Warhammer 40,000 Darktide PC – DF Tech Review – Optimised Settings, Performance Analysis + More



It’s not often that we see a PC-focused game that really pushes the platform hard – but that’s exactly what Warhammer 40K Darktide does – and its visual quality is astonishing. That quality comes at a cost though. Alex talks you through the game, how performance looks, and how best to optimise the settings for a good experience on mid-range hardware.

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27 thoughts on “Warhammer 40,000 Darktide PC – DF Tech Review – Optimised Settings, Performance Analysis + More”

  1. Great video DF are tech kings 👌
    Game runs amazing on the few missions i have played with RT off max settings. 9700k @ 5ghz and 3080 3440×1444 ultrawide. 150-100fps. With full RT 80-60 ish ..
    The soundtrack is top notch! Like the old Amiga demos ❤️🔥

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  2. DLSS is smearing behind some moving objects. Inspect a weapon and rotate it. This is the simplest, most extreme case! It doesn't matter what setting you have DLSS on!

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  3. About game stability: I've found game to be VERY susceptible to CPU instabilities coming from overclock or undervolts, even if said cpu passes all stability tests. In my case undervolted Ryzen 5600 was the culprit, increasing vcore a little bit, to 1.125v was enough to render game stable.

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  4. I have had hitching on my PC across just about all the games I played, I reset windows which seems to have solved it.
    When I started playing Darktide I was worried that my issue had come back but I'm low key glad that the game just has a hitch.

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  5. Dear god a 4090 and 12900k cant even hold a constant 60fps at 4k?!?! what on earth are you buying these 2k graphics cards for then? lol I would expect locked 120fps 4k at max for the top of the line gaming GPU…I am worried upgrading my 2080 to a 4080 won't even be worth it if this is all the performance I can expect.

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  6. Hi Alex, I think the 3070+ settings might be a bit too heavy.

    I'm running the game with those settings on a 3080 + Ryzen 7 5800x at 3440 x 1440p with DLSS set to auto. I did 1 co-op mission and essentially never hit 60fps at any point. Also in the main hub I'm constantly under 60 as well. Disabling RTX put me above 60, but that was the only way.

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  7. Alex I think you missed some issues with the raytracing effects! Raytracing makes the game A LOT darker (which unfortunately does not come across in the comparison shown) and less fun to play as a result! Also there is some draw distance issue with some backgrounds making them seem improperly lit with RT enabled. So it's very recommended to turn GI off! I turned them off first due to performance on my 4090 13900k pc because I love to hit those 240 fps with frame generation for my 240 Hz display, but before doing so looked up some comparison videos and found it striking how much brighter the game seemed, which my own gameplay also reflected.

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  8. There is "pushing the platform hard" and then being unoptimised which this game is.

    We all arnt rich enough to rely on dlss 3.0.

    You got to think you're getting those hitches and drops when you are using dlss 3.0 which is just fake frames anyway so when this happens for people on normal pc's it will go below 60fps.

    Btw this game is meant to be cpu heavy but I'm using a threadripper 3990x on game mode and it won't even use more then 30% of it, I give the game permission to use more cores to do more of the tasks it needs to do but nope it would rather suffer

    Edit: I tried the optimised settings that use the 2070 on here on my 3090 strix and still dip below 60, just avoid this game

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  9. A visually striking game that in no way needs RTX. It's still beautiful without it and really not worth the performance hit IMO. Loving the game, even for all it's technical hiccups and questionable designs.

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  10. Demanding game but DLSS really works wonders here. On Automatic at 4k I can barely notice the quality loss and it pretty much doubles my fps to around 100 on average. The game wouldn't even be playable at 4k on a 3080 otherwise.

    Also, one of the recent patches completely cleared up the frametime issues for me and gave a nice performance bump.

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  11. 7700K @4.8Ghz (max 45 degree in game) paired with iChill 3070 (stock, undervolted) is giving me 60-120 fps @1440p with customized settings. Most of them almost doesn't matter – I'm just keeping lights at high and disabled fog (can't see enemy). Game rocks!

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