine tbh. The developers just need to send out a big patch for performance. I'm struggling myself with a 5800x3D and 7800XT lol. Game just needs some optimization and AMD needs to bring out driver Updates for the game since they haven't yet

[@Lemoncit0]

Man, I really thought UE5 would not have as much problems as UE4. What an idiot i was

[@jonnygudman1815]

480x640 will become fashionable again. 😆

[@TheZoenGaming]

Massive props to Steve for spending over 4 hours waiting for shaders to compile. Devs: Consoles have more VRAM so we can push way better graphics! 8GB isn't enough anymore. Also devs: We aren't willing to optimize graphics for any level of VRAM. Also also devs: Why is everyone shitting on our game? It runs perfectly fine on the $1,600+ GPU in our test system that the company wrote off as a business expense!

[@Sython6]

Makes me feel like i should have stuck with a 1080p monitor.

[@leviathan5207]

The game is severely CPU Limited tbh. A 5800x3d cannot manage a stable 60 in the first town.

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

lmfao that won't help with CPU bound this game is you'll not see high frame rates unless you have a beast CPU.

[@Tryton4551]

@@DragonOfTheMortalKombat Only 102 fps average with 9800X3D, ouch

[@tedkaczynskigaming2653]

​@@leviathan5207despite being this cpu limited its npcs, world etc are the worst in the series npcs are the dumbest they have ever been they dont even take cover just walk slowly to you and theres no cpu heavy alife system from old games enemies just randomly spawn out of nowhere the game world is dead

[@rhoharane]

hey, you still get a good Windows desktop experience lol

[@MANiACmiget925]

That thumbnail is wild...😮

[@ThisPc0001]

The future makes me hate my 3080 10GB :( Between the Crypto craze, and VRAM shortages, it's such a disappointment.

[@baronoflight]

Fsr3 and fsr frame gen has saved my 3080

[@wombatonsteroids]

What a horribly optimized game. I'm really sick of this trend the last couple years where flagship cards are BARELY able to achieve playable framerates on new games despite the ridiculous specs we're working with.

[@JimBobm]

Agreed

[@james2042]

See this is exactly why upscaling vs native matters. Epic quality with upscaling vs high native have similar performance. The upscaling will introduce visual inconsistencies as ai isnt perfect, high reduces overall image quality, but maintains consistency. Personally id prefer high than upscalling, most games ive played upscalling has been pretty bad

[@DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

"most games ive played upscalling has been pretty bad" So that means you played with bad upscaling aka FSR.

[@dante19890]

You mean that fsr is bad. We know

[@Osaka2407]

​@@DragonOfTheMortalKombat no, the fact that DLSS sucks less than FSR doesn't mean it's doesn't suck. It's just just a fancy TAA with a ton of frame persistency to hide all the graphical flaws RTGI, DXR and other 'advancements'. Want to see a good upscaling/AA solution? Go back to 4 TFLOPs PS4 Pro. It managed 1800p30 in Ghost of Tsushima. 10 TFLOPs PS5 manages 1800p, completely locked to 60FPS and the game looks absolutely stunning. They got checkerboard rendering to be bascially indistinguishable from native rendering during movement with pixel peeping required to spot differences while static. Upscaling now requires the same pixel peeping when static but falls apart in fast movements, especially if FPS is lower than ~60. Such an advancement the DLSS/FSR and other are.

[@guilhermedecarvalhofernand1629]

@@Osaka2407 they don't wanna hear the truth

[@RobloxianX]

if gpu history went different and we had a 4090 the speed of a current day 4060, FPS and detail in games would be the same. It's just that Developers would put more time into optimization. Honestly, allowing developers to make basically crappy unoptimized garbage with the excuse of "Hardware will get better over time" is going to kill the PC Gaming industry. 6-8 years ago, a $1000 PC would have been able to play most games of the time at 1080p Ultra at ranging around 120FPS, today from these benchmarks, even a $2000 PC can barley break 60FPS at 1080p Ultra without DLSS.

[@Z3rgatul]

developers can rename current "medium settings" to "epic settings", "low settings" to "high" and add few presets below the current "low". Will this make you happier? Or is it like south park episode when government announced new average size of penises?

[@RobloxianX]

@@Z3rgatul lmfao wtf are you yapping about

[@PSXman9]

a 400€+ GPU can't even get 60 FPS at 1080p...

[@LightTrack-]

An optimization guide is propably what everyone is waiting on right now. But considering the devs will most likely make efforts to optimize the game themselves, i'm not surprised if the changes will warrant another one down the line.

