Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most anticipated game releases of 2024, and it's right around the corner - launching August 20 for PC and PlayStation 5. This is one that we've been following for a while, and on PC, the game is set to be a visual treat thanks to the inclusion of full ray-tracing (or path tracing), DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, and Frame Generation.
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Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark Tool running in 4K on a GeForce RTX 4090.
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Ahead of the game's launch, developer and publisher Game Science has released a free Benchmark Tool on Steam that includes a fly-over through one of the game's lush forest, river, and temple environments. There's no combat in the benchmark, which is a shame. Still, the developer notes that it "evaluates your hardware performance and system compatibility through the real-time rendering of an in-game sequence."
As for the game's full visual potential, here's a look at 4K performance running on a GeForce RTX 4090.
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With or without ray-tracing Black Myth: Wukong looks incredible when played using the game's Very High or Cinematic graphics presets, delivering photo-realistic environments and lighting effects. Running the Benchmark (and we assume playing the game) in 4K requires some serious hardware, so we paired the game with the flagship GeForce RTX 4090.
First, here's a look at 4K performance using the DLSS Performance preset with Frame Generation enabled.
The Cinematic quality setting in Black Myth: Wukong is the game maxed out, from draw distance to object detail, texture quality, lighting, shadows, ambient occlusion, texture filtering, and everything else. What's impressive here is that performance is stable, no matter the average frame rate. Looking at the Minimum FPS numbers compared to the Average FPS numbers, we were shocked at how close they were - especially as an Unreal Engine 5 game.
Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark Tool running in 4K on a GeForce RTX 4090.
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Also, Cinematic quality with 'Full Ray Tracing' compared to Cinematic quality without ray tracing only sees performance dip by 12.5% - incredible. Granted, you need DLSS and Frame Generation to hit 100+ FPS with a GeForce RTX 4090 in 4K - but Black Myth: Wukong, even in Benchmark Tool form, is one of the most visually impressive and technically advanced games to date.
This is Cyberpunk 2077 'Overdrive' mode levels of quality, and our only criticism with the look would be that the post-processing is overly sharp - so here's hoping there's a sharpness slider available in the full game.
Next up, here's a look at 4K performance using the DLSS 'Quality' mode with Frame Generation enabled.
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Running a game in 4K with the DLSS Quality preset means that the game is natively rendered in 1440p. However, the result delivers image quality on par or better than native 4K. Here, it's the latter, thanks to DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, which vastly improves ray-traced shadow and reflection quality. However, even with Frame Generation, the GeForce RTX 4090 only hits an average frame rate of 70 FPS with Full Ray Tracing enabled, which increases to 75 FPS when lowering the overall graphics preset to Very High. The benchmark runs smoothly thanks to stable performance and excellent Minimum FPS numbers, but this could lead to increased latency when playing the game.
What about the millions of gamers without a high-end GeForce RTX 40 Series card? It's good news for 1440p and 1080p gamers, as the Steam user reviews for the Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark Tool shows that it runs great on everything from a GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB GPU to a Radeon RX 5600 XT. The Benchmark Tool also supports AMD FSR and Intel XeSS upscaling and frame generation technologies, covering all bases.
According to Steam, the most popular GPUs also deliver impressive results - the benchmark runs great on GeForce RTX 3060 and GeForce RTX 4060 rigs. To add to the hype, some have gotten the benchmark to run fine on a Steam Deck.
Here's a reminder of the PC hardware requirements for Black Myth: Wukong, which lists the GeForce GTX 1060 as the minimum spec GPU required to play the game at 1080p.
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