Familiar choppiness makes Dune: Awakening’s PC performance less of a smooth wormride

3 days ago 13

I’ve ever recovered Dune: Awakening an oddball conception – it’s been repeatedly made clear, by Zendaya nary less, that Arrakis volition instantly kill, flay, and digest anyone who pokes a toed into its sands without an intolerable sci-fi techsuit and a beingness of edged weapons training. Not, you'd suspect, an evident mounting for a endurance crafting crippled wherever genre conventions request you statesman beingness arsenic immoderate bare loser picking up sticks.

And yet, Awakening has turned retired alright, hoisting godforsaken exploration and ominous sci-fi atmospherics supra the tedious 24/7 assets gathering that has choked retired definite peers. PC show is workable too, with capable concessions towards low-end rigs, though it’s not crysknife-sharp either: immoderate method mishaps request a punctual patching, portion Unreal Engine 5 is up to its accustomed stuttering nonsense.

Dune: Awakening besides exhibits another, little disposable quirk of UE5: a graphics settings paper that makes it hard to boost show beyond blindingly evident changes, similar employing DLSS oregon switching disconnected ray tracing-adjacent Lumen effects. You’ll find my blindingly evident settings usher below, aft a look astatine however this crafty MMO fares connected assorted hardware.

Dune: Awakening strategy requirements and PC performance

I person nary thought wherefore this crippled needs an further 15GB of SSD abstraction for recommended performance. Still, astatine slightest that’s the lone questionable facet of Awakening’s authoritative specs. All the CPU, memory, and for once, graphics paper requirements are each beauteous reasonable, with the GPUs successful peculiar matching expectations successful my testing.

Dune: Awakening minimum PC specs

OS: Windows 10 64-bit oregon newer
CPU: Intel Core i5-7400 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200
RAM: 16GB
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon 5600 XT
DirectX version: 12
Storage: 60GB, SSD required

Dune: Awakening recommended PC specs

OS: Windows 10 64-bit oregon newer
CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K / AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
RAM: 16GB
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3070 / AMD Radeon 6700 XT
DirectX version: 12
Storage: 75GB, SSD required

The GTX 1060, for example, averaged 36fps astatine 1080p by combining the Low prime preset with Quality-mode FSR upscaling. Using native-resolution TAA, that dropped to 29fps, but for a rock-bottom spec paper the upscaled effect ain’t excessively bad. The recommend-tier RTX 3070, meanwhile, managed 59fps astatine autochthonal 1080p connected the Ultra preset – and with Quality DLSS, astir matched that astatine 1440p, scoring 58fps.

Vindication for Funcom’s estimates, then, and Awakening seems to standard rather handily connected newer GPUs too. At 1080p, the comparatively humble RTX 4060 produced 50fps connected Ultra and 61fps connected High – not connected the RTX 3070’s level, but inactive speedy capable to debar upscaling if that’s what you prefer. Higher resolutions don’t artifact disconnected higher framerates, either: the RTX 4070 Ti was capable for a slick 95fps astatine 1440p, utilizing some Ultra settings and Quality DLSS, and the aforesaid paper inactive managed 60fps aft a power to 4K. The newer RTX 5080 is besides a bully acceptable for this rez, averaging 81fps with Ultra and DLSS Quality.

Back successful Budgetsville, adjacent the Steam Deck tin support up, acknowledgment successful portion to an "experimental" Low End Laptop toggle accessible done the graphics options. A benignant of lower-than-low mode, this does marque the lighting and shadiness effects look a spot mobile gamey, but show connected the Steam Deck is awesome – I typically got anyplace betwixt 35fps and 55fps, depending connected on-screen bustle, and that was aft manually adjusting the upscaling from Ultra Performance XeSS to the acold sharper-looking Quality FSR.

It’s surely bully to spot a modern, big-money crippled not being truthful precious astir the request for ocular compromises connected affordable hardware. That said, determination are immoderate places wherever it could usage a small other polishing. Bugs, for 1 thing, aren’t uncommon. After hardly an hr connected Arrakis I awoke from a spice imagination to find my imaginativeness wholly blackened, capable to determination and interact but not spot anything. Come connected Funcom, that’s the other of what spice does. Minutes later, having discontinue and rejoined a server, I spawned into an out-of-bounds void that near maine floating helplessly until I relogged a 2nd time.

DLSS 4 framework procreation is besides broken, astatine slightest connected the RTX 5080 I tested it with. Both its 2x and 4x settings did adhd immoderate other frames, but with an inexplicable headdress of 95fps, an underwhelming summation from the 81fps I’d antecedently recorded without them (and, successful the lawsuit of 4x, astatine the outgo of immoderate genuinely sinful input lag). I person a feeling that this whitethorn beryllium different RTX 50 bid issue, arsenic 2x framework procreation worked overmuch amended connected some the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4060, with the second jumping from 77fps with lone DLSS Quality upscaling to 115fps with framework gen. But successful immoderate case, that’s different blip that needs fixing.

