God of War Ragnarok at 8K makes me question the point of the PS5 Pro and the RTX 5090

Our 8K test system

PC built by Stormforce Gaming

Motherboard: Asus PRIME Z-790P LGA 1700
Processor: Intel Core i9-13900K, 24 cores / 32 threads
CPU cooler: Corsair iCUE H100i 240mm ELITE CAPELLIX CPU Liquid Cooler
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
Storage: 1.0TB Seagate FireCuda 530 M.2 NVMe SSD
Case: Corsair iCue 5000X RGB
R.A.M: Corsair Vengence 32GB DDR5 4800MHz
Screen: LG55NANO966PA

God of War Ragnarok is now available on PC and, along with other PlayStation 5 games that have made the jump to the best gaming laptops and gaming desktops, it has some excellent PC-exclusive features.

Unlike the previous game that I played on PS4 Pro before replaying it on PC, I didn’t have the opportunity to God of War Ragnarok before the PC release, as I waited to purchase a PS5 in the hope that the almost inevitable announcement of the PS5 Pro would get me back into console gaming.

So, with God of War Ragnarok Now that it's in my Steam library, I was keen to see if it could live up to its excellent predecessor while also seeing how well it runs at 8K on our Stormforce Gaming test system.

Considering the PC is already a few years old, the results were extremely impressive – so much so that my interest in a PS5 Pro or even the rumored Nvidia RTX 5090, which will probably be announced soon, has evaporated.

Instead, I was reminded once again of what a beast the RTX 4090 graphics card still is, even two years after its announcement.

Along with software improvements thanks to the teams behind the game at Sony Interactive Entertainment and Santa Monica Studio, who are becoming increasingly adept at developing the title for PS4 and PS5 hardware, along with Jetpack Interactive, the team that God of War Ragnarok to PC (they also ported the previous game), with increasing experience and the constant advancement of upscaling technologies like Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR, you really feel like there is little need to upgrade, especially if you have high-end equipment.

Instantly playable 8K

When I started testing the possibilities of 8K gaming in 2019, I felt like we'd never see games at 7680×4320 resolution with anywhere near playable frame rates. An 8K future seemed a long way off as I struggled to get Red Dead Redemption 2 running at ultra-high resolution with a $2,499 Nvidia Titan RTX graphics card and a $3,000 Dell UltraSharp UP3218K monitor.

Back then, artificial intelligence still felt like a science fiction concept and DLSS was just a twinkle in Jensen Huang's eye.

In the five years since then, we have made tremendous progress. Hardware has become more powerful and even more affordable.

While the RTX 4090 will never be considered a cheap GPU, its launch price of $1,599 (about £1,359, AU$2,300) was still much lower than that of its predecessor, the RTX Titan. 8K TVs may still be a long way from being mainstream, but they do exist, and they can cost a lot less than the dedicated Dell monitor we used to rely on.

Perhaps the biggest sign of how far the technology has advanced is the fact that the game runs right out of the box at native 8K resolution and graphics settings on “Ultra” God of War Ragnarok an average of 35 fps (frames per second). Just a few years ago, with the advent of DLSS and armed with an RTX 3090, a playable minimum of 30 fps seemed a distant goal.

So to create a game as graphically impressive and demanding as God of War Ragnarok It's very impressive that it runs at over 30 frames per second at 8K (that's four times the resolution of 4K) without any optimization.

Still, 35 fps isn't ideal and the game has plenty of tools to boost frame rate, so I was curious to see how much tweaking would be needed to reach 60 fps.

(Image credit: Sony)

AMD FSR 3.1

When turning on upscaling, the first technical option is AMD's FSR 3.1 technology. This is the latest version, and with this version, AMD has made a great effort to improve image quality, with a particular focus on reducing flickering and blurry graphical artifacts that were annoying in previous versions.

Unlike Nvidia's competing DLSS technology, FSR 3.1 doesn't use AI (although there are rumors that it will be used in FSR 4). While that means it can't quite match DLSS in terms of results in my opinion, it also means it has less stringent requirements for the type of hardware it runs on. FSR doesn't need an AMD graphics card to work – Intel and Nvidia cards can use it too.

This is especially good news for users of older Nvidia cards who missed the benefits of DLSS.

Even better news is that with God of War Ragnarok, AMD FSR 3.1 delivers some excellent results. Setting the FSR preset to Quality, which minimizes the amount of upscaling performed (in this case, upscaling a native resolution of 5120×2880 to 7680×4320) to preserve image quality, the game averaged 55fps – tantalizingly close to the 60fps target. Image quality was very good indeed – and there were definitely fewer noticeable artifacts.

Switching to Balanced reduced the native resolution to 4512 x 2536, meaning the hardware has to do more work to upscale the image to 8K, and here I achieved 59fps – essentially the 60fps I wanted (currently 8K displays and HDMI 2.1 can only display 8K at a maximum of 60fps, and that sometimes results in 59fps being recorded as the average frame rate by the benchmarking software we use).

