Serious Sam 4 Laptop and Desktop Benchmarks

Old-school charm, but technically half-baked Fans of the Serious Sam series are finally getting their money's worth again, almost ten years after the third chapter - Flaky shooting fun against gigantic hordes of crazy creatures. Unfortunately, developer Croteam, in all in the excitement, forgot to optimise the engine.

Florian Glaser, 👁 Florian Glaser, ✓ Felicitas Krohn (translated by Alex Alderson), Published 10/02/2020 🇩🇪 🇷🇺

Technology

Serious Sam 4 feels purely playful, like a mixture of Doom (disgusting monsters) and Borderlands (funny sayings). As with both of those games, Serious Sam 4 plays at a frenetic pace, with the main character moving through the different levels at insane speeds. The extremely fast movement combined with great weapon feedback of various shots and sounds is a lot of fun, too.

On the other hand, the basic technical framework underpinning Serious Sam 4 performs less well. Despite the rather expedient look, which in part hardly deviates from its almost 10-year-old predecessor, Serious Sam 4 turns out to be quite hardware-hungry.

The many technical problems that we encountered during our tests are just as serious as Sam himself. Here is a list of the problems we came across when playing Serious Sam 4:

Altering settings often lead to a crash.
Sometimes the game does not close correctly, or the synchronisation with Steam servers takes forever.
Annoying intermediate stutters can occur irrespective of hardware and settings.
The loading times are extremely long even with an SSD
Every now and then, a restart results in some settings being changed.
The maximum resolution often cannot be selected on external monitors, like 4K.
After levels have been loaded, the game often has to warm up for a while or hangs completely for several seconds.
The game is often CPU-limited even at higher graphics levels and resolutions, which is very unusual for a first-person shooter.
The integrated benchmark likes to mess around.
The VRAM requirement is extremely steep. If you have a card with less than 4 GB of VRAM, then you can save yourself from purchase the game unless you are willing to accept awful visual. The game also requires 6-8 GB of VRAM for higher graphics levels and resolutions, which is borderline absurd considering the graphics on offer here.

In general, the graphics did not blow us away, even at the highest possible graphics settings. Yes, some elements are quite attractive, such as the splatter effects, but the texture sharpness and the number of polygons are way down on what other modern games currently offer. Additionally, the surroundings sometimes look quite sterile, despite the inclusion of vegetation and other details. The sheer mass of enemies only makes up for that to a limited extent, in our opinion.

To be clear, a good shooter can do without the graphical superiority that some games offer. However, if a game is as hardware hungry as Serious Sam 4 is, then one should expect decent graphics in return.

Serious gamers, meanwhile, will be happy that Serious Sam 4 includes a huge amount of graphics options with which to tinker. What is offered is rather too much of a good thing for the average gamer as you have to work your way through various submenus - as can be seen in the screenshots above - which is quite uncomfortable. However, there are presets based around CPU speed, GPU speed and VRAM volume.

In terms of APIs, Serious Sam 4 supports not only DirectX 11, but also DirectX 12 and Vulkan. In our experience, Vulkan provides the best frame rate but also increases the chance of problems presenting themselves. Hence, we used DX12 for our benchmark results for greater stability.

Benchmark

We are fans of the built-in benchmark function, which can be found under Extras. The benchmark comprises several levels, but we limited our tests to the mission Four Horsemen of the Apocalpyse. We let the benchmark run for 60 seconds each time, as the video below demonstrates. Since the benchmark sequence is never 100% identical, there are certain fluctuations in the results.

In our opinion, Serious Sam 4 is playable at 50 FPS and upwards, primarily because of its first-person perspective and its fast-paced gameplay. With that said, Serious Sam 4 never feels completely smooth.

Results

FHD (1,920 x 1,080)

We would recommend using a recent upper mid-range graphics card to play Serious Sam 4 at Full HD. Specifically, a GeForce GTX 1650 or Radeon RX 5500M should do when playing the game at medium details, while we would recommend a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti or higher for gaming at maximum settings.