[@venator9536]

Yeah. And a lot of websites recommend completely diffirent optimized settings and it makes no sense. One says "you can put those on epic without fps impact" the other says the complete opposite....

[@LightTrack-]

@@venator9536 No point in believing any of those without side-by-side comparisons and each setting benchmarked.

[@Vincent-bw8vv]

Great Benchmark! Highly appreciating CPU benches also. I know from others already that the 9800x3d is the fastest, but I would like to see your results also🙏

[@taylorturant8567]

Appreciate your work on this title. The STALKER series cemented my love of PC gaming back in the day.

[@dimitry7182]

Uncanny ah thumbnail

[@richardnpaul_mob]

That a $1600(MSRP) GPU barely scrapes through 60fps at native 4K and the $1000-1200 GPUs don't get there is pretty damning about the value proposition of all of those cards. I mean, it did happen in the past but then you'd have been paying half as much for the top end cards.

[@mondodimotori]

It's still 2 years old silicon

[@richardnpaul_mob]

@@mondodimotori well, let's see how brand new silicon does in a couple of months as this benchmark should be in there for those comparisons. It's a shame that this game wasn't available in time for the CPU mega test

[@Aleksi723]

You can cry about the price, but you can only blame game devs when thse 2008 looking ass titles takes 4090 to enjoy it somewhat.

[@richardnpaul_mob]

@@Aleksi723 if you're happy making yourself poorer to feed someone else's pension/bonus that's up to you

[@Kumoiwa]

Playing Native 4K is dumb when FSR looks just as good and DLSS looks even better

[@AdamsWorlds]

It's crazy that Nvidia is making the 5070 12gb and 5070 TI 16gb according to the leaks. They should both be at a minimum 16gb cards. £700+ for the first card with more than 12gb VRAM is wrong. Paying over £500 for a 12gb card is nuts also. 4k is gaming is getting more popular we need more VRAM to be loading in those textures. I know they want to stop those buying gaming cards over server/workstation cards for applications like AI but this sucks and really hurts the gaming industry and gamers by holding things back.

[@McSluntTheSecond]

Remember when the 5000 series was announced, and nvidia was going to name the basic 4070 as the "RTX 4080 12GB" until everyone called them idiots? They were even going to price that card $100-150USD higher than what it actually launched at. nvidia have become one hell of a joke.

[@maynardburger]

Why are you guys taking shallow rumors as gospel? There's no reason to believe 5070Ti will be 16GB. It could easily be 12GB through cut down bus.

[@AdamsWorlds]

the leaks are from a reliable source (google and check them yourself and see) I wish it was a joke but it’s not.

[@WiLLiW_oficial]

As long as there are dumb people buying mid/high gpus with 8 or 12 gb in 2024/2025, Nvidia will continue to manufacture and sell them

[@haukikannel]

$700 is for poor people Don´t expect too much! 😂 Real gamers will go $1600 GPUs 😂

[@n.erdbeer]

Those visuals hardly justify the hardware requirements...

[@danieldimov8625]

For me it's one of the best looking video games I've played, demanding for sure, but even with the settings turned down, its still very good looking.

[@n.erdbeer]

@@danieldimov8625 I mean the lightning and reflections are just rasterized and still it demands so much performance.

[@danieldimov8625]

@@n.erdbeer Incorrect, the game uses Lumen.

[@danieldimov8625]

@@n.erdbeer They are not rasterised tho.

[@n.erdbeer]

@danieldimov8625 there is no raytracing so what else? Lumen software rt, which is just a better fake lightning. Guess why AMD cards do quite well.

[@FirebonE_88]

Turn off motion blur, people. You'll get better performance and motion blur is crap, anyway.

[@mclarenf1gtr99]

Deadly Performance, Dangerous Shaders, Glitches and Stutters...Nothing will stop our triumphant march towards saving Stalker 2. - mod devs right now.

[@moravianlion3108]

Looks like even in UE5 7900 XTX is best high end card purchase for just $830. Especially for 4k.

[@Sevuntiy]

Unreal engine, more like Urine engine

[@walter1824]

I hope the 8 gb 5060 will be one of the most humiliated cards in history

[@Al_Lergic]

It will have 12gb with a 128bit bus(4x3gb).

[@roastinpeace2320]

@@Al_Lergic Nope. it will be 8 gigs

[@Al_Lergic]

@@roastinpeace2320 Not possible. Minimum 9gb with a 96bit bus(3x3gb) but they probably use it for the rtx5050.

