I Played Crimson Desert on an NVIDIA RTX 5070 and Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Build; Here’s How it Went

Crimson Desert — available now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, macOS, and PC—is a sprawling open-world action-adventure with a healthy dose of RPG DNA. Originally teased way back in 2020, this marks Pearl Abyss’s first real swing at a massive single-player epic. This is, without a doubt, one of the most anticipated games of this year.

You step into the boots of Kliff, a mercenary from the Greymane faction fighting to reunite his clan across the vast, unforgiving world of Pywel. I’ve clocked about 10 hours so far, and honestly, it’s one of the few open worlds that’s actually kept me hooked. That’s largely because the devs haven't played it safe; they’ve thrown everything into the mix. We’re talking mysterious ancient forces, a sudden dash of high-tech robots, and even jetpacks in a medieval setting. It’s a bizarre, genre-bending cocktail that keeps you wondering what’s around the next corner.

But as much as I’m enjoying the trek, I’ve been putting the game through its paces on an RTX 5070 and Core Ultra 9 285K build, leaning heavily on DLSS 4.5, Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction. And, there’s no denying that CrimsonDesert benefits largely from RR, as we’ll see further in the article.

Crimson Desert PC System Requirements

Pearl Abyss has already put out an exhaustive list of system requirements across the board, be it for PC, Console, Handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X, and MacBooks as well.

The Minimum specs can run on an Intel i5-8500 or an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X paired with either the Radeon RX 5500 XT or the GTX 1060. As for the Ultra preset, it can run on a build with Intel i5-13600K or AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and AMD Radeon RX 9070XT or RTX 5070Ti. There’s another graphic preset that is not mentioned in the System Requirements

Testing Rig

For testing, I paired the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, which sits on the MSI Z890 Gaming Plus Wi-Fi motherboard, and 48GB of Kingston Fury Renegade non-binary DDR5 RAM clocked at 6000MT/s (using XMP Profile 3). Storage was handled by a WD Black SN850X (2TB).

Requiem were tested on an MSI G274F monitor with a 180Hz refresh rate. The GPU driver version used was 595.79, which was rolled out on March 10.

Crimson Desert Graphics Settings and Features

Crimson Desert offers six graphics presets — Minimum, Low, Medium, High, Ultra, and Cinematic — giving you a fairly wide spectrum to work with depending on how much performance you’re willing to trade for visuals. Beyond the presets, the game also allows granular control over some settings like texture quality, model detail, foliage density, and ray tracing, which is useful because not every preset scales cleanly across hardware.

Ray Tracing is enabled by default starting at the Medium preset and above, and automatically switches off below that.

Crimson Desert also lets you switch between graphics presets on the fly without a restart, making experimentation with different configurations far less tedious. The same goes for upscaling and frame generation—you can toggle them in seconds, making it easy to see what’s actually helping performance on your rig. There’s also a real-time overlay for FPS, latency, and VRAM usage, which is genuinely useful while testing.

I tested Crimson Desert using two presets, Cinematic and Medium, both running at 1080p. DLSS 4.5 was enabled across all runs, except for one specific test mentioned later, and ray tracing remained enabled throughout.

With Ray Reconstruction disabled, Crimson Desert starts to fall apart visually in ways that are hard to ignore. There’s a constant layer of noise, especially around foliage, and it becomes very obvious the moment you start moving. Shadows don’t hold up either. Trees tend to flicker, and in darker indoor scenes with a single light source, the image just feels unstable and messy. The same applies to water physics as well. The ripples don’t quite feel natural, and enabling RR doesn’t really change much there. It still looks a bit off, especially when you’re paying attention.

Note: If you have an AMD GPU, this setting will be called Ray Regeneration.

There are also moments where the world breaks a bit. Patches of grass and even vines on towers tend to pop in quite aggressively, sometimes when you’re just a few steps away from the structure. It’s noticeable enough to pull you out of the scene, especially in an otherwise detailed environment.

What stood out more was how much this affects the overall look of the game. Even at Cinematic settings at 1080p with Ray Tracing, it doesn’t really look like a maxed-out experience. Character models still look solid, armour details and NPC outfits are sharp enough, but the world around them feels off. It almost comes across like the game is running on a much lower preset, even though it isn’t.

Looking at the numbers, the difference between Cinematic and Medium isn’t doing much to justify itself here. Cinematic is averaging 112fps with 1% lows at 83fps, while Medium is actually a bit higher at 119fps. At the same time, GPU power draw is pushing close to 200W on Cinematic. So you’re clearly asking more from the GPU, but without Ray Reconstruction, that extra load isn’t really translating into a cleaner image.

With DLSS Ray Reconstruction enabled, the improvement in visual quality is hard to miss. Ray Reconstruction is essentially designed to clean up the noise that comes as a side effect of ray tracing, and you can see that working here almost immediately.

