The Outer Worlds with ray tracing can't hit 60FPS at paltry 540p resolution with an RTX 5090 and 9800X3D - ray tracing 'performance' mirrors Borderlands 4 fiasco

(Image credit: Steam)

It's a new day, and another badly-optimized AAA Unreal Engine 5 game has hit store shelves. A couple of YouTubers, including Daniel Owen, have discovered serious performance problems in The Outer Worlds 2 that almost mirror Borderlands 4's atrocious launch day performance. One of the most problematic graphics settings is the game's ray tracing mode, which prevents even AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D gaming champ from achieving 60 FPS at resolutions well under 1080p.

The aforementioned YouTuber ran the game across three hardware configurations: one with a Ryzen 5 5600X and a GTX 1070, another with the same chip and an RTX 3080 12GB, and the third with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D paired with an RTX 5090. The two former configurations represent the game's minimum and recommended system requirements on the game's Steam page.

Bring a BIG CPU!!! The Outer Worlds 2 PC Performance Tested - YouTube

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The game struggled to hit 60 FPS on both 5600X-powered configurations. With the GTX 1070, the game was unable to run at even 30 FPS consistently in one of the game's city areas at low settings with FSR set to performance mode at 1080p (540p internal resolution).

Switching to the RTX 3080 12GB technically fared much better, with that GPU achieving almost 60 FPS with the same settings. But regardless, it couldn't maintain a solid 60 FPS at the game's lowest quality settings.

The only configuration of the three that could provide solid performance in the game (at any graphics setting) was the Ryzen 7 9800X3D rig powered by Nvidia's flagship RTX 5090. With these top-of-the-line components, the game ran above 60 FPS at 4k resolution with DLSS set to performance mode (1080p internal resolution) at the game's maximum settings (except for hardware ray tracing).

That said, native 4K resolution and hardware ray tracing proved extremely challenging for the 9800X3D and 5090 to handle. Running the game at native 4k resolution with DLAA at maximum settings (with ray tracing still disabled) was only good enough for 45-50 FPS.

Enabling ray tracing significantly degraded performance. At 1080p with DLSS performance mode (540p internal resolution), the RTX 5090 and 9800X3D could not achieve a solid 60 FPS.

The Outer Worlds 2's performance on modern-day hardware is comically bad, even by Unreal Engine 5 standards. The game struggles to play on the lowest settings on the game's own recommended hardware configuration, and ray tracing is basically unplayable (unless you like 540p gaming on an RTX 5090). The developers seem to have taken a step from Borderlands 4's playbook, a game that also struggles to maintain 60FPS at its lowest graphical settings on modern mainstream PC hardware.

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

15 Comments Comment from the forums

hotaru251

and people will still buy it and encourage devs to keep making poorly optimized UE5games.
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coolitic

Unreal's marketing department has caused more damage to the gaming industry in the past 5 years than EA in the 2000s.
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consoleplebe

PC Master Race, indeed
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Heat_Fan89

I still haven't bought into RT or PT. I've tried it on several games like Doom Dark Ages and Indiana Jones. It did make the game look a little nicer but the performance hit was jarring even with an RTX 5080. I turned it off and I never felt like I was missing something.

RT/PT is a nice tech but it's not as much a game changer as when John Carmack discovered and used his real time lighting technique from his ID Tech game engine, in Quake. Firing a rocket and seeing the rocket light up the hallway as it traveled towards its target was pretty freaking cool.
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rluker5

Looks like a 9800X3D issue. Things like raytracing and framegen occupy cache. I would like to see if it is still an issue with a 5090 and 13900/14900k.
Borderlands 4 has framegen issues with the 9800X3D where it gets less than 1/2 the 1% mins as a 14900k.
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jordanclock

rluker5 said:
Looks like a 9800X3D issue. Things like raytracing and framegen occupy cache. I would like to see if it is still an issue with a 5090 and 13900/14900k.
Borderlands 4 has framegen issues with the 9800X3D where it gets less than 1/2 the 1% mins as a 14900k.
So, you think heavily GPU-bound features like RT and FG are performing poorly because of insufficient cache and that a CPU with 1/3 the L3 cache would perform better? A CPU that rarely outperforms the 7800X3D and sometimes falls behind the 5800X3D?

A more sane explanation is that the RT settings in Outer Worlds 2 are just poorly tuned. There are a lot of variables that can be tweaked for RT in UE5. It's very easy for settings to be left at default values that are far higher than needed. Heck, it's part of the reason why devs need to stop shipping with "ultra" options because they are almost always using the default UE5 values that are borderline placebos over "high".
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rluker5

jordanclock said:
So, you think heavily GPU-bound features like RT and FG are performing poorly because of insufficient cache and that a CPU with 1/3 the L3 cache would perform better? A CPU that rarely outperforms the 7800X3D and sometimes falls behind the 5800X3D?

A more sane explanation is that the RT settings in Outer Worlds 2 are just poorly tuned. There are a lot of variables that can be tweaked for RT in UE5. It's very easy for settings to be left at default values that are far higher than needed. Heck, it's part of the reason why devs need to stop shipping with "ultra" options because they are almost always using the default UE5 values that are borderline placebos over "high".
The video has low GPU utilization during the low frame rate episodes, Daniel Owens has released prior videos showing the 7800X3D having the same issues in several games and even Tom's has shown the 9800X3D losing its mojo vs a likely stock 13900k with raytracing enabled in the 5090 review.

The 9800X3D is a great gaming CPU, especially with games that stick to the feature set that RDNA2 does well in. They just often lose cache advantage when going beyond RDNA2 supported graphics features.
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emike09

Very poorly optimized game. With all settings maxed @ 4k, RT on, DLSS quality, Frame Gen enabled, I was getting between 50-65fps (hardware in sig below). Turning down some settings smoothed that out a bit. The game isn't a visual masterpiece by any means and in no way justifies such poor performance.

UE5 is partially to blame here - it's a bloated engine and takes way too much to optimize efficiently. Comparing to engines like ID Tech, Red, or Snowflake, which can do full path tracing and look beautiful at high framerates.

Boring game anyways, I refunded it. Way too dialog heavy and too much agenda pushing.
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Amdlova

@rluker5 don't say anything bad about AMD or they will be mad at you
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Scanphor

Admin said:
YouTubers have discovered terrible performance on The Outer Worlds 2, so much so that the game's maximum settings with ray tracing can only be run at below 60 FPS at a 540p internal resolution on an RTX 5090.

The Outer Worlds with ray tracing can't hit 60FPS at paltry 540p resolution with an RTX 5090 and 9800X3D - ray tracing 'performance' mirrors Border... : Read more

Odd hearing about these stories, I'm playing on a 4070 Super, 265k CPU, 3440 x 1440. Settings are mostly "High" (view distance "very high"), RT on, DLSS Quality, frame gen on. Raw FPS 60-70, after frame gen 120-140, buttery smooth gameplay.
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