More than a year after its console debut, Square Enix is finally getting around to releasing Final Fantasy XV on the PC. True 4K support will be available when the game launches on March 6, so this is our opportunity for a version without compromise, right? Right?!
When XV was released in 2016, the Xbox One, PS4, and PS4 Pro versions all had their own unique quirks. The eventual Xbox One X patch was a nice step up, but it still lacked the fit and finish that we hoped for. So, how is it going to hold up on the PC?
Over at the Digital Foundry, the team has analyzed the pre-release FFXV benchmarking program, and they found some significant performance concerns – especially on AMD cards. Square Enix is using Nvidia’s GameWorks, and that causes a performance penalty that’s hard to excuse. On a GTX 1060, DF found that GameWorks drops the average frame rate by about 11fps. On the RX 580? It’s closer to a 20fps difference – gross.
Even worse, an overclocked GTX 1080 Ti with everything turned on can’t even deliver a perfect 1080p60. That’s wildly disappointing to hear, but there is some hope. This benchmark app doesn’t really offer much in the way of tweaking, but Square Enix promises the final version will offer more options. If you’re willing to make graphical compromises, hitting a perfect 60fps will likely be in reach.
So as it stands, it seems unlikely that any normal person will have a machine capable of delivering 2160p60 on high settings on day one. The situation will change as optimizations are made, and new hardware is released down the road, but March 6 won’t be the huge celebration hardcore Final Fantasy fans have been wishing for.
Curious about how the game will run on your setup? Well, you can download the demo right now, and see for yourself. In fact, it even has the 4K assets baked in, so you can crank it all the way up to see if you can handle the game at 4K.
The demo just launched this week, so we’re still waiting to see in-depth analysis of how it runs on different hardware.
