Every few years, a video game comes out that aims to challenge the notion of what high-end hardware can achieve. In the early 2020s, it was Cyberpunk 2077, widening the gulf between the high-end PC and console versions with ray-traced lighting so much that the two experiences couldn’t be further apart. That game, following years of updates, finally closed most of the gap between the two hardware platforms. So what next? In 2026, that high-end title has come in the form of Crimson Desert, an open-world AAA (maybe quadruple-A?) single-player action RPG that’s pushing consoles and high-end graphics cards on PC alike.
The game absolutely hammers top-of-the-line GPUs on PC with maxed-out ray-traced lighting while delivering a less-than-optimal experience on the base consoles. On the PS5 Pro, according to Digital Foundry, the game renders at a native 4K resolution in Quality Mode running at 30fps, while using PSSR 2 in Performance Mode to deliver a mostly smooth 60fps. On the base PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, the game uses FSR 3 upscaling. What’s the equivalent experience on PC? Can a sufficiently high-end PC with realistic part distribution, given the current economic state of the industry, deliver an optimal experience?
I’ve been running Crimson Desert on my PC, equipped with an RTX 5070, a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, and 32GB of DDR4 RAM. It’s a system that, in theory, should represent what an enthusiast who built a PC in 2020 would have upgraded to in recent years.
Crimson Desert: RTX 5070 Can Beat the PS5 Pro
If you’ve paired yesteryear’s high-end cards with a high-refresh-rate 1440p monitor, you’re in luck. At 1440p, you can comfortably game above 80fps without using upscaling. Using ray reconstruction will bring it down, but then you can use DLSS combined with multi-frame generation to enjoy the high refresh-rate experience.
While the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti can comfortably run games at 4K, mostly using DLSS, Crimson Desert is quite taxing on the GPU. However, lowering a few sliders in the settings menu can get you up and running at 4K with great performance, blowing the PS5 Pro out of the water at equivalent settings.
At 4K using FSR 3.1 quality mode and PS5 Pro-equivalent settings, with ray reconstruction turned off, the RTX 5070 renders the game at 52fps. It’s not quite 60fps, but it’s considerably higher than the PS5 Pro’s 30fps, and that’s before we use some smart toggles to boost performance, namely better upscaling and frame generation. Using DLAA provides a sharper image than FSR 3.1, which puts us at an advantage over the PS5 Pro, running at 50fps. Switching the upscaler to DLSS performance mode instantly gets us up to 90fps.
There’s a caveat: We haven’t turned on ray reconstruction. This feature is the number one performance killer in Crimson Desert. Turning on RR at PS5 Pro’s equivalent settings gives us a paltry 11fps. This won’t do. To get some performance back, we can turn to DLSS performance mode, giving us 38fps – higher than PS5 Pro, but not a great experience on a PC monitor. Turning a few settings to the “High” setting can get us over 40fps, and from there you can use 3X-4X frame generation to play between 120-160fps. You might feel some of the input latency while at it, and panning the camera fast will produce some visual artefacts.
A word on Ray Reconstruction: it transforms the image, improving the ray-traced lighting significantly. You get deeper, more accurate shadows, better lighting density in appropriate scenes (mostly indoor at night), sharper shadows, and more. Judging from the performance cost and the image characteristics, it’s evident that turning on ray reconstruction is akin to a secret “extreme” preset, as it’s affecting more than just the lighting.
If you still want to reduce the strain on your GPU while decreasing input latency, here’s the best-case scenario:
Use the “Cinematic” preset with ray reconstruction turned off, and output at 4K using DLSS performance mode. The RTX 5070 can run the game around 90fps with those settings. Use frame generation on top of that to push the frame rate into the 120+ fps territory.
Crimson Desert Optimized Settings
At 1440p, use the “Cinematic” preset and turn on ray reconstruction, combined with DLSS Balanced mode, to run at ~63fps. Sticking with DLSS, from here, use any appropriate multiplier in frame generation as you see fit. If you’d rather not deal with the high cost of ray reconstruction at all, turning it and frame gen off will get you a massive performance boost, soaring to 90fps.
At 4K, use the “Cinematic” preset, combined with DLSS performance mode, to get a smooth 75+fps presentation. If you’re using FSR performance mode, you’ll be trading image quality for a paltry performance boost at 85fps.
If you’re unhappy with the ray-traced lighting artefacts, turn on ray reconstruction and combine that with frame generation at 2X for minimal UI ghosting to render just above 60fps. Switching DLSS frame generation for AMD’s FSR frame generation, along with FSR 3.1 upscaling, got me above 120fps. However, you cannot use ray reconstruction when FSR is enabled. So whether the tradeoff is worth it will be up to individual opinion.
The biggest performance hitters are lighting quality and ray reconstruction. Lighting quality affects the accuracy and intensity of the global illumination, which significantly affects the game’s atmosphere and mood.
There’s also a funny behaviour in Crimson Desert: Turning off ray tracing does not result in any performance uplift. That runs contrary to the relationship between performance and ray tracing in most games. Pearl Abyss designed Crimson Desert with ray-traced lighting in mind from the start. It’s fundamental to the game’s lighting. There are also other issues plaguing the game, the primary one being extreme pop-in. Assets pop into the frame at close distances, most evident when running around or galloping on a horse. No in-game setting can improve this. We’ll have to wait for Pearl Abyss to patch this out.
DISCLAIMER: REVIEW COPY PROVIDED BY PEARL ABYSS. RTX 5070 SENT BY NVIDIA FOR REVIEW.
Crimson Desert is available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
