Stalker 2 Test: GPU/CPU Benchmarks

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Post on Nov 21, 2024

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Stalker 2 Test: GPU/CPU Benchmarks - My Rig Almost Melted!

Hey everyone! So, I finally got my hands on Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, and let me tell you, it's a beast. I mean, seriously, this game pushes your hardware to the absolute limit. I’m talking frame rate drops that would make a rollercoaster look tame. I spent the last few days running benchmarks, tweaking settings, and generally losing my mind trying to get a decent framerate. Let's dive into my findings, and hopefully, save you some headaches.

My Setup: The Battlefield (aka My PC)

First things first, my setup. I've got a pretty decent rig, I thought – an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. Pretty solid, right? Wrong. Stalker 2 laughs in the face of “pretty solid.” This game is hungry.

I've been using several benchmarking tools and various settings to get data for this.

Initial Benchmarks: The Reality Check

My initial benchmarks at 1440p with ray tracing set to Ultra were… let's just say underwhelming. I was averaging around 40-50 FPS. Forty to fifty! On a 4080! I was pissed. I felt like I'd wasted money on high-end hardware. It was utterly frustrating. My poor fans were screaming like banshees. I thought my CPU was gonna spontaneously combust.

I immediately started tweaking.

Tweaking for Performance: The Long, Grueling Process

The first thing I did was to drop ray tracing to Medium. That bumped my FPS up to around 60-70, but still... I wasn't happy. Then I started fiddling with other settings: shadows, textures, ambient occlusion. It felt like a never-ending game of cat-and-mouse. I was checking every little setting, making changes, and then running another benchmark. Honestly, it was exhausting. Eventually, I discovered that the biggest performance hit came from DLSS quality settings, and turning on FSR. Then, I made some adjustments to the in-game settings.

My Final Stable Settings (for now…): A Compromise

After hours of tweaking and testing, here's the sweet spot I found for a balance between visuals and performance at 1440p:

• Ray Tracing: Medium (High was a killer)
• Shadows: Medium (High was also too demanding)
• Textures: High (Could go higher, but didn't see a huge difference)
• DLSS: Quality (Helps a lot!)
• FSR: Enabled (Helps a lot!)
• Ambient Occlusion: Medium

With these settings, I'm consistently getting 70-80 FPS at 1440p with only occasional dips. It's playable, at least, which is a huge relief after my initial disappointment. But the game is definitely still demanding.

CPU Bottleneck? Maybe…

One thing I noticed is that my CPU utilization was pretty high, even with the settings toned down. This suggests there might be some CPU bottleneck going on. I haven't had time to properly investigate this yet, but it's something I'm planning to delve into further – more benchmarks to come!

Lessons Learned: Don't Believe the Hype (Always)

This whole experience taught me a valuable lesson: even high-end hardware can struggle with demanding games. Don't just blindly assume that throwing money at the problem will solve everything. Always benchmark and tweak your settings to find the optimal balance between performance and visuals. And be prepared to be patient; optimization takes time.

Final Thoughts & Recommendations

Stalker 2 is a visually stunning game, but it's also incredibly demanding. Be prepared to spend some time tweaking settings to find what works best for your system. If you've got a less powerful rig than mine, you'll likely need to make even more compromises. But stick with it! It is worth the effort. It’s intense, detailed, beautiful, and a rewarding challenge for gamers like me. It's worth the sweat and frustration. Seriously.