Phantom Blade Zero PC performance benchmarks

Phantom Blade Zero is now available on PC, offering increased graphical fidelity thanks to NVIDIA’s DLSS 4.5 technology, Path Tracing and more.

Phantom Blade Zero with NVIDIA RTX and DLSS 4.5 makes fast cuts smooth and stunning on the eyes

Chinese game developers are challenging everyone in the industry by releasing AAA titles that not only match the quality of major Western publishing houses, but also receive rave reviews from around the world. We saw Black Myth Wukong, a game that went on to receive major accolades, and now it looks like we have a whole new contender for GOTY in the form of Phantom Blade Zero.

The tone of Phantom Blade Zero is brutal; it’s essentially an action-RPG, and combat is in the spotlight, all in stunning environments and supported by an incredible soundtrack. The tutorial fight had me all excited as metal music played in the background while I engaged in a spectacular semi-boss fight. The gameplay isn’t a pure “souls-like” experience, but it will take some experience to navigate through some of the boss fights. I’m not a huge fan of Souls, but I really enjoyed my time with Phantom Blade Zero.

Enough talking about the game; I want to talk more about my PC experience in general. But I also wanted to share some thoughts from my colleague, Francesco De Meo, who gave the game a perfect 10/10, and who goes on to say that with Phantom Blade Zero, “S-Game has delivered a masterpiece with its first major release on PC and console that stands neck and neck with the absolute pinnacle of the genre.”

Phantom Blade Zero PC Game Settings

Phantom Blade Zero is made using Unreal Engine 5 (5.7.4). Visually, the game is stunning and there are plenty of options to tune the game to suit your PC’s hardware.

The game starts with a shader compilation screen which takes a long time. This is a unique process.

First of all, we have the “Display” menu where you can adjust “Image Calibration” and change “Display Mode” settings, such as selecting “Output Display”, switching between “Window Mode”, adjusting the resolution and enabling the frame rate limit. Here you will also find some settings under the “Visuals” bar, including:

• Synchronization V
• HDR
• Motion blur
• Acuity
• Camera shake
• Film grain intensity

Moving to the “Graphics” menu, the first thing you can do is apply a recommended graphics preset. The game will automatically check your hardware and select a preset.

Below that are the “Super Resolution” settings. These allow users to choose an SR method, which comes in the form of TSR, NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS. You can also choose Super Resolution mode with standard Ultra Performance, Performance, Balanced, Quality, Ultra Quality and DLAA/FSR AA/XeSS AA modes available. Dynamic resolution quality is also available but will be disabled when using DLSS/XeSS/FSR technologies.

The game also features built-in frame generation support with AMD up to 2x, Intel up to 4x, and NVIDIA up to 6x modes. Users can also enable Dynamic MFG mode via the NVIDIA app, and a faster image generation model is already available since the last update.

Phantom Blade Zero is one of the latest titles to feature Path Tracing technology. The technology is not enabled by default and users can choose between native rendering, ray tracing, and path tracing. NVIDIA RTX GPUs support Ray Reconstruction technology based on DLSS 4.5 which provides better image quality when running RT/PT modes.

The full list of “Details” bar graphics options is listed below:

• Shadow quality
• Quality of reflection
• Post-processing quality
• Lighting quality
• Effect quality
• Material quality
• Quality of ambient occlusion
• Quality of depth of field
• Motion blur quality
• Antialiasing
• Show distance
• Character texture quality
• Character model quality
• High quality hair
• Environmental texture quality
• Quality of the environment model
• Quality of environment details

Our test setup included an Intel Core i9-13900K running on an MSI MEG Z790 ACE motherboard with 32GB of DDR5-7600 (CL36) memory. The drivers used are 581.42 for NVIDIA, 25.10.1 for AMD and 32.0.101.8136 for Intel.

Phantom Blade Zero PC performance benchmarks

Before we start benchmarking, we first want to see how the game performs under its different quality presets.

The Low preset looks very basic, with most meshes and models missing while textures are very poor quality. Switching to Medium, we see the same level of detail with a slight improvement in texture quality and a few additional objects in the world, like vegetation, but lighting remains the same between the Low and Medium presets. This is why the performance between the two modes is also very similar, with only a difference of 3-5 FPS.

Switching to High we notice the first big improvement in the visuals as the lighting is much better, textures look sharper, and meshes/objects are filled. We also see a 14% drop in performance. The very high preset further elevates visual fidelity and we see an additional 15% increase in overall performance. And finally we have the Ultra preset, which looks slightly better and results in a 6-7% performance drop.

By enabling Ray Tracing, you will see a 20-22% drop in performance compared to the native “Ultra” preset, while enabling Path Tracing has a 35-40% impact on FPS compared to Ray Tracing and 50% on the native “Ultra” presets.

This is 4K resolution with a 5090, so actual mileage may vary depending on resolution and graphics card used.

As for performance, we want to share native results first. In 4K, there are virtually no GPUs besides the RTX 5090 capable of handling over 60 FPS; all other cards run at less than 60 FPS, making Phantom Blade Zero a very graphics-intensive title to run.

At 1440p, 60 FPS can be achieved on cards such as the 5070 Ti, RX 9070 XT and above. The rest of the cards will have to rely on lower quality or +frame-gen upscaling to achieve over 60 FPS.

On entry-level and mainstream GPUs, Phantom Blade Zero requires quality reduction and upscaling technologies for over 60 FPS.

Upscaling and Frame-Gen options are available in-game. Most cards aimed at enthusiasts will not require frame-generation, as upscaling will easily deliver over 100 FPS, but if you want to go the extra route for that 4K at 240Hz experience, then MFG is a must. If you plan to use Path Tracing or Ray Tracing, it is essential to enable image generation.

Here’s how GPUs compare when upscaling and generating images in 4K.

Phantom Blade Zero PC impressions

Phantom Blade Zero is the latest Unreal Engine 5 title to release on PC and as expected it offers great visuals, but to get those visuals you also need powerful hardware. On PC, the game relies on a fantastic set of tuning options, and the developer has improved things by taking advantage of NVIDIA’s RTX and DLSS technologies.

In our testing, we found that running the game natively at Very High and Ultra settings is very difficult, even on existing GPUs, without using upscaling or frame generation. The High and Very High settings provide a good balance between performance and visuals, but if you want something more, scaling and image generation are necessary.

Speaking of the RT and PT side, the visuals are further enhanced thanks to Ray Tracing, but Path Tracing, as expected, takes things to the next level. The world of Phantom Blade Zero is very dense and rich; In combat, you’ll see various particle effects, as well as some sections that include rainy and stormy weather conditions that look absolutely stunning when the shadows and lighting are traced. DLSS 4.5 Ray reconstruction also adds that finer touch, further enhancing traced scenes.

Overall, S-GAME has really outdone itself by releasing a beautiful, fast and superb game in the form of Phantom Blade Zero, and NVIDIA’s RTX technologies really bring out the best in this game.

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