Sons of the Forest review: Laptop and desktop benchmarks
Technical aspects
Despite still being in Early Access, Sons of the Forest is already very popular. This is obvious when you look at the countless good reviews it has received on Steam as well as the great success it enjoys amongst the YouTube and Twitch community. We can definitely understand this positive reception. Like many Early Access titles, Sons of the Forest still struggles with various minor hiccups such as stuttering (regardless of how powerful your hardware is), clipping issues and other graphical glitches (e.g. flickering and objects popping in). Nonetheless, the game's graphics is mostly quite impressive.
If you ignore the somewhat blurry clouds, Sons of the Forest features crisp textures, luscious vegetation, high draw distance and stylish effects (e.g. lighting) for the most part. In conjunction with various climate zones (green forests, snowy mountains, etc.), the day and night cycle and regular change in weather also lend the game a fantastic and rather unique atmosphere. Another highlight is the beautiful trails that the player character leaves in snow or wet beach. Overall, the developers have managed to get a lot out of the Unity Engine and don't have to be daunted by typical triple-A games from large studios.
From a technical standpoint, the game is already relatively polished and runs quite well in its current state (provided you have at least a mid-range GPU). We'll discuss this later in the benchmark section. Load times are likewise acceptable. Whilst the game launches very quickly, the initial loading process takes a while to complete. That said, other load times are fairly reasonable. One more thing to mention is the small install size: Sons of the Forest is a 9 GB download and occupies 13 GB of storage – astonishingly little for a game in 2023.
The options menu is likewise not too shabby. The graphics tab contains more than 20 options, which can be adjusted collectively by selecting one of the quality presets. One nice thing is that all the settings can be changed without restarting the game. Similar to many other current games, Sons of the Forest supports dynamic upscaling methods such as FSR and DLSS (which we disabled for our testing). The display tab doesn't have much to offer by comparison. Besides resolution, it only lets you adjust the display mode, VSync, gamma, brightness and frame rate limit (20 to 240 or unlocked).
Benchmark
Because Sons of the Forest doesn't have a built-in benchmark, we used a standardised in-game sequence to help us measure frame rates. As shown in the video below, we made the player character walk up and down a predefined path on the beach (one of the spawn points at the start of the game) for roughly 40 seconds. Frame rates were captured using CapFrameX.
Results
FHD (1,920 x 1,080)
Whilst iGPUs such as the Radeon 680M and Iris Xe Graphics G7 already struggle to handle the game at Full HD and Low preset (<40 fps), mid-tier GPUs mostly have enough power to spare for high to max settings. However, as you can see in the table for FHD, the processor quickly ends up being a limiting factor when paired with a mid-range GPU or better. For example, at Ultra preset, our desktop RTX 3070 is hardly any slower than the otherwise much faster desktop RX 7900 XTX. Even more remarkable: our RX 6600M laptop managed to outperform the RX 6800M laptop thanks to better CPU utilisation.
Sons of the Forest | |
1920x1080 Low Preset 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 | |
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, i9-12900HX | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, i7-12700H | |
AMD Radeon RX 6600M, R7 5800H | |
AMD Radeon RX 6800M, R9 5900HX | |
AMD Radeon 680M, R9 6900HS | |
Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 96EUs, i7-1165G7 |
QHD (2,560 x 1,440)
You should use an upper mid-range to high-end graphics card if you want to play the game on a QHD display. Based on our testing, a GeForce RTX 3060 or higher is required to achieve an average of more than 50 fps at 2,560 x 1,440 and Ultra preset.
Sons of the Forest | |
2560x1440 Ultra Preset AA:T | |
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, i9-12900K | |
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, i9-12900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, i9-12900HX | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, i7-12700H | |
AMD Radeon RX 6800M, R9 5900HX | |
AMD Radeon RX 6600M, R7 5800H |
UHD (3,840 x 2,160)
In general, there's no getting around using an absolute top-end graphics card if you wish to play the game at 4K (3,840 x 2,160) and Ultra preset. For a portable system, only a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or better can break the 50 fps mark.
Sons of the Forest | |
3840x2160 Ultra Preset AA:T | |
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, i9-12900K | |
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, 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 |
---|---|---|---|---|
Notebooks | ||||
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 |
Tower PCs | ||||
Custom I | AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (24 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT (20 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 6950 XT (16 GB DDR6) 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 HX99G | AMD Radeon RX 6600M @100 W TGP (8 GB GDDR6) | AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX | 2 x 16 GB DDR5 | Windows 11 |
4K monitors | Nvidia driver | AMD driver |
---|---|---|
Philips Brilliance 329P9H, Gigabyte M32U | ForceWare 528.49 | Adrenalin 23.2.2 |