With Shadow of the Tomb Raider (SOTTR) now considerably lengthy within the tooth, it appears to be the case that Sq. Enix and Crystal Dynamics are going to get off the bed with Denuvo. As Bit-Tech has reported beforehand, Denuvo Anti-Tamper tech comes at a value, and whereas it could be enticing at sport launch time, the tradeoff between sport gross sales earnings and anti-tamper tech-rent should now be at a pivot level.
The Darkish Aspect of Gaming seen the elimination of Denuvo from SOTTR final week and on the weekend determined to check the efficiency distinction between the Denuvo-protected model and the just lately launched model with the anti-tamper tech exorcized. Many customers complain about their CPU cycles being soaked up by the likes of Denuvo, although publishers sometimes deny any important affect, so it’s good to A/B such releases to search out ‘the reality’.
Please word that the refreshed non-Denuvo model of the SOTTR has been ‘rolled again’ on Steam, however continues to be accessible within the beta construct part of the shop. DSOG examined each variations of the sport on the next PC system specs:
- Intel i9 9900K processor,
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU,
- 16GB of DDR4 system RAM at 3,600Mhz,
- Home windows 10 64-bit, utilizing the GeForce 496.13 driver.
Checks of SOTTR had been run at each 1080p/Highest Settings (with out Ray Tracing or DLSS), and 1080p/Lowest Settings and the built-in benchmark within the seek for significance. DLSS wasn’t used as within the patch notes it has been famous that it has been improved between sport variations with and with out Denuvo tech. No different sport optimizations are famous for the sans-anti-tamper model.
DSOG seen that the largest adjustments in body charges between sport variations had been when the decrease settings had been used. On this case body fee variations of a median of 17fps had been noticed. Furthermore, with HT disabled, a distinction of 30fps was noticed.
The above signifies that, sure, Denuvo will absorb your CPU cycles, impacting sport efficiency, and people who can much less afford such successful (e.g. older processor with decrease core rely, no HT) will come off the worst. I’ve seen comparable experiences of the GeForce driver having an overhead, affecting lower-power PC techniques. Nvidia Driver Overhead may probably be a contributory issue right here with HT off, too.
