Over the past few years, we’ve seen some poorly optimized Unreal Engine games, especially on consoles, as developers struggle to implement new and impressive visual features within a limited performance budget. Ark: Survival Ascended, the UE5 remake of 2015’s Ark: Survival Evolved, might be the worst yet.
When remaking Survival Evolved, originally an Unreal Engine 4 game, for the new UE5, developer studio Wildcard decided to take advantage of as many new high-end rendering features as possible, while also shipping the game to Series X and Series S (via Game Pass ) plus PS5 and PC. Fortunately, there are no last-gen versions, but even on current-gen machines, it’s clear that the game poses a serious performance challenge.
After all, while the original island from Survival Evolved arrived intact, the difference in fidelity is staggering, as Nanite UE5 is used to carve out fine geometric details in the landscape, with rocks and foliage benefiting from it. Lumen UE5 lighting is also available, using a hybrid ray-tracing technique to simulate global illumination and reflections on water. In addition, the game features volumetric cloud systems, fog in forested areas, dynamic water, improved physics, a better third-person camera and much more – an extremely feature-rich menu that looks spectacular at times.
For context, it’s worth comparing the PC versions of Evolved and Ascended running at maximum settings. Nine-year-old Survival Evolved runs easily in native 4K on a powerful RTX 4080 machine, but Ascended struggles to hit 60fps even when running at 1080p internally, upscaled to 4K with DLSS. The incredible demands of the game on PC set the tone for the situation on consoles, machines with significantly less GPU and CPU resources available even on the high-end PS5 and Xbox Series X – not to mention the weaker Series S.
Even if they run at lower settings than PC, which these console versions certainly do, it’s clear that the developers weren’t willing to sacrifice visuals to hit 60fps – and all three consoles are somewhat off their target framerate. When you wake up with your newly created character, you’ll be greeted with an incredible 25-50 frames per second performance range on the Series X or PS5, and with v-sync turned off, you’ll also be tearing frame by frame up and down. . It’s quite a sight. For the S series, expect 20-45 fps with screen tearing – and even lower – while Nanite and Lumen quality is significantly reduced.
Before we get into framerate testing, it’s worth taking a quick look at how these consoles and PCs stack up. Both the PS5 and Series X target 1440p, but with dynamic scaling almost always active, the game often renders at the lower end of 720p, the 50 percent range. The same logic applies to the S series, with a 900p target, but most of the pixel count is handled by the 450p internal resolution (again, 50% scaling). These low numbers are in line with other UE5 titles we’ve seen use Nanite and Lumen on the console, such as Immortals of Aveum or Lords of the Fallen in 60fps performance mode. The PS5, Series X and Series S again rely heavily on low native resolution and reconstruction technology to find GPU space for the best UE5 features.
Looking beyond resolution, while the PS5 and Series X seem to offer identical settings, the Series S is further limited in almost every way. Texture quality is reduced, as are shadows and ambient occlusion, resulting in a huge loss of detail underfoot. In the water, the wave physics are dialed back on the S series, while the alpha transparencies for the splash are also cut out. You’ll also notice the Screen Space Reflections (SSR) used over water for the S Series, where the PS5 and X Series avoid occlusion artifacts around the player character using Lumen. Lumen’s effect on global illumination is also smaller on the S series, eliminating the color cast seen on the PS5 and X series.
On the positive side, the draw distances for the trees and main geometry match – a crucial point given that the world framework needs to have a common base for online play. But then the grass and rock density of the S series is cut back, with brighter pops for smaller details. To make matters worse, tree physics is outright disabled on the S series as well, meaning we miss the swaying branches as we wade through dense jungle areas.
So the S Series is a heavily compromised take on this new take on Ark UE5. Adding a PC version to the mix – using a mid-range Ryzen 7 5700X machine paired with a high-end RTX 4080 graphics card – is also clear. The Series X and PS5 sit comfortably in the middle of the PC and Series S, missing the highest “epic” preset, with a corresponding drop in rock and plant density and a less welcome drop in texture quality. To their credit, the Series X and PS5 offer respectable quality presets for Lumen, Nanite and Volumetric Fog.
Let’s move on to performance testing. Before we begin, there is a unique feature in Ark: Survival Ascended – the command console that allows you to tweak UE5 settings on the console as well. Plug in a keyboard, hit the tilde key, and a universe of possibilities opens up. Given the terrible state of the game’s frame rate by default on console, it’s at least nice to see the developer giving you the tools to fix it yourself.
