Crimson Desert was one of the most visually demanding open-world games out there, and now we have a much clearer idea of ​​how it stacks up. In a new technical dive, Digital Foundry tested the game’s BlackSpace engine and was impressed, particularly with how well it runs natively at high settings.
At a time when most major releases rely heavily on DLSS or FSR to achieve playable frame rates, Crimson Desert appears to be bucking the trend. According to tests, the game could run on an AMD Radeon RX 7900
That doesn’t mean there’s no upscaling. The game supports DLSS and FSR, but the key takeaway is that they feel optional rather than necessary. This distinction is particularly important for gamers who prefer native rendering or want more headroom for future hardware.
Native performance is in the spotlight
Digital Foundry has highlighted several areas where the BlackSpace Engine excels, from lighting and weather systems to texture detail and environmental density. Rain effects, global lighting and large open environments were consistently highlighted as major visual strengths. In fact, ray tracing plays a big role in this presentation, especially in lighting and reflections. Yet despite these demanding effects, the game maintains strong performance without having to rely heavily on upscaling as has become common in recent AAA releases.
The PC requirements reinforce this impression. The minimum specs only list an RX 6500 XT or GTX 1060, while the recommended specs point to RTX 2080-class hardware for ultra settings and ray tracing, which is already several generations old. Taken together, this suggests that developers have prioritized scalability over brute-force hardware requirements. This is encouraging for PC gamers, especially after recent AAA releases that required heavy upscaling to run smoothly.
Of course, these results are based on PC tests. The console’s performance remains to be seen, but recent examples are optimistic. Titles like Resident Evil have made significant progress with the latest PSSR updates on PlayStation hardware. If Crimson Desert benefits from a similar optimization, it could perform well on all platforms. At the moment, the PC outlook is promising, and if this level of optimization continues, Crimson Desert could be a rare AAA game that looks cutting-edge and runs smoothly out of the box.
