Low-End Performance (RTX 2060/i5 8600K)

[Transgression Roomba]

First and foremost, this game at the lowest settings with FSR set to Ultra Performance and resolution scalability set to 50% STILL LOOKS GOOD when I am playing borderless 2560x1440p. I've been stress testing my machine for the past couple hours now and I'm patiently waiting this weekend when I can actually play further, but for right now I'm so excited to hop back into it when I get the chance.

I was a naysayer from the initial announcement, as Silent Hill 2 might not be my favorite of the franchise but is a game I've often quoted to friends and colleagues as being video games as an art form perfected. I wasn't really impressed with Bloober's back catalog, since you can be inspired by others' works and still not "get" it, but after watching a friend play for 4 hours last night I knew I needed to have this game and thankfully another friend helped me out with a discount and now I have my digital deluxe items. Bloober has knocked it out of the park, and I'm excited with the prospect of them getting to remake the other games and (hopefully) put their own original blood into the franchise. I mean, it's been dead for over a decade guys, and we are sooooo back. Stay mad, tourists and grifters.

My rig:
NVIDIA RTX 2060
Intel Core i5 8600K @ stock clock speeds
16GB RAM (can't remember the speeds at all, but assuredly nothing fancy)
Running Windows 10 Pro
Game is loaded on an NVMe which definitely helps a bit with asset streaming, I'm sure

I'm using FSR right now because I initially had tried out frame gen, but will likely switch to DLSS and I'll have more to say to that. Basically set everything to low. SSR and Ray-Tracing goes away entirely and IMO aren't needed for the game at all. They're mostly nice to have, but in some cases I'd argue are worse than without. I haven't really noticed any differences in shadow quality, albeit I've seen another comment around here suggest that sometime later during the game, low quality shadow options have a major impact on some assets. Hopefully a patch would later address that. Textures are set to low, but playing at this resolution and upscaling from 50% I couldn't tell a difference between low and high except for a select few camera angles in cutscenes getting real close to grass, but it's still passable and doesn't affect me either way. Most importantly is that James will pick up notes in the environment and you can tell that the game will temporarily load higher quality textures for readability, which is greatly appreciated as not every game I've played will do that. Now, I initially tried out the game using an .ini edit that enabled frame gen for FSR. If I hadn't since seen comments suggesting that this would cause severe stuttering issues, I'd have left it on and not even bothered seeing how the game ran without- I had just assumed it would be a pure benefit. I was wrong, and consider trying the game with/without it force enabled. At first, I encountered stuttering basically anytime the camera made a major swing, on top of the general traversal stutters that are being talked about left and right. Turned it off, stuttering is more or less gone. Sure, it'll pop up whenever I'm moving to another major area with things being obviously loaded in the background, but that stutter will last for just a mere moment, not even seconds of my time, and the game goes back to being a smooth experience- hardly game breaking IMO.

I'll probably update again when I switch to DLSS, but that won't be until the weekend my weekend I think. But, altogether I'm definitely hovering between 30-60fps depending on the complexity of the environment and, considering my hardware and its age, that's incredible for how beautiful the game still looks at the lowest qualities. Hopefully performance will keep up by the time I hit the apartments and later sections of the game, but I'm feeling optimistic given that I know I can probably squeeze a bit more out of my hardware.

[JerryHatrick_Nz]

I'm interested in you giving more info and tips.

Tempted to get the game but my friend and I have computers very similar to yours and he bought but refunded the game because on minimum settings it still had minor stutters so I never tried.

[Vagrant]

Have you tried the -dx11 launch command?

[Gabi]

It has traversal stutter and a lot of it for everyone. Check out digital foundries coverage. Wait and see if they fix this otherwise skip it.

[JerryHatrick_Nz]

Originally posted by Gabi:

It has traversal stutter and a lot of it for everyone. Check out digital foundries coverage. Wait and see if they fix this otherwise skip it.

This sounds like it might have been what he had. He said it was generally okay but with small but somewhat common stutters.

Thanks for the heads up.

[Ricback2]

Originally posted by Gabi:

It has traversal stutter and a lot of it for everyone. Check out digital foundries coverage. Wait and see if they fix this otherwise skip it.

It's only visible if you're playing around 60fps or more. When I lock 30fps it disappears, but this game (as many titles in first and third person view) doesn't go well in 30 fps.