For example, you can change the internal resolution. Just enter r. setres in the command menu and then your value. It is even possible to disable visual features such as Lumen GI, reflections and volume clouds. In any case, find the command and enter 0 as the value at the end. Unfortunately, all your changes are reset every time you restart the game, so it’s not an ideal solution. Still, if nothing else, the command console solves one glaring problem on the PS5, Series X, and S: screen tearing. Enter year of high school 1and the tear lines are gone. And yes, it is also possible to enable the 30 frames per second limit. Type t.maxfps 30and we are immediately stuck at the 30 frames per second limit. The snag is that the frame rate limiter causes unwanted judder caused by uneven frame rates. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how each console fares at 60fps in the game’s default settings with v-sync enabled – and then how we might optimize the settings ourselves for better results.
At the start we have the S series with a 900p target and a typical 450p native resolution. The game is fully unlocked at 60 frames per second, although performance is usually half that – or worse in dense jungle areas or a scorched earth map. In my playthrough, I also found an area in northern zone 1 of the island that dropped the framerate to as low as 13fps, especially during rain and at night. This hard drop seemed to fix itself after a console reset, but it’s still something to watch out for. Either way, the general trend for the S series is to perform just above the 30fps mark.
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Fixing series S Yippee possible – and there are two approaches. First, we can simply lower the internal resolution until we reach 60 frames per second more consistently, using the r. setres and r.secondaryscreenpercentage.gameviewport commands to lock onto any specific target you want. But the sobering reality is that we need to drop the S series down to a target of 600p – often rendering at native 300p – to keep 60fps in the frame, and even then dips are possible during fast browsing.
The second approach to optimizing for 60fps is a bit more aggressive: stick to the default 900p target – 450p internal – and drop the visual settings instead. Removing the volumetric clouds gets 10fps, while the additional removal of the basic dynamic GI of the S series results in a 60fps target… at the expense of a barren, lifeless world. Of course, at this point, with so many features removed, the benefits of playing Survival Ascended over the 2015 original are limited. It’s clear that the core world design – the intricacy of the island that Studio Wildcard has built – doesn’t scale gracefully to the S series in any scenario. Only between a combination of resolution drops and disabled settings is there a path to something close to 60fps that could at least play reasonably well fine with a VRR display attached.
Moving to the X series we are at least closer to the 60fps mark with a higher target resolution of 1440p – 720p internal. Framerates are generally in the 30-45fps range, but I’ve seen dips as low as 20s in some areas, such as our Series S northern jungle stress point. Here, dropping the target resolution to 900p – 450p internal – gives fairly good lock at 60 frames per second. Visually, it’s definitely a step down, but the performance improvement is also substantial. Just for fun, you can also set the resolution higher if you want – 1620p runs at 40fps, 1800p is at 36fps and 4K results in a drop to 28fps. Similar to the S series, we can also undo the setting, with volume clouds and Lumen GI disappearing in exchange for a 60fps frame rate readout. It works, but it’s quite a visual sacrifice.
Finally we have the PS5, and unfortunately the game seems to run worse overall on the Sony machine than on the Series X in the initial beach area – sometimes as much as 5-10fps lower despite the settings being set accordingly. There’s no clear reason for the performance difference, although later areas tend to put both on par. There is a possible drop area below 30 frames per second for each. In challenging jungle areas, the PS5 runs in a similar 25-40fps range with the odd traversal stutter – well outside the ideal VRR range at default.
That means we have a bigger task to find performance improvements, and here even running at 720p – 360p internal – doesn’t provide a good enough 60fps lock. Rather, we were just avoiding the 58fps mark. Dropping down to lower values ​​also results in diminishing returns – and not even such glaring lows as 360p will change the fortunes of the PS5. If we opt for visual tweaks instead, the loss of shadows (!), GI and volumetric clouds also results in just under 60fps performance. The game looks desolate, but combined with the drop in resolution, 60fps is within reach on the PS5.
It’s impossible to call these optimized settings ideal by any means, but the state of Ark: Survival Ascended is dire enough to justify extreme measures. Right now we really need a push from the developer himself to optimize the game for PS5, Series X and Series S with tools more advanced than what we have – the command console will only take us so far.
On a basic level, Ark: Survival Ascended surprised me, at least with how far it takes advantage of Unreal Engine 5 features and ambitiously recreates Survival Evolved with Lumen, Nanite and volumetric fog. But when performance goes from 20-40fps with heavy screen tearing, it’s clear that the game wasn’t really made with PS5, Series X, or Series S optimization in mind. That’s for sure there is on every platform, with varying degrees of limitation, but it really only looks the best on PC. In the end, if 60fps is the goal of the console, Ascended is a game waiting for new and better hardware to arrive.