Outlaws Benchmarks and PC Performance Analysis

Last week, Ubisoft released its latest Star Wars open-world game, Star Wars: Outlaws. Star Wars: Outlaws is built on the Snowdrop engine, so now is the time to compare it and examine its performance on PC.

For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB DDR5 at 6000MHz, AMD's Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA's GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 560.94, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1 drivers. In addition, we disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.

Ubisoft has included many graphics settings to tweak. PC players can adjust the quality of micro-details, shadows, particles, terrain tessellation, and more. There are also options for film grain, depth of field, motion blur, and chromatic aberration.

Note that the game offers ray tracing, even on the lowest settings. In other words, you can't disable RT completely. So what RT effects does the game use by default? RTGI, RT Reflections, and RT Shadows.

Additionally, the PC version supports RTXDI. RTXDI is NOT RTGI. Instead, RTXDI replaces all of the game's direct lighting. This allows almost all light sources to cast shadows. Also, the RTXDI shadows look better and more realistic than the shadow maps the game used in its non-RT version. DF did a great job of explaining RTXDI, so be sure to check out their video.

The PC-exclusive features don't end there. Ubisoft has also added support for DLSS 3.5 Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction. Oh, and there's also support for AMD FSR 3.0 FG, meaning anyone can use Frame Generation to achieve higher framerates. And trust me. You'll need it on Ultra settings.

Massive Entertainment has not included a built-in benchmark tool. This is surprising since Avatar, which was based on the same engine, had one. Since there is no built-in benchmark, we used the first town you come across in the game for our testing. This seems like a challenging area.

From what we could see, Star Wars: Outlaws is primarily a GPU-heavy title. Our NVIDIA RTX 4090 was pushed to the limit, even at 1080p, so there wasn't really any point in simulating different CPU configurations.

At native 1080p/Ultra settings/without RTXDI, our top four GPUs were able to achieve frame rates above 60 fps at all times. The RTX2080Ti was also able to provide a smooth gaming experience with a minimum of 58 fps and an average of 64 fps.

At Native 1440p/Ultra/No RTXDI, the only GPUs that could run Star Wars: Outlaws at more than 60 fps were the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the NVIDIA RTX 4090. The AMD Radeon RX 6900XT and the NVIDIA RTX 3080 were also able to provide a playable experience, provided you're using a FreeSync/GSync monitor.

Finally, at Native 4K/Ultra/No RTXDI, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 was the only GPU that could provide a smooth gaming experience. Again, Native 4K and the game features ray tracing effects at Ultra settings, even without using RTXDI.

And since we mentioned RTXDI, here are some comparison screenshots. The screenshots without RTXDI are on the left, while the screenshots with RTXDI are on the right. RTXDI can improve the shadows in the game. This can sometimes be very subtle. But other times it can also be very noticeable. Also, in static screenshots, you might think that the shadows are fine in the last comparison. However, in motion, the version without RTXDI looks TERRIBLE because the grass shadows are full of aliasing.

The bad news here is that RTXDI comes with a huge performance hit in grassy areas. At 4K on ultra settings with DLSS 3 quality and frame generation, we saw drops to 50 fps on the NVIDIA RTX 4090. And that's WITH frame generations. And yes. That's LESS than Black Myth: Wukong with its full ray tracing/path tracing effects. I don't really know what's going on here. However, you know something is wrong when a game without path tracing runs worse than one with path tracing.

DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction also brings a 10fps performance hit. This surprised me as I wasn't expecting such a big hit. There are undoubtedly visual benefits here. But for a game that runs so poorly on RTXDI, there's no point in enabling it even on the most powerful GPU. On the other hand, if you don't want to use RTXDI, you can enable DLSS 3.5 RR and enjoy the visual improvements.

It's worth noting that Star Wars: Outlaws can be scaled down on older GPUs. By going down to High, we were able to increase the NVIDIA RTX4090's performance by 25% at native 4K. Then, at Medium settings, we were able to get an additional 12% performance boost.

In terms of graphics, Star Wars: Outlaws doesn't come close to what we've seen in recent Unreal Engine 5 games. The game also currently looks too soft, even at 4K. This seems to be related to the Lens and Cinematic setting. Setting this to Medium will make the game look sharper, but this can introduce additional aliasing. There are also numerous visual artifacts from the software-based RTGI. Character animations are also a bit rough and nowhere near what you'd expect from a triple-A title.

Honestly, Black Myth: Wukong and Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 look like next-gen games compared to Star Wars: Outlaws. They also run better than Star Wars: Outlaws. So that gives us an idea of ​​how efficient UE5 can be in terms of ray tracing. And even though Horizon: Forbidden West doesn't have RT effects, it can look better than the non-RTXDI version of Star Wars: Outlaws.

The good news is that I didn't have any major problems with stuttering. The game also ran stable as there were no crashes. The PC controls are also responsive, so the game can be played well with keyboard and mouse.

All in all, Star Wars: Outlaws is a mixed bag. Performance is great without RTXDI and the game can scale on older GPUs. However, there are various visual issues. For example, shadows from the sun can look low-res and awful. RTXDI fixes this. The game also has blurring, aliasing and ghosting issues caused by the upscaling techniques, DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction and the Cinematic setting. And if you disable them, other visual issues arise. For example, without DLSS 3.5 RR, there are A LOT of RT visual artifacts in shadowy places. And even with all of its RT effects, Star Wars: Outlaws can't match the graphics (and performance) of Black Myth: Wukong or Hellblade 2. Or Alan Wake 2. So let's hope the developers throw in some optimizations via some patches!