Maxing out each graphics setting is never one of the simplest ways to play a demanding Unreal Engine 5 sport, and The Sinking Metropolis 2 is a very clear instance. Frogwares’ return to its Lovecraftian world makes use of a number of of the engine’s marquee rendering options, however its Extremely preset is sort of heavy on the GPU relative to the visuals it delivers. Extra frustratingly, many of the particular person high quality settings do little or no to both the picture or efficiency.
That doesn’t imply the PC model is a technical catastrophe. The truth is, The Sinking Metropolis 2 handles one among Unreal Engine 5’s most persistent issues, shader compilation stutter, surprisingly properly. Traversal can also be typically clean, whereas CPU-limited efficiency is extra blended and the sport’s GPU necessities are undeniably steep.
On this information, we are going to first present a gameplay and technical overview, study the official PC system necessities, and assess CPU efficiency throughout a demanding boat journey by way of Arkham. We are going to then examine each related graphics setting and establish the few choices which are genuinely value decreasing.
Lastly, we are going to current ready-to-use optimized graphics settings. In our GPU-limited take a look at, these improved efficiency with solely a modest discount in visible high quality.
Gameplay And Technical Overview Of The Sinking Metropolis 2
Launched on August 18, 2026 for PC through Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Collection X|S, The Sinking Metropolis 2 is a third-person survival horror sport developed and printed by Frogwares. In contrast to its investigation-heavy predecessor, the sequel leans way more decisively into survival horror, with tighter assets, harmful enemies, stock administration, puzzles, weapon upgrades, and non-obligatory investigations.
The sport takes place in a flooded interpretation of Twenties Arkham and follows Calvin Rafferty, an occult adventurer attempting to save lots of his girlfriend, Faye, after a ritual leaves her trapped in a mysterious sleep. Gamers discover the ruined metropolis on foot and by boat, battle creatures warped by supernatural forces, collect provides, and revisit beforehand explored areas as new routes and shortcuts change into out there.
For extra on The Sinking Metropolis 2, please take a look at our assessment of the sport from this link.
From a technical standpoint, The Sinking Metropolis 2 makes use of Unreal Engine 5.8 and options {hardware} Lumen ray-traced world illumination and reflections, Nanite, MegaLights, and Digital Shadow Maps. Medium and better settings have interaction {hardware} Lumen for each world illumination and reflections, which additionally helps clarify why their respective Low modes can look visibly damaged.
The sport can look fairly good in the appropriate situations. Its flooded streets, decaying interiors, dense environment, and interval structure are all properly suited to Unreal Engine 5’s ray-traced lighting and virtualized geometry methods. Even so, it falls in need of the engine’s best visible showcases and is quite GPU-heavy for the picture high quality it achieves, regardless of utilizing the most recent engine model out there at launch.
The excellent news is that shader compilation is dealt with unusually properly. There isn’t a devoted PSO compilation display, however the sport compiles shaders throughout the preliminary boot sequence at any time when its shader cache is chilly or empty. If the participant interrupts that course of by loading a save, compilation continues throughout the loading display, and the save just isn’t opened till all required shaders have been processed.
It’s a barely uncommon method, but it surely was efficient in our testing. We encountered barely any apparent shader compilation stutters. Traversal hitches have been additionally uncommon, with solely occasional spikes into the 20-30 millisecond vary, mostly whereas shifting rapidly by way of Arkham by boat. These transient excursions shouldn’t critically disrupt the expertise on a succesful PC with a Variable-Refresh Fee (VRR) show, though weaker CPU, system reminiscence, or storage efficiency might make them extra obvious.
There are just a few notable omissions. HDR just isn’t supported, and the graphics menu lacks a field-of-view slider despite the fact that the default digital camera can really feel uncomfortably slim. We wish to see each limitations addressed, particularly the lacking FoV management.
Upscaling help can also be surprisingly uneven. The Sinking Metropolis 2 contains DLSS Tremendous Decision and Unreal Engine 5’s TSR, however there isn’t any DLAA possibility. The menu claims to help AMD FSR upscaling, but we couldn’t allow it, whereas Intel XeSS Tremendous Decision is absent altogether. Frogwares has confirmed that AMD FSR (each upscaling and body technology presumably) was unavailable at launch as a result of AMD had not but launched the required plugin or patch for Unreal Engine 5.8. The studio plans so as to add FSR as soon as that help turns into out there. Intel XeSS can also be absent, though its UE5.8-compatible Tremendous Decision plugin was launched earlier than the sport launched, and Frogwares has not defined why it was omitted.
