And the time has finally come. Sony has just released Stellar Blade on PC. Powered by Unreal Engine 4, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.

For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 576.66, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.5.2 drivers.

Shift Up has added a respectable number of PC graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Shadows, Textures, Lighting, Characters and more. The demo also comes with the 4K Texture Pack that is exclusive to the PC version. Plus, there is support for both NVIDIA DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 3.0. Sadly, though, there is no support for Intel XeSS.

Stellar Blade does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, we used the Prologue/Beach area. This appeared to be the most demanding area early in the game. As such, it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of it runs. Also, for those interested, we have a separate article for our DLSS 4 benchmarks. So, be sure to check it out.

At 1080p, we were significantly bottlenecked by our RAM or CPU. Thus, I’ve decided to test different CPU configurations to see how the game scales on various CPU configurations.

So, at 1080p/Max Settings, we were able to run Stellar Blade with over 70FPS, even on a dual-core configuration. With 4 cores/threads, we were able to raise our minimum framerate to 119FPS, and our average framerate to 152FPS. Then, we hit a CPU/RAM wall with more than six CPU cores/threads. Despite these bottlenecks, the good news is that you will be able to game with over 60FPS, even if you don’t own a high-end CPU.

At 1080p/Max Settings, all our GPUs were able to provide high framerates. Even the NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti was able to push over 100FPS. Thus, we can safely say that Stellar Blade will run smoothly on a wide range of PCs. Moreover, our AMD Radeon GPUs were faster than our NVIDIA GPUs, especially when it came to the minimum framerates.

At 1440p/Max Settings, all of our GPUs were, once again, able to offer a smooth gaming experience. And yes, even at 1440p, the NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti was able to achieve framerates higher than 70FPS. I don’t remember the last time that GPU was able to provide such a smooth gaming experience at 1440p.

As for Native 4K/Max Settings, our top five GPUs were able to provide framerates over 60FPS at all times. The NVIDIA RTX 3080 and AMD Radeon RX 6900XT came close to a 60FPS experience, though they could drop to the 50s. If you want to game at 4K/Max with those GPUs, I suggest using DLSS or FSR.

Graphics-wise, Stellar Blade has a great art style and it is pleasing to the eye. Tech-wise, though, it does not bring anything new to the table. For the PC version, Shift Up added some 4K textures that can improve the game’s overall image. For its amazing performance, the game looks great. Just don’t expect it to knock your socks off. It looks great, but not mind-blowing.

Before closing, I want to say that I didn’t run into any big stuttering problems while playing. There were a few shader compilation stutters. However, they weren’t as bad as in some other recent games. Most of the time, the game ran smoothly on PC, even with an unlocked framerate.

All in all, Stellar Blade is a polished PC game. It does not require a high-end PC, meaning that it will run great on wide range of PC systems. It also looks great, and the KB&M implementation feels solid. Plus, it supports some PC-only features, like DLSS and FSR. And although it uses Denuvo, it does not suffer from any performance issues. With the way the game runs, it’s a bit disappointing we did not get any Ray Tracing features. There are some shadow-y scenes in which RTGI and RTAO would benefit the game. But that’s just a nitpick. As I said, Stellar Blade will run smoothly on a wide range of PCs. And that’s probably what most PC gamers will appreciate.

Enjoy!