Dead Space Remake review: Laptop and desktop benchmarks
Technical review
The 2023 version of Dead Space remarkably demonstrates how to create a fantastic remake. The horror game manages to find the perfect balance between nostalgia and a modern feel. Apart from the game's graphics, the developer has, for instance, also markedly improved the controls (one of the biggest complaints back then about the original game). In particular, the remake stands out visually with its lighting, i.e. light and shadow rendering. The rest of the effects (smoke, particles, fire, etc.) are similarly impressive.
That said, the game still doesn't feel very technically polished in some areas. Whilst the sometimes strange physics is more likely to make you chuckle, the stutters that happen occasionally during gameplay – regardless of the hardware and settings you use – are fairly annoying. In other words: the visuals don't feel very smooth even when the game is running at high frame rates. Just as annoying is the fact that the game frequently stutters for a while after loading. When you first boot up the remake, it also starts by optimising the shaders, which is something we have seen in games such as Call of Duty. And this process can very well take a few minutes to complete depending on your system.
If you ignore the somewhat repetitive enemy design, Dead Space is undoubtedly superb in terms of both gameplay and content. Besides the imposing atmosphere, other positive aspects include the fascinating functions of the space suits (e.g. stasis), interesting weapon abilities and upgrades, and cool physics puzzles that make the experience less monotonous. The use of the suit's computer to display information directly in the game world and the gruesome yet gameplay-relevant "tactical dismemberment" were very novel when the original first released and still remain memorable to this day.
However, the remake's graphics menu is not as spectacular. In the upper half, you can adjust settings like brightness, motion blur, film grain, colour mode, dynamic resolution and anti-aliasing (resolution, screen mode, refresh rate, VSync and HDR are tucked away in a separate menu). The lower half houses six sliders for modifying quality settings, which can also be changed at one go via "Graphics Quality" – thankfully without having to restart the game. Even though ray tracing is automatically enabled when graphics quality is turned all the way up to max, both the visual changes and the performance difference between the various presets are not very drastic. The game also supports FSR 2.0 and DLSS. Just as a quick note: our review is based on the Steam version, which requires about 35 GB of space.
Benchmark
As you can see in the video below, for the frame rate measurement, we used a roughly 20-second sequence in the hangar where the player reaches not very far into the game (it takes around one hour of playing to get to this section). And frame rate was captured using CapFrameX. We would consider Dead Space decently playable if the average frame rate is 40 fps and above.
Results
FHD (1,920 x 1,080)
You won't have any fun with the remake if your system only has an iGPU. Both the Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 and the AMD Radeon 680M got stuck loading the game and didn't even make it to the main menu. You shouldn't encounter such issues with a mid-tier dedicated GPU or better. At Full HD, a card at the same level as the Radeon RX 6600M is powerful enough to run the game at all detail levels.
Dead Space Remake | |
1920x1080 Low Preset AA:T 1920x1080 Medium Preset AA:T 1920x1080 High Preset AA:T 1920x1080 Ultra Preset AA:T | |
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, i9-12900HX | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, i9-12900K | |
AMD Radeon RX 6800M, R9 5900HX | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, i7-12700H | |
AMD Radeon RX 6600M, R7 5800H |
QHD (2,560 x 1,440)
The game becomes semi-demanding at 2,560 x 1,440. You should have at least a modest high-end GPU, such as the Radeon RX 6800M, if you want to run the game at this resolution.
Dead Space Remake | |
2560x1440 Ultra Preset AA:T | |
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, i9-12900HX | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, i9-12900K | |
AMD Radeon RX 6800M, R9 5900HX | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, i7-12700H | |
AMD Radeon RX 6600M, R7 5800H |
UHD (3,840 x 2,160)
All the laptop GPUs we had at the time of the review were overwhelmed by the game at 4K and max settings. Even a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop was unable to cross the 40-fps mark. A desktop with an absolutely high-end GPU (e.g. Radeon RX 7900 XTX) is required to run the game at these settings.
Dead Space Remake | |
3840x2160 Ultra Preset AA:T | |
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, i9-12900HX | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, i9-12900K | |
AMD Radeon RX 6800M, R9 5900HX | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, i7-12700H | |
AMD Radeon RX 6600M, R7 5800H |
Note
Because gaming tests are very time-consuming and are often constrained by installation or activation limits, we are only able to provide you with part of the benchmark results at the time of publishing this article. We will be adding more graphics cards over the coming days and weeks.
Overview
Test systems
Device | Graphics card | Processor | RAM | Operating system |
---|---|---|---|---|
Laptops | ||||
MSI Titan GT77 12UHS | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti @175 W TGP (16 GB GDDR6) | Intel Core i9-12900 | 2 x 16 GB DDR5 | Windows 11 |
Lenovo Legion 5 Pro | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 @140 W TGP (6 GB GDDR6) | Intel Core i7-12700H | 2 x 8 GB DDR5 | Windows 11 |
Asus ROG Strix G15 | AMD Radeon RX 6800M (12 GB GDDR6) | AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 11 |
Lenovo Legion 5 | AMD Radeon RX 6600M (8 GB GDDR6) | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 11 |
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 | AMD Radeon 680M | AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS | 2 x 16 GB DDR5 | Windows 11 |
Desktop PCs | ||||
Custom I | AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (24 GB GDDR6) MSI GeForce RTX 3080 (10 GB GDDR6X) MSI GeForce RTX 3070 (8 GB GDDR6) |
Intel Core i9-12900K | 2 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 11 |
Custom II | Palit GeForce RTX 4090 GameRock OC (24 GB GDDR6X) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 FE (24 GB GDDR6X) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (8 GB GDDR6X) Nvidia Titan RTX (24 GB GDDR6) Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super (8 GB GDDR6)Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super (8 GB GDDR6) KFA2 GeForce GTX 1660 Super (6 GB GDDR6) PNY GeForce GTX 1660 (6 GB GDDR5) KFA2 GeForce GTX 1650 Super (4 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 6800 (16 GB DDR6) AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (12 GB DDR6) AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 6600 (8 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 5700 (8 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (6 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (8 GB GDDR6) |
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X | 2 x 16 GB DDR5 | Windows 11 |
Custom III | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super FE | Intel Core i9-11900K | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 11 |
Mini PCs | ||||
Zotac ZBOX CI665 Nano | Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 (96 CUs) | Intel Core i7-1165G7 | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 11 |
Morefine S500+ | AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 | AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX | 2 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 11 |
Minisforum NUCXi7 | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 @125 W TGP (8 GB GDDR6) | Intel Core i7-11800H | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 11 |
Minisforum HX90G | AMD Radeon RX 6600M @100 W TGP (8 GB GDDR6) | AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX | 2 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 11 |
4K monitors | Nvidia driver | AMD driver |
---|---|---|
Asus PB287Q, Philips Brilliance 329P9H, Gigabyte M32U | ForceWare 528.02 | Adrenalin 22.11.2 |