The image looks far more stable, with lighting and shadows holding together instead of breaking apart like before. The noise that was clearly visible earlier is gone, foliage looks cleaner in motion, and shadow flickering is not evident anymore. Even darker scenes with limited lighting look far more consistent now, instead of falling apart with grain and uneven shading.

This is also where the game starts to look like it’s actually running at higher settings. That said, the performance hit is very evident. At Cinematic settings, the average drops to 64fps with 1% lows at 53fps. The Medium preset runs at 71 fps, which is more manageable but still a clear drop compared to running without RR. At the same time, GPU power draw climbs past 214W.

The scaling between presets also raises some questions around optimisation. Medium already seems to be doing most of the heavy lifting, especially with ray tracing and Ray Reconstruction in play. Moving up to Cinematic increases the load on the GPU, but the difference in output isn’t as pronounced as you’d expect.

In its current state, the game appears to hit its performance ceiling fairly early, which leaves higher presets offering limited returns for the additional cost. It doesn’t feel like a well-balanced scaling curve, and that takes away some of the flexibility you’d normally expect from a wide range of graphics options such as this.

With both Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction enabled, the jump in average frame rates is immediately obvious. Cinematic goes from the mid-60s to 110fps with 2x FG, and all the way up to 207fps with 4x MFG. Medium follows a similar pattern, touching 215fps at 4x multi-frame generation. On paper, it looks like a massive win.

Once you look past the average FPS, though, the picture becomes clearer. The 1% lows barely change. Cinematic still sits around the 50fps mark, and Medium isn’t too far off either, even with 4x MFG enabled. That’s expected behaviour. Frame Generation isn’t increasing the actual render performance; it’s building extra frames on top of what’s already there. So while the FPS counter shoots up, the base performance of the game remains largely the same.

On the visual side, the trade-off is surprisingly minor. The most noticeable difference is in fine details, like pavement textures losing a bit of definition. Beyond that, character models, facial details, and general scene composition remain largely intact. It doesn’t feel like you’re taking a major hit to image quality, at least not in obvious ways during regular gameplay.

With DLSS 4.5 disabled, which also means Ray Reconstruction is out of the picture, the game averages around 107fps, with 1% lows at 86fps and 0.2% lows at 84fps.

How is Crimson Desert, and Should You Buy it?

Crimson Desert, even in the limited time I’ve spent with it, feels massive, and there’s a clear sense of depth here. I’ve probably seen less than half a per cent of what the game has to offer, and it already feels dense with systems, mechanics, and things to do. Combat is easily one of the highlights. There’s a lot of flexibility in how you approach encounters, and the game keeps unlocking new layers as you progress. It can feel a bit overwhelming at the start, especially with controls that aren’t immediately intuitive, but once it clicks, it flows well.

What stands out early on is how much the game throws at you beyond just combat. There’s a strong focus on traversal, environmental interactions, and dynamic events that keep breaking the usual open-world routine. You’re not just moving from point A to point B, there’s always something happening in between, whether it’s NPC activity, random encounters, or just the world reacting to what you’re doing.

Combat is easily one of the highlights. There’s a lot of flexibility in how you approach encounters, and the game keeps unlocking new layers as you progress. So, there’s a mix of traditional combat and a bit of magic.

If you enjoy large-scale open-world RPGs with deep combat and plenty to uncover, Crimson Desert already gives you enough reasons to jump right in.

On the performance side, things are a bit more mixed. The game looks like it’s built to push hardware, but it doesn’t scale as cleanly as you’d expect. Medium and Cinematic presets sit closer than they should, both in terms of performance and visual gains, which takes away some of the flexibility you’d normally rely on while tuning settings. The bigger shift comes from features like DLSS Ray Reconstruction (Ray Regeneration on AMD GPUs).

Ray Reconstruction, in particular, feels essential. Without it, the game looks noisy and unstable, with flickering shadows and inconsistent foliage. Even at higher presets, the image doesn’t hold up the way it should. Turning it on fixes most of these issues, but it also drops performance noticeably and pushes GPU usage to its limits.

Frame Generation and Multi-Frame Generation, on the other hand, do exactly what they’re supposed to. The FPS numbers jump significantly, but the base performance remains largely the same, which is evident from the 1% lows staying well, low. The game looks smoother, but responsiveness doesn’t scale in the same way. That said, the visual trade-off is minimal. Aside from minor loss in fine detail in certain surfaces, most of the scene holds up well, which makes FG a practical option, especially on lower-end systems.

And that’s where things land. Despite its scaling issues, Crimson Desert is surprisingly approachable if you’re willing to tweak the right settings. Medium with Ray Reconstruction enabled feels like the sweet spot, and adding Frame Generation can help smooth things out further without heavily compromising visual quality. It’s not perfectly optimised, and the preset scaling could use work, but the game does offer enough flexibility to run well across a wider range of hardware than you might expect.

Right now, it feels like a technically ambitious game that’s still evolving. The balance isn’t quite there yet, especially on the performance side, but the foundation is strong. If the optimisation improves, there’s clearly something special taking shape here.