Serious Sam 4
1920x1080 Medium (DX12) 1920x1080 High (DX12) 1920x1080 Ultra (DX12) AA:2xMS
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (Desktop) MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, i9-9900K	123 (7.84^min, 79.5^P1) fps ∼53% 117 (26.3^min, 80.8^P1) fps ∼8% 108 (21^min, 76.2^P1) fps ∼55%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile MSI GT76 Titan DT 9SG, i9-9900K	107 (6.12^min, 66.6^P1) fps ∼46% 105 (13.2^min, 65.9^P1) fps ∼7% 89.4 (9.65^min, 58^P1) fps ∼46%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (Desktop) MSI GeForce RTX 2070, i9-9900K	105 (26.5^min, 74.2^P1) fps ∼45% 98.9 (20.7^min, 61.1^P1) fps ∼7% 83.4 (26.7^min, 51.6^P1) fps ∼43%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (Desktop) MSI GeForce RTX 2080, i9-9900K	101 (7.59^min, 62.2^P1) fps ∼43% 94.5 (3.58^min, 59.2^P1) fps ∼7% 85.3 (3.17^min, 50.9^P1) fps ∼44%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (Desktop) MSI GeForce RTX 2060, i9-9900K	100 (3.66^min, 36.5^P1) fps ∼43% 104 (5.26^min, 57.5^P1) fps ∼7% 70 (8.11^min, 36.6^P1) fps ∼36%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile MSI GE65 Raider 9SE, i7-9750H	83.3 (8.49^min, 53.9^P1) fps ∼36% 57.7 (2.44^min, 31.4^P1) fps ∼4% 50.3 (1.968^min, 23.1^P1) fps ∼26%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile Alienware 17 R4, i7-7820HK	75 (8.3^min, 43.6^P1) fps ∼32% 56.4 (5.38^min, 30.1^P1) fps ∼4% 54.4 (15^min, 34.1^P1) fps ∼28%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile MSI GP65 Leopard 9SF, i7-9750H	73.9 (2.73^min, 34.4^P1) fps ∼32% 71.4 (2.8^min, 33.7^P1) fps ∼5% 61.3 (2.51^min, 26.3^P1) fps ∼31%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile MSI GP65 Leopard 9SD, i7-9750H	69 (2.36^min, 30.3^P1) fps ∼29% 68.3 (12.2^min, 39.6^P1) fps ∼5% 51.5 (2.47^min, 22.7^P1) fps ∼26%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile Asus G752VS, 6820HK	68.5 (7.26^min, 41.9^P1) fps ∼29% 55.5 (2.56^min, 29.3^P1) fps ∼4% 46.5 (1.967^min, 22.7^P1) fps ∼24%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile MSI GP75 Leopard 9SC, i7-9750H	56.1 (9.2^min, 38.6^P1) fps ∼24% 45.1 (13.7^min, 24.6^P1) fps ∼3% 24.4 (0.824^min, 6.85^P1) fps ∼12%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile MSI GT62VR, 6820HK	55.5 (6.44^min, 32^P1) fps ∼24% 41.5 (2.23^min, 18.9^P1) fps ∼3% 33.3 (2.53^min, 13.5^P1) fps ∼17%
AMD Radeon RX 5500M MSI Alpha 15, R7 3750H	51 (2.61^min, 20.5^P1) fps ∼22% 48.4 (11.1^min, 27.4^P1) fps ∼3% 24.6 (2.02^min, 8.25^P1) fps ∼13%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile MSI GE72 7RE, i7-7700HQ	31.4 (9.01^min, 21.8^P1) fps ∼13% 22.2 (1.078^min, 6.04^P1) fps ∼2% 9.66 (0.726^min, 2.34^P1) fps ∼5%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile MSI GL62M 7RD, i7-7700HQ	25.8 (8.19^min, 15.7^P1) fps ∼11% 15 (1.62^min, 4.1^P1) fps ∼1% 5.99 (0.793^min, 1.356^P1) fps ∼3%
NVIDIA GeForce MX330 MSI Prestige 14, i7-10510U	13 (1.896^min, 4.24^P1) fps ∼6% 8.16 (1.41^min, 1.734^P1) fps ∼1%
NVIDIA GeForce MX350 MSI Prestige 14, i7-10710U	10.6 (1.24^min, 3.26^P1) fps ∼5% 3.81 (0.4147^min, 0.999^P1) fps ∼0%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super (Desktop) Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming Desktop DDR4-2666, KFA2 GeForce RTX 2060 Super, i7-8086K	90.1 (23.7^min, 58^P1) fps ∼46%