[@SantistaFighter]

I haven't run a benchmark yet, but I've played a few hours of it on my R7 7700X, 7700XT, and 32GB DDR5 at 1440P. The game is gorgeous and played okay.

[@lowzyyy]

Can someone explain to me what exatcly this new games do better to require 4090 for normal playing?

[@3dcomrade]

UE5 is still trash Simple as

[@KimBoKastekniv47]

New games give Nvidia and AMD a lot of money because it makes people upgrade.

[@N0N0111]

OMG he did the 4K Ultra HD [Native] benchmark, how the cookie crumbles...

[@GavinTheMistborn]

Important to remember, this town tanks performance by a decent chunk. For those interested in playing the game, my fps goes up by about 30% immediately upon leaving.

[@prezlamen7906]

I hate upscaling and FG, but the sad truth is i need it on my 6700xt and by turning those on i get 70fps constant, no matter if im in a town, village or outside. So at least i can play it. Hopefully it gets patched to run better.

[@anysguerin8869]

the problem is the hair settings, set it to medium and no more dip to 5 fps :) Yes that sounds ridiculous but it actually works lol.

[@Aleksi723]

@@prezlamen7906 Sonn as i got my hands on upscaling i realized how shit it is. Its a joke that games from 2008 need it.

[@notchipotle]

even the 10GB 3080 is starting to struggle

[@NightHawk512]

Purely due to VRAM shortage 12 GB models should still do okay

[@Hezzadude12]

10GB 3080 has been struggling for a while. Not that the RT is amazing in either of these games but I had to either turn off RT or turn down textures in Dragon’s Dogma 2 and RE4 because 10GB isn’t enough. Rift Apart also can’t run max textures on a 3080 without significant stutters due to the 10GB buffer. Even RE2 Remake (DX12 version) had huge VRAM problems when I alt-tabbed to look something up while playing with RT and textures maxed out. All of this on a 3440x1440 display and using upscaling whenever possible (DLSS Quality only). The 10GB 3080 was a joke and I feel super burned having bought it during the shortage… but alas

[@NightHawk512]

@ I feel your pain. I upgraded from an 11G 1080Ti to a 10G 3080. was a very weird feeling doing so but as you said… alas

[@grigiobasi2751]

RTX 4090 in village 45-55 fps in 3440x1440)

[@nossy232323]

Ugh!!!

[@PaulMooney-y3l]

If EVER a game needed an optimization guide it's this one!!!

[@lolmao500]

AMD really needs to just sell a minimum 12GB GPU next gen to really bring it to Nvidia

[@bobocionut6926]

Nvidia fanboys will still buy a 8GB RTX

[@RedEverything]

@@bobocionut6926More AMD cards in stock for me to choose from then haha.

[@beezito]

That thumbnail though 😳🤯

[@dainiusvysniauskas2049]

Are game devs being paid by Nvidia/AMD to not optimize their games anymore or what? It's pathetic that you need a 4070 level of performance to get 60 FPS at 1080p max settings. And the 3 FPS result of 3070 is pure comedy, lol

[@Z3rgatul]

VRAM issue exists only on epic preset you think 3070/4070 are the cards for epic? and i am not even talking about very small visual differences between high and epic

[@dainiusvysniauskas2049]

@Z3rgatul 4070 should be absolutely capable of running any game at 1080p max setting without any issues. That kind of performsnce used to belong to 60 series cards, not 70.

[@Z3rgatul]

@@dainiusvysniauskas2049 why do you think that? epic settings was always for the top hardware in the current gen or even for the next gen. That's was always the case since like 2010. Just remember crysis, original stalkers, far cry's, and other top graphic games for their times just because you don't play 4k it doesn't mean 4070 should handle epic settings at 1080p

[@dainiusvysniauskas2049]

@@Z3rgatul Epic, Ultra, etc. is just name for max settings of the game. And for max settings at 1080p 60 class series card was the performance benchmark. 70 series cards were intended for 1440p max settings. For reference, 3070 got 85 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at the time of its release at 1080p max settings and had almost 60 FPS at 1440p max settings. It's not like the game was particularly well optimized either. So yeah, getting just over 60 FPS with 70 series card at 1080p is flat out embarrassing.

