Kingdom Come Deliverance seems to have replaced Crysis on PC in the 'can it run it?' meme
Kingdom Come Deliverance on PC can look a lot better than consoles, but you can't have it both looking this good and running at 60fps.
Kingdom Come Deliverance suffers from performance problems on all consoles, so the logical assumption is that things are going to be better on PC.
According to a new report, this is not really the case. To start with, Kingdom Come Deliverance is very CPU-bound, and this is one of the first things that become apparent when you compare the PC version with consoles.
Compared to consoles, some of the upgrades on PC include volumetric lighting, better anti-aliasing, texture filtering, as well as higher-resolution textures and shadows. The PC version also benefits from improved ambient occlusion, which is reflected in many areas giving scenes a deeper look, and making mud tracks look more realistic.
Pop-in does exist on PC, but it doesn't kick in as often as it does on consoles, and you can always push the slider up if your PC can handle it.
With an i5 8600K, and a GTX 1080Ti at 1080p, the game struggled to maintain 60fps. Digital Foundry points out that you can achieve a near constant 60fps by dropping draw distance and shadows to High. The Ultra setting in particular activates a very taxing indoor shadow tech that the report says can be even more demanding than outdoor scenes.
Turning settings down to High is much more manageable with GPUs like the GTX 1060 and AMD's RX580, with frame-rate hovering around 60fps, though drops in the 30s can still happen.
After contacting the developer, the game's lead programmer pointed out that Ultra High is future proofing, meant for future PC hardware, because of how taxing it is on modern hardware. You can drop the preset even further to Medium, which maintains 60fps much more consistently.
PC players who witnessed the launch of the original Crysis will remember that it was similarly hard to keep locked to 60fps. The 'can it run Crysis' meme was born for a reason, and it rang true for a very long time. As it stands, not even top of the line GPUs can maintain 60fps at 1080p, let alone other resolutions and weaker cards.
Hit up our Kingdom Come Deliverance guide if you're not worried about technical shortcomings, but would like to solve many of the game's mysteries.