Secret Mode has lifted the embargo on reviews for the first-person narrative horror game, Still Wakes the Deep, The Chinese Room. With Unreal Engine 5, it’s time to compare it and explore its performance on PC.
For our benchmarks we used AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32 GB DDR5 at 6000 MHz, AMD Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA GTX9808Ti, RTX408i also RTX4.03 I use Windows 10 64-bit, GeForce 555.99 drivers and Radeon Adrenaline Edition 24.5.1. Additionally, we disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
The Chinese Room contained a respectable number of graphic settings. PC gamers can adjust the quality of lighting, shadows, textures, geometry details, visual effects and post-processing. The game also supports NVIDIA DLSS 3, AMD FSR 3.0 and Intel XeSS. Additionally, the Chinese room added a FOV slider in the accessibility options. I mention this because a) a lot of you will miss it and b) the default FOV is really low when playing on a PC monitor.
Still Wakes the Deep has no built-in benchmark tool. So we used this custom scene for our benchmarks. This should give us a pretty good idea of ​​how the rest of the game plays out.
Before I continue, I would like to note some issues with AMD FSR 3.0 and NVIDIA DLSS 3. Right now AMD FSR 3.0 Frame Generation does not work at all. On the other hand, NVIDIA DLSS 3 Super Resolution is set to balanced mode by default. No matter what you choose, the DLSS 3 SR will be locked in balanced mode. We’ve already informed the developers about these issues, so hopefully they’ll be able to fix them via a post-launch update.
Still Wakes the Deep is a GPU bound title. Our NVIDIA RTX4090 was also maxed out at 1080p/Epic settings. So there was no point in testing different CPU configurations. Most of you will be GPU limited in this title. Despite this, we simulated a dual-core CPU (without SMT/Hyper-Threading) to see how this latest UE5 game runs. I also lowered the resolution to 720p/Epic Settings. And as I suspected, our simulated dual-core system had no problems running the game at all. While it did have some noticeable stuttering in passing, it was able to hit over 70fps throughout.
At 1080p/Epic settings, you’ll need an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX6900 XT to get a consistent 70fps experience. Note that Still Wakes the Deep uses Lumen Software and Nanite on Epic Settings.
At 1440p/Epic Settings, the only GPUs that could push frame rates above 60fps under all circumstances were the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. When it comes to Native 4K/Epic Settings, there is no GPU that can offer 60fps.
As I’ve said many times before, Lumen is a form of Ray Tracing, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. By enabling DLSS 3 Frame Generation, RTX4090 owners can get more than 80fps at 4K/Epic settings at any time.
It’s also worth noting that Still Wakes the Deep offers settings that can noticeably improve performance. By lowering our settings to High, we were able to achieve a consistent 60 frames per second in native 4K on the NVIDIA RTX 4090. By lowering our settings to Medium and Low, we got an additional 13% and 27% performance boost, respectively.
Graphically, Still Wakes the Deep looks amazing overall. The game’s lighting makes full use of software Lumens and looks great. It’s incredible what small studios can achieve with UE5. Just look at the screenshots and the video. The lighting and materials look incredible.
However, there are some graphical issues. For example, I noticed some annoying noise artifacts and occlusion issues. These problems are mostly caused by Software Lumen. It would be great if the developers allowed PC gamers to enable Hardware Lumen. Hardware that would solve them. Unfortunately, there is no such setting in the game. I also noticed some popping issues with the characters. So I think the developers used Nanite for the game environment and objects (since those don’t suffer from any popups) and not for the characters.
All in all, Still Wakes the Deep works like most UE5 games. The game uses Lumen and Nanite Software and looks amazing. Not only that, but the game precompiles its shaders on first launch, meaning you won’t have any shader compilation hangs. As I said, the game also suffers from some visual artifacts. Still, it pushes visuals that can rival games from other triple-A studios. And yes, Lumen is demanding and you will need a high-end GPU, especially for gaming at native resolutions. However, unlike some early UE5 games, you can increase the game’s performance by lowering the in-game settings. Or you can use upscaling tech.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and editor-in-chief of DSOGaming. He is a fan of PC games and very supportive of the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on many gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still loves – 16-bit consoles and considers the SNES one of the best consoles. Nevertheless, the PC platform won it over the consoles. This was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic 3D accelerator dedicated graphics card, the Voodoo 2. John also wrote a thesis on “The Evolution of PC Graphics”.
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