The First Descendant is among the most popular Steam games. With over 100K concurrent players, it has established its foothold among the most played PC games. In this post, we test the Radeon RX 7900 XTX/XT and their GeForce RTX 40 series rivals in “The First Descendant.” We benchmarked the game at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, with and without ray-tracing, and a look at upscaling/frame generation near the end.
Test Bench
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
- Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360 AIO.
- Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E Carbon WiFi.
- Memory: 8 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.
The First Descendant: 1080p, 1440p & 4K Benchmarks
Built on the Unreal Engine 5, The First Descendant is a taxing game. At 1080p, the GeForce RTX 4060 falls way short of 60 FPS using the “Ultra” quality preset, while the RTX 4070 averages 83 FPS. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the RTX 4080 Super average 113.4 FPS and 119.1 FPS, respectively.
At 1440p, the GeForce RTX 4070 averages ~58 FPS, while the Radeon RX 7900 XT manages 78 FPS. The GeForce RTX 4080 Super continues to lead the RX 7900 XTX, with the RTX 4090 at the very top (92.5 FPS).
At 4K, only the RTX 4090 comes close to 60 FPS. The GeForce RTX 4080 Super produces 55 FPS while the RX 7900 XTX registers an average of 51 FPS. The RX 7900 XT manages 45 FPS and the RTX 4070 finishes with 36 FPS.
The First Descendant: Ray Tracing Benchmarks
Enabling ray-tracing pushes the GPUs to their limits. FHD or 1080p is more manageable with averages of over 50 FPS for all the contestants, but things get hairy at 1440p.
The Radeon RX 7900 series averages ~40-45 FPS at 1440p with the highest ray tracing preset. The GeForce RTX 4080 Super produces a much more manageable 62 FPS in the same scenario, next to the RTX 4090 (72 FPS). The RTX 4070 is as fast as the Radeons.
Ray-traced 4K is not playable without upscaling (+frame generation for Radeons). The GeForce RTX 4090 averages 46 FPS, followed by the RTX 4080 Super with 37.5 FPS. The RX 7900 XTX can only manage an average of 24.5 FPS.
Upscaling & Frame Generation
Frame generation works wonders for Radeon and GeForce GPUs. The RTX 4090 posts over 100 FPS with DLSS “Performance” Frame Generation enabled, up from 74 FPS with just upscaling. Frame generation paired with DLAA produces an average of 59 FPS, up from 46 FPS at native 4K.
Frame generation gives new life to the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, pushing the average from 24.5 FPS to 95.8 FPS using the FSR “Performance” upscaling mode. Sheer frame generation with FSR 3 “Native AA” produces 44 FPS, while upscaling alone posts 53 FPS on average.