QHD (2,560 x 1,440)

If you want to play with full details at QHD (2,560 x 1,440), then you cannot get away with anything less than a high-end and expensive card at the level of the GeForce RTX 2070.

Serious Sam 4
2560x1440 Ultra (DX12) AA:2xMS
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (Desktop), i9-9900K MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti	107 (27.6^min, 65.8^P1) fps ∼63%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (Desktop), i9-9900K MSI GeForce RTX 2080	80.3 (11.7^min, 47.4^P1) fps ∼47%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile, i9-9900K MSI GT76 Titan DT 9SG	78.6 (11.4^min, 52^P1) fps ∼46%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super (Desktop), i7-8086K Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming Desktop DDR4-2666, KFA2 GeForce RTX 2060 Super	74.3 (13.9^min, 49.1^P1) fps ∼43%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (Desktop), i9-9900K MSI GeForce RTX 2070	67.8 (24.1^min, 45.4^P1) fps ∼40%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (Desktop), i9-9900K MSI GeForce RTX 2060	57.6 (21.3^min, 36.5^P1) fps ∼34%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile, i7-9750H MSI GP65 Leopard 9SF	54.5 (16.3^min, 33.7^P1) fps ∼32%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile, i7-7820HK Alienware 17 R4	52.6 (3.55^min, 24.8^P1) fps ∼31%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile, 6820HK Asus G752VS	43.9 (14^min, 25.8^P1) fps ∼26%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile, i7-9750H MSI GE65 Raider 9SE	43.6 (11.8^min, 25.1^P1) fps ∼25%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile, i7-9750H MSI GP65 Leopard 9SD	39.6 (11.4^min, 24.1^P1) fps ∼23%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile, 6820HK MSI GT62VR	27.7 (12.9^min, 16.8^P1) fps ∼16%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile, i7-9750H MSI GP75 Leopard 9SC	21.7 (1.313^min, 10.4^P1) fps ∼13%
AMD Radeon RX 5500M, R7 3750H MSI Alpha 15	16 (2.6^min, 5.41^P1) fps ∼9%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile, i7-7700HQ MSI GE72 7RE	8.28 (1.025^min, 2.83^P1) fps ∼5%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile, i7-7700HQ MSI GL62M 7RD	4.17 (0.2558^min, 0.631^P1) fps ∼2%

UHD (3,840 x 2,160)

Serious Sam 4 is beyond the capabilities of all laptop GPUs bar the GeForce RTX 2080 when running at a mixture of UHD (3,840 x 2,160) and ultra settings. You can opt for a lesser graphics card, but you can only expect smooth all-round performance with the GeForce RTX 2080. The situation may improve with future patches, though.

Serious Sam 4
3840x2160 Ultra (DX12) AA:2xMS
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (Desktop), i9-9900K MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti	86.3 (23.2^min, 61.3^P1) fps ∼53%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (Desktop), i9-9900K MSI GeForce RTX 2080	54 (17.6^min, 31.4^P1) fps ∼33%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super (Desktop), i7-8086K Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming Desktop DDR4-2666, KFA2 GeForce RTX 2060 Super	44.6 (9.2^min, 27.3^P1) fps ∼27%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (Desktop), i9-9900K MSI GeForce RTX 2070	42.8 (15.4^min, 28^P1) fps ∼26%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (Desktop), i9-9900K MSI GeForce RTX 2060	36.6 (14.8^min, 23.1^P1) fps ∼22%

Please note

Since gaming tests are very time-consuming and are often hindered by installation or activation limits, we can only provide you with some of the benchmarks, initially. Results for more graphics cards will be added in the coming days and weeks.

