Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Performance – 40 Graphics Cards Tested!
Kingdom Come: Deliverance made a name for itself with its deep historical accuracy, punishingly realistic combat, and an open world that felt truly alive. Now, after years of anticipation, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is finally here, promising an even more immersive medieval experience. As with any major new release, we’ve been putting in the work, testing how it performs across 38 different graphics cards, at three resolutions, five quality presets, and, of course, diving into its upscaling options to see how they hold up.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Now, I won’t go too deep into the game itself because, well, to be honest, historical RPGs aren’t usually my thing. That said, Kingdom Come has built up a hardcore fan base thanks to its unique approach to realism, and Deliverance II takes that even further. Though, fair warning, if you’re looking to just jump in and start swinging swords, expect a slow burn. It took me well over two hours to even get to a proper benchmarking location, but now that we have, let’s take a look at how this game runs across a massive range of GPUs.
Unlike many modern games pushing ray tracing as a key feature, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II doesn’t include ray tracing at all. While CryEngine can support ray tracing to some extent, it primarily relies on traditional lighting techniques, voxel-based global illumination, and screen-space effects to create its realistic medieval world. The game instead focuses on performance and visual fidelity through well-optimised baked lighting and dynamic shadows, rather than the computational cost of real-time ray tracing.
Minimum System Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB) / AMD Radeon RX 580
- Storage: 100 GB available space
Recommended System Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- Processor: Intel Core i7-13700K / AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
- Memory: 32 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 / AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT
- Storage: 100 GB available space
The use of Crytek’s CryEngine, rather than Unreal Engine (which has become the dominant choice for most developers today), does make Kingdom Come: Deliverance II stand out. Although Unreal Engine 5 offers advanced features like Lumen for real-time global illumination and Nanite for virtualised geometry, and it’s easy to see why so many studios are adopting it, CryEngine has long been known for its strong environmental rendering, and Warhorse Studios is clearly pushing it to its limits here to create a visually rich and immersive medieval world, just without all the bells and whistles of ray tracing.
Benchmarking
For our benchmark run, we settled on the village of Troskowitz, where we get our first chance to free-roam to a degree. Though the guardsmen aren’t overly keen on me wandering around with my shirt off, the ladies seem to like it, as they keep mentioning my hose, or something to that effect, but I digress.
We needed a location that truly puts the game’s engine to the test, and Troskowitz stood out as the perfect choice. It’s packed with near, mid, and far detail, from dense foliage and detailed buildings to roaming NPCs and wildlife, all of which push both the CPU and GPU in different ways. This ensures we get a real-world performance snapshot, rather than just an isolated stress test, making it an ideal spot to see how each GPU handles the game in all its medieval glory.
When looking at the settings within the game, they are broken into graphics settings and advanced graphics settings. In graphics settings, you can change the resolution that you’re playing at, change the mode from windowed to full screen, along with adjusting the overall image quality, which ranges from low, medium, high, ultra, and finally experimental, and we’ve tested all of them today. You can also have an FPS overlay, adjust VSync and the frame rate limit, as well as gamma correction and horizontal field of view. There’s also a section for resolution scaling, which gives us the option of FSR or DLSS, but no XeSS support, and with the included modes, you can adjust through various presets, including Native AA, Quality, Balanced, and Performance. There’s also the ability to adjust motion blur and near depth of field too.
In the advanced graphics settings, you can fine-tune details a little more. These change depending on the overall image quality that you set, but you can lower or increase visual settings to get a balance of visuals and performance because this game, even on an RTX 5090 from the get-go, manages to use 100% of our GPU’s performance.
About Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is a gritty, realistic open-world action RPG set in medieval Bohemia. Continuing the story of Henry, players will find themselves embroiled in a complex web of political intrigue, revenge, and self-discovery. Experience a historically accurate depiction of the 15th century, complete with challenging combat, impactful choices, and a deep, immersive world. Explore vast landscapes, engage in realistic activities like blacksmithing and archery, and shape Henry’s destiny in a land torn by conflict.