Lastly, we person the UE5 special: regular, often rather dense stuttering, careless of wide framework rates and particularly prevalent erstwhile exploring caller areas. Which, fixed however anxious Dune: Awakening is to prod you distant from the information of your base, happens a lot. These micro-interruptions truthful seldom fto up, and tin often footwear successful astatine the slightest convenient of times, similar erstwhile you’re dangling disconnected a cliff look with 5% stamina near to enactment with, oregon erstwhile trying to enactment up a (hilariously long-ranged) genu complaint against an attacking bandit.

I deliberation astatine this point, astir of america person jittered our mode done 1 stuttering Unreal crippled oregon another. Yet it feels peculiarly disappointing present arsenic the crippled gets a batch other close successful its attack to performance, from its handheld-friendly murphy mode to the easiness with which higher-end PCs tin equilibrium fancy effects with silky framerates. Alas.

Dune: Awakening champion settings guide

There’s nary means of overcoming this stutter, but it’s inactive worthy fiddling with the ocular settings. Not slightest due to the fact that the presets – Ultra, High, Medium, and Low – each effort to unit connected not conscionable upscaling, but DLSS oregon FSR framework procreation arsenic well. And that, arsenic the RTX 5080 demonstrated, has mixed results.

At the aforesaid time, there’s nary constituent fine-tuning each idiosyncratic mounting successful the list, due to the fact that – arsenic has been the lawsuit with galore games successful caller years, UE5 ones particularly – a batch of them won’t impact show 1 mode oregon the other, unless you’re connected the weakest oregon oldest of PC gear. Using my RTX 4060 to trial each setting’s framerate impact, adjacent the accustomed suspects similar shadiness quality, foliage quality, and presumption region performed astir the aforesaid connected Ultra arsenic they did connected Low.

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The large exceptions were GI (Global Illumination) prime and, by extension, the Enable Lumen setting. Running GI connected Ultra automatically enables Lumen, UE5’s built-in ray tracing equivalent, truthful simply lowering that is an casual mode to container loads of escaped frames. Remember however the RTX 4060 averaged 50fps astatine 1080p/Ultra (with upscaling/frame gen disabled)? That became 76fps with GI prime connected Low, and 72fps with it connected Medium.

The different large frames shaper is, unsurprisingly, upscaling. This is simply a no-brainer astatine 1440p and supra anyway, though adjacent astatine 1080p, it’s viable truthful agelong arsenic you instrumentality to the higher prime settings. Specifically, DLSS is worthy utilizing if you person the Nvidia GPU to enactment it. Otherwise, I’d suggest TSR implicit FSR, arsenic portion the erstwhile is narrowly slower – 73fps connected the RTX 4060 versus FSR’s 74fps, some connected equivalent prime settings – TSR looks crisper and cleaner erstwhile upscaling to 1080p.

Now for what I conscionable said, but successful database form:

Motion blur: Off
Override upscaling preset: On
Upscaling method/Upscaling quality/Resolution scale: DLSS connected Quality, oregon TSR connected 67 rez scale
Frame procreation method: Off
GI quality: Medium
Enable Lumen: Off (this should acceptable itself aft dropping GI quality)
Everything else: Ultra preset equivalent

A speedy benchmark with these settings got the RTX 4060 averaging 86fps – not conscionable a immense leap up from the 50fps I was getting with Ultra prime and autochthonal 1080p, but precise adjacent to the 89fps that the aforesaid GPU got from utilizing Low settings. Again, a batch of that is conscionable upscaling, but the ocular prime of these tools has progressed to the constituent wherever we don’t request to beryllium rather arsenic fearful of deploying them extracurricular of the highest resolutions.

As for framework generation, I don’t deliberation it’s indispensable adjacent erstwhile it works properly, though the flipside of that is however higher integrated framerates trim the latency interaction erstwhile framework gen is applied connected top. With the ongoing caveat that DLSS 4 broke connected my RTX 5080, I volition accidental it performed overmuch amended connected the RTX 4060, further bumping that caller 86fps mean up to 137fps – without immoderate superior ocular problems oregon excessive latency. If generated frames are your jam, consciousness escaped to astatine slightest trial it retired for yourself.

That’s each from me, but different RPS-based Dune: Awakening guides are available, including Jeremy’s quality creator overview, trainer locations guide, and h2o scavenging tips.

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