[@Z3rgatul]

@@dainiusvysniauskas2049 I had 3090 at cyberpunk release, and I was playing with DLSS balanced in 4k (meaning it was upscale from 1253p) on high settings. With 1 out of 3 RT options. And I have 60-80 FPS. You are telling me you played with 3070 on Ultra in 1080p 🤣🤣🤣 Disabling RT and turning everything else on Ultra doesn't equal "I played on Ultra" 3090 was the best GPU at Cyberpunk release, and it barely handles 1080p native in 60 FPS with all ray tracing turned on If the devs delete Ultra preset and rename Mid preset to Ultra - this will make you happier, right? You seems to care only about "I can run the game on ultra settings" no matter what graphics fidelity of the game is

[@SkepTones]

Thanks for being a trooper and enduring the 3060ti on these tests. I was glad to see it on here because I recently went from a 3060ti to an rx6800, which wasn't a huge jump BUT doubled my vram. Which as you can see here, is the difference between running and not running this game. I've been really stoked going back to team Red even for a 6000 series card, their high vram and memory bandwidth even on older cards are proving to be very impressive in the long run. Also, got it at an insanely good price for a brand new card. Can't say the same for Nvidia cards which have always skimped on VRAM and especially bus width in the 40 series, yet still being ridiculously overpriced. Sad to see once great value cards like the 3060ti falling off due to being capped at 8gb. Can't wait to see how Nvidia stagnates and overprices the low-mid range 50 series cards lol.

[@ChengsHardware]

Damn，that thumbnail🤣

[@electrotrashmailbox]

Instead of meditating, Steve trains his spirit by watching the shader compilation screen if you gaze long into a shader compilation screen, the shader compilation screen also gazes into you

[@ApexLodestar]

RX 6800 XT can't even do 60fps at 1440p High preset in this game. 😅

[@Veritas.0]

In this week's thumbnail... Steve looking at another shader compiling screen: BLYAT!

[@ladare19]

Thumbnail 🤩

[@SPSteve]

Amazing content again from Steve and the Hardware Unboxed crew.

[@Neves7561]

UE5 is dogshit for performance

[@_funtowatch]

I would love to see an updated version of this video after the game receives some more love and optimization.

[@moneeral-alawneh2909]

As someone getting into the PC space after a hiatus that has lasted 10+ years due to gaming on consoles, I THANK YOU for all the work and unbiased testing that you put out. Your videos have not alienated me, a Muggle, in the PC world. That says a lot.

[@fatabelly]

Great video and fantastic insight on the struggle of most GPU’s with this title.

[@amberhamzic6289]

Optimization guide pls!!!

[@Praylv]

Those charts remind me of Unreal Engine 3 games running on pre 8800gtx hardware. Geforce 7600GT - 22fps , Geforce 7950GTX - 29 fps . I guess we simply need another big gpu performance jump

[@NegitoroIsBestShip]

Looking forward to the announcement of Firearms Unboxed

[@ChippaWubba]

Any chance Steve you managed to notice the system and render latency even with the 4090 being completely horrible? Even with the Input mouse lag fix via reddit \ config file.. Game just feels like shit in towns, Frame gen on or off doesn't appear to change anything as well... yet i feel like Frame Gen is better as long as using DLAA via DLSS option to maintain 1440p res due to the latency being horrible. 7950x3d I have tried with just one CCD0 x3d 8 cores enabled with HT on or off shows the same FPS.. Even when in my normal config forcing Freq CCD1 via bios and using Process lasso to force the x3d and changing from all 16 cores, HT and no HT and 8 cores only.. Like the game was solely setup to use 8 P cores. (Grayzone warfare for example at least could use more cores for extra performance) The good thing about this game since it's single player is Process lasso isn't blocked from changing core allocation which is normally a issue with anti cheats etc.

[@SlyNine]

Still hoping for cpu scaling and core scaling test.

[@Skenderbeuismyhero]

Load times in the original three games were ridiculous too. I think many fans have forgotten because we've been playing COC and Anomaly for so many years and they fixed the load times.

[@diligaf1000]

This guy does the best thumbnails on KZbin 😂

[@anysguerin8869]

3600,5700 XT, 16 Gb. 1080/ FSR - Native w/ FG Ultra textures, everything else in High except Post processing, Shadows, Hair in medium. Beautiful and smooth as. The Hair settings is bugged and is what causes the drops to 5/10 fps in town with lots of NPC's.

[@JCTiggs1]

This game needs another 10 months of development and optimization.

[@JimBobm]

I holding off on getting it because of this.

[@AcuraAddicted]

A 3090 barely holding at 60FPS at 1080p epic native is wild.