The game still looked great (graphics presets stayed on Ultra), and the jump from 35fps to 60fps meant the game felt much smoother and more responsive—which is especially important in a game like this where quick reactions are essential.

Since I had already hit the 60fps mark, I was ready to try the other upscaling options, but out of curiosity I tried the Ultra Performance mode. Again, the framerate was maxed out at 59fps, but the image quality was noticeably compromised and looked very washed out. This isn't too surprising, as the native resolution the game renders at is 2560 x 1440. These days, 1440p resolution is considered pretty low, and with FSR working hard to upscale it to 7680 x 4320, it's inevitable that image quality will suffer.

Nevertheless, it shows that you could definitely play with a mid-range graphics card God of War Ragnarok at 8K and 60fps. I'd suggest you don't try it, but it's impressive nonetheless.

Screenshot of God of War Ragnarok with 8K

(Image credit: Sony)

Intel XeSS

Next came Intel's XeSS. While it's designed to work with Intel Arc graphics cards, it's not exclusive to Intel hardware, which, like FSR, is a huge plus for people who don't have the latest Nvidia GPUs.

Since its launch, I have been impressed with XeSS and it has once again done a great job with God of War Ragnarok. It offers “Ultra Quality+” as a preset, which renders the image at 5904 x 3320 before upscaling it to 8K. This is higher than AMD FSR 3.1's quality preset and means less upscaling is required.

Image quality was excellent, but the performance increase was rather muted. The game averaged 45 fps. That's a decent 10 fps increase over native 8K gaming, but on the “Ultra Quality” setting, which drops the native resolution to 5120 x 2880, the same as FSR's “Quality” preset, the game averaged 57 fps. Essentially the same as FSR “Quality,” albeit a tiny bit faster.

By switching down to “Quality” on XeSS, I got the magic 60fps average (so 59fps). Image quality still looked very good at a native resolution of 4512×2536. Interestingly, this is essentially the “Balanced” setting on AMD FSR at the same resolution and performance. One could argue that Intel overstates XeSS with three “quality” levels, but I like the option of the additional “Ultra Quality+” preset that AMD lacks. However, I think AMD is being more honest when it describes this resolution and upscaling level as a balance between image quality and performance.

Screenshot of God of War Ragnarok with 8K

(Image credit: Sony)

DLSS

Finally, we come to Nvidia's DLSS 3. This is the most mature of the upscaling options and is traditionally the one that delivers the best results in my experience. However, unlike AMD and Intel's offerings, DLSS is only compatible with Nvidia's latest RTX graphics cards (and DLSS 3 is exclusive to the very latest RTX 4000 series of GPUs).

While this isn't a problem for RTX 4090-powered PCs like our review unit, it does limit the availability of this exciting technology.

As if to prove the superiority of DLSS, all I had to do was turn on the first preset, “Quality,” to get an average of 59 fps. It uses the same native resolution of 5120 x 2880 as the “Quality” settings of XeSS and AMD FSR, but offers a higher and more stable frame rate.

Conclusion: DLSS unfolds its magic again

As with previous 8K tests, DLSS comes out on top, offering excellent performance and image quality, doubling the RTX 4090’s frame rate at God of War Ragnarok in a demanding resolution of 7680 × 4320.

I didn't even have to touch the lower DLSS presets, set the graphics settings below “Ultra,” or enable frame generation (another AI-powered perk that can help smooth out frame rates).

That said, if you can't get DLSS 3, both XeSS and AMD FSR 3.1 produced really good results, with Intel's technology narrowly beating AMD's thanks to slightly more resolution options.

When one of the three upscaling technologies is turned on, God of War Ragnarok looked incredible at 8K.

However, the game's impressive performance at such high resolutions comes with some drawbacks. First of all, God of War Ragnarok was a cross-generational game that was released on both the PS5 and the now 11-year-old PS4.

It also doesn't offer advanced lighting effects like ray tracing. But don't get me wrong: This is still a great looking game. And if you're playing it on PC at the more attainable 4K resolution, it runs even better at a native resolution, meaning there's no sacrifice in image quality.

Still, the power of these upscaling tools presents me – and many other gamers – with a bit of a dilemma when new hardware comes out. Is it worth upgrading? It's clear that the RTX 4090 with DLSS support continues to be an amazing GPU that will continue to handle new games at high resolutions for years to come.

This also means that if I want the very best experience playing PlayStation games, I don't have to buy a PS5 Pro. I just have to be patient until Sony's exclusives finally come to PC.

God of War Ragnarok at 8K makes me question the point of the PS5 Pro and the RTX 5090

You may also like...

Recent Posts

God of War Ragnarok at 8K makes me question the point of the PS5 Pro and the RTX 5090

You may also like...

Total chaos and more leaks from Singham

Two people have been hospitalized following a highway crash in El Paso County that is believed to have involved a school bus

Steelers starting guard suffers possible serious injury – WPXI

Recent Posts