Bloober Team is set to unveil its latest third-person action horror game, Cronos: The New Dawn, later today, utilizing the powerful Unreal Engine 5. This release presents a prime opportunity to assess its performance on PC, and we have conducted a thorough benchmarking analysis.
Benchmarking Details
For our tests, we employed a robust setup featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, paired with 32GB of DDR5 RAM clocked at 6000MHz. The graphics cards used included AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, and RX 9070XT, alongside NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. The operating system was Windows 10 64-bit, with the latest drivers from GeForce and Radeon.
In terms of graphics settings, Cronos: The New Dawn offers a variety of options for players to customize, including adjustments for Textures, Shadows, Effects, and more. The game also supports advanced technologies such as NVIDIA DLSS 4 with MFG, AMD FSR 3.1, and Intel XeSS 2.0.
Performance Insights
While Cronos: The New Dawn lacks a built-in benchmark tool, we utilized a particularly demanding area encountered early in the game for our performance tests. This location serves as a reliable indicator of overall gameplay performance.
- At 1080p with Epic Settings, the top five graphics cards consistently delivered frame rates exceeding 60 FPS. The AMD Radeon RX 6900XT and NVIDIA RTX 3080 also provided a smooth gaming experience, although a FreeSync or G-Sync monitor is recommended for optimal performance.
- Moving to Native 1440p with Epic Settings, only three GPUs maintained a fluid experience: the NVIDIA RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. The AMD Radeon RX 6900XT performed comparably to the NVIDIA RTX 3080, while the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX outperformed the RX 9070XT.
- At Native 4K/Epic Settings, no GPU managed to sustain a constant 60 FPS experience, which is expected given the game’s default use of Software Lumen.
It is noteworthy that the game demonstrates impressive scalability through its graphics settings. Transitioning from Epic to High Settings can enhance performance by 18–25%, allowing the NVIDIA RTX 5090 to achieve smooth gameplay at Native 4K. Further adjustments to Medium and Low Settings yield additional performance boosts of 15% and 21%, respectively.
Visual Quality and Performance Stability
Visually, Cronos: The New Dawn excels, immersing players in richly atmospheric environments and showcasing highly detailed character models. While some minor visual imperfections, such as blocky shadows, may be observed, the overall aesthetic remains striking.
Importantly, the game exhibits fewer stutters without Hardware Lumen enabled, with only minimal traversal stutters noted. The absence of shader compilation stutters is a positive aspect, enhancing the gaming experience for most players.
In comparison to other titles, Cronos: The New Dawn outperforms Silent Hill 2 Remake in terms of stability and performance. While there remains potential for optimization—particularly with Hardware Lumen—running the game without it currently offers a smoother experience. Overall, it aligns with the performance expectations typical of Unreal Engine 5 games, all while providing support for various PC upscaling technologies.
John, the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming, is a passionate advocate for PC gaming and the modding and indie communities. His extensive background in gaming journalism is complemented by a deep appreciation for both PC and console gaming, with a particular fondness for the iconic 16-bit consoles. John’s expertise is further underscored by his academic work on the evolution of PC graphics cards.
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