Übersicht

Frame times of the benchmark run

The below chart shows the frame times in milliseconds that the GeForce RTX 2070 and Radeon RX 5500M took to calculate each frame at FHD and ultra graphics settings. Smaller and consistent values provide a better gaming experience, in this regard.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M15 GU502L GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q, i7-10750H, 2x Intel SSD 660p SSDPEKNW512G8 (RAID 0): Ø16.7 (9.33-74.01)

MSI Alpha 15 Radeon RX 5500M, R7 3750H: Ø40.6 (15.52-495.96)

Testsysteme

Device	Graphics Card	Processor	RAM	OS
Desktop PC I	MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11 GB GDDR6) MSI GeForce RTX 2080 (8 GB GDDR6) MSI GeForce RTX 2070 (8 GB GDDR6) MSI GeForce RTX 2060 (6 GB GDDR6)	Intel Core i9-9900K	4 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
Desktop PC II	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB GDDR5X) Asus GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6 GB GDDR5) XFX Radeon R9 Fury (4 GB HBM) Sapphire Radeon R9 290X (4 GB GDDR5) Sapphire Radeon R9 280X (3 GB GDDR5) MSI Radeon R7 370 (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-8086K, Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming	2 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
Desktop PC III	NVIDIA Titan RTX (24 GB GDDR6) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super (8 GB GDDR6) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super (8 GB GDDR6) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super (8 GB GDDR6) KFA2 GeForce RTX 2060 Super (8 GB GDDR6) NVIDIA Titan X (Pascal) (12 GB GDDR5X) KFA2 GeForce GTX 1660 Super (6 GB GDDR6) PNY GeForce GTX 1660 (6 GB GDDR5) Gainward GeForce GTX 1650 (4 GB GDDR5) Zotac GeForce GT 1030 (2 GB GDDR5) AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 5700 (8 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (8 GB GDDR6)) AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (8 GB HBM2) XFX AMD Radeon RX 590 (8 GB GDDR5)	AMD Ryzen 9 3900X	2 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI GT76	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (8 GB GDDR6)	Intel Core i9-9900K	2 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI GP65	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (8 GB GDDR6)	Intel Core i7-9750H	2 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI GE65	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6 GB GDDR6)	Intel Core i7-9750H	2 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI GP65	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6 GB GDDR6)	Intel Core i7-9750H	2 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI GP75	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-9750H	2 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
Alienware 17 R4	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB GDDR5X)	Intel Core i7-7820HK	2 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
Asus G752VS	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-6820HK	2 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI GT62VR	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-6820HK	2 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI GE72	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-7700HQ	2 x 4 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI GL62	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-7700HQ	2 x 4 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI Prestige 14	NVIDIA GeForce MX350 (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-10710U	1 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI Prestige 14	NVIDIA GeForce MX330 (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-10510U	1 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit
MSI Alpha 15	AMD Radeon RX 5500M (4 GB GDDR6)	AMD Ryzen 7 3750H	2 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64-bit

4K Monitors	NVIDIA drivers	AMD drivers
Asus PB287Q, Philips Brilliance 329P9H	ForceWare 456.38	Adrenalin 20.9.1

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Editor of the original article: Sebastian Jentsch - Managing Editor Consumer Laptops - 1753 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2010

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Reviews > Serious Sam 4 Laptop and Desktop Benchmarks

Florian Glaser, 2020-10- 2 (Update: 2022-01-21)

Legend
5	Stutters – This game is very likely to stutter and have poor frame rates. Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, average frame rates are expected to fall below 25fps
	May Stutter – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, stutters and poor frame rates are expected.
30	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 25fps
40	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 35fps
60	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 58fps
	May Run Fluently – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, fluent frame rates are expected.
?	Uncertain – This graphics card experienced unexpected performance issues during testing for this game. A slower card may be able to achieve better and more consistent frame rates than this particular GPU running the same benchmark scene.
	Uncertain – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game and no reliable interpolation can be made based on the performances of surrounding cards of the same class or family.
The value in the fields displays the average frame rate of all values in the database. Move your cursor over the value to see individual results.