Indiana Jones and the Great Circle performance review: VRAM requirements overwhelm many (laptop) GPUs

Almost a month after its re-release, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is still in a questionable technical state. Although the engine used is visually impressive, the hardware requirements—especially in terms of video memory—are still extremely high. When using the Very Ultra preset, the game crashes on Nvidia GPUs of the RTX 4000 generation with 6 GB VRAM or less at Full HD, with only 8 GB at QHD, and with only 12 GB at 4K as long as full path tracing is enabled, according to our measurements. Only with 16 GB of VRAM did we stop encountering crashes, although the frame rate can still drop massively at extreme resolutions and settings. You are only on the safe side with 24 GB of VRAM. The fact that the VRAM requirement continues to rise is one thing. However, in the case of Indiana Jones, it must be noted that the title is simply not well optimized, and its VRAM hunger is thus unjustified.

Visually, the title makes a very good impression at higher settings (with a few exceptions). Both the indoor and outdoor levels are quite coherent and have been built with great attention to detail. In general, the game shines with its atmosphere, which is not least due to its soundtrack.

The many setting options are also a positive feature. The graphics menu is so extensive that you have to scroll quite far to reach some settings (after all, there are several presets). Indiana Jones supports all kinds of modern features, from upscaling (though only DLSS) and frame generation to ray tracing or, more precisely, path tracing. If this is enabled, performance takes quite a hit, as the following QHD and UHD benchmarks show.

For our benchmarks, we used the early part of the game, where the main character traverses the Peruvian jungle with other characters. We recorded the frame rate for approximately 20 seconds using the CapFrameX tool, until a bush blocks the path (as seen in the video).

When path tracing is disabled and the GPU has sufficient VRAM, the system requirements for Indiana Jones are not as steep. At 1080p, an RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 Laptop can run the game on high settings, achieving just under 60 FPS. The Radeon RX 7600S however struggles way more than we would expect, despite having 8 GB of VRAM just like the two RTX card do.

At QHD, you'll need at least 12 GB of VRAM to maintain smooth performance with the Very Ultra preset active. The RTX 4080 Laptop is capable of surpassing 60 FPS on average. However, when full path tracing is enabled, performance drops considerably. Even with DLSS Quality and Frame Generation enabled, the RTX 4080 Laptop struggles, failing to maintain smooth gameplay. To consistently achieve over 60 FPS at this resolution and on high enough settings, the RTX 4090 Laptop is required.

At 4K, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle becomes a serious resource hog. In our testing at 3,840 x 2,160 with the Very Ultra preset active, the game was only playable with a laptop RTX 4080 or laptop RTX 4090. With path tracing, DLSS Quality, and Frame Generation enabled, no currently available laptop could maintain smooth gameplay. Only Nvidia's desktop flagship, the RTX 4090, managed to deliver a playable experience at these settings.