Black Myth: Wukong, one of the most anticipated game releases of 2024, is just around the corner, launching on August 20th for PC and PlayStation 5. This visually captivating game promises an immersive experience, especially on PC where it utilizes cutting-edge technologies like full ray-tracing, DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, and Frame Generation. To give players a taste of what to expect, developer and publisher Game Science has released a free Benchmark Tool on Steam. This tool allows players to experience a breathtaking fly-over through one of the game’s lush forest, river, and temple environments. While the benchmark unfortunately lacks combat, it does provide a realistic glimpse into the game’s visual fidelity, showcasing its impressive real-time rendering capabilities.
Running the Benchmark (and presumably playing the game) in 4K necessitates powerful hardware. We paired the game with the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 to test its visual potential. The game shines with both ray-tracing enabled and disabled, particularly when using the Very High or Cinematic graphics presets, delivering photo-realistic environments and lighting effects.
In 4K with the DLSS Performance preset and Frame Generation enabled, the game achieves stable performance with incredibly consistent Minimum FPS compared to Average FPS, especially noteworthy for an Unreal Engine 5 game. Even with Full Ray Tracing enabled, performance drops only by 12.5% compared to Cinematic quality without ray tracing, showcasing the game’s optimization. However, achieving 100+ FPS with a GeForce RTX 4090 in 4K requires DLSS and Frame Generation.
Black Myth: Wukong, even in Benchmark Tool form, demonstrates its potential to be one of the most visually impressive and technically advanced games to date. It rivals Cyberpunk 2077’s ‘Overdrive’ mode in quality, but the only criticism with the visual style is the overly sharp post-processing. Hopefully, the full game will provide a sharpness slider for customization.
When using the DLSS ‘Quality’ mode with Frame Generation enabled, the game is rendered natively in 1440p, yet still delivers image quality on par or even superior to native 4K thanks to DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction. This advanced technology significantly enhances ray-traced shadow and reflection quality. However, even with Frame Generation, the GeForce RTX 4090 only reaches an average frame rate of 70 FPS with Full Ray Tracing enabled, increasing to 75 FPS when reducing the graphics preset to Very High. While the benchmark runs smoothly thanks to stable performance and excellent Minimum FPS numbers, this could lead to increased latency in gameplay.
The good news for gamers without high-end GeForce RTX 40 Series cards is that Black Myth: Wukong seems to perform well even on less powerful hardware. Steam user reviews for the Benchmark Tool highlight its smooth running on GPUs ranging from a GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB to a Radeon RX 5600 XT. The Benchmark Tool also supports AMD FSR and Intel XeSS upscaling and frame generation technologies, providing compatibility for a wide range of systems. Popular GPUs, such as the GeForce RTX 3060 and GeForce RTX 4060, also deliver impressive results in the benchmark. Adding to the excitement, the benchmark has been successfully run on a Steam Deck, further expanding its potential audience.
The minimum hardware requirements for Black Myth: Wukong list a GeForce GTX 1060 as the necessary GPU for playing at 1080p. This suggests that the game will be accessible to a large portion of PC gamers, even without the latest high-end hardware.