DLSS SR is comfortably the best choice for GeForce RTX house owners. The sport’s native-resolution TSR implementation seemed noticeably worse than DLSS Tremendous Decision in High quality mode in our comparisons, whereas additionally performing worse. We verified DLSS SR’s enter resolutions and located nothing irregular, so TSR itself is probably not working as supposed.
Body technology help is equally one-sided. DLSS Body Era/Multi Body Era is the one native possibility, and NVIDIA confirms that the game supports DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation, with Dynamic Multi Body Era out there by way of the NVIDIA app on appropriate {hardware}. AMD and Intel GPU house owners presently don’t have any native body technology different.
We wish to see Frogwares add purposeful FSR upscaling and body technology, XeSS Tremendous Decision and body technology, DLAA, HDR, and a field-of-view slider in future updates. For now, GeForce RTX customers obtain a significantly extra full characteristic set than everybody else.
Allow us to now study the official PC system necessities, courtesy of the sport’s Steam store page:
| Tier | CPU | GPU | RAM | Storage | Efficiency Goal / Notes |
| Minimal | Intel Core i7-8700K / AMD Ryzen 5 3600X | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 / AMD Radeon RX 5700 8 GB | 16 GB | 70 GB SSD | Low preset, 1080p at 30 FPS. Examined with TSR and comparable applied sciences. Home windows 11 x64 and DirectX 12 required. |
| Really helpful | Intel Core i5-14600K / AMD Ryzen 5 7600X | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 12 GB | 32 GB | 70 GB SSD | Medium preset, 1440p at 60 FPS. Examined with TSR and comparable applied sciences. Home windows 11 x64 and DirectX 12 required. |
These necessities instantly set up The Sinking Metropolis 2 as a demanding PC launch. An RTX 4070 Ti or RX 7900 XT for 1440p at 60 FPS utilizing the Medium preset is a excessive bar, significantly when the goal already depends on TSR or a comparable temporal reconstruction know-how. The really useful Core i5-14600K and Ryzen 5 7600X are additionally comparatively fashionable CPUs, whereas the soar from 16 GB to 32 GB of system reminiscence is substantial.
The efficiency notes may very well be extra clear. Frogwares doesn’t specify the interior decision or TSR high quality mode used for both tier, so the true rendering decision behind these 1080p and 1440p targets is unclear. The RTX 4070 Ti and RX 7900 XT are usually not particularly shut equivalents in typical rasterized efficiency both, though the sport’s heavy reliance on {hardware} Lumen complicates direct comparisons between GPU distributors.
Our testing broadly helps the concept that this can be a GPU-heavy title. The excellent news is that the official necessities don’t use body technology to outline the 30 and 60 FPS targets. Nonetheless, gamers near the minimal specification ought to anticipate to rely aggressively on temporal upscaling, because the graphics settings present little or no room to scale beneath the Extremely preset.
CPU Benchmark
Earlier than analyzing the graphics settings, we additionally examined CPU efficiency in The Sinking Metropolis 2. Arkham doesn’t characteristic the massive crowds or elaborate physics simulations seen in some open-world video games, so a stationary scene wouldn’t have instructed us very a lot. As a substitute, we targeted on asset streaming and traversal.
For this take a look at, we drove Calvin’s boat as rapidly as attainable by way of the canals within the coronary heart of the flood-ravaged metropolis. Fast boat traversal forces the sport to stream geometry, textures, lighting info, and world knowledge constantly, making it a helpful CPU and memory-system stress take a look at. Performance was captured with CapFrameX underneath CPU-limited situations.
The CPU benchmark on this part and the graphics settings comparisons within the subsequent part have been carried out on a desktop system with the next related specs:
- CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K;
- RAM: 32 GB DDR5-7000 CL34;
- Storage: 2 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD;
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB;
- Working System: Home windows 11 25H2;
- All system firmware, drivers, BIOS, and operating-system updates have been totally utilized earlier than testing.
CPU efficiency was blended. The common body fee was excessive, however the 1% lows and particularly the 0.1% lows sat a lot farther behind than we’d have preferred. A better have a look at the body time graph revealed a small variety of spikes into the 15-25 millisecond vary, which pulled down these percentile figures.
Exterior these remoted excursions, the benchmark run was moderately clean. Even probably the most extreme spikes have been barely noticeable on an honest VRR show, so the low 0.1% determine seems to be extra alarming on a chart than the take a look at felt in movement. Programs with weaker CPUs, slower reminiscence, or much less succesful storage might expose these traversal hitches extra clearly.
We additionally seen occasional intervals of unexpectedly excessive CPU utilization with no apparent visible or gameplay set off. This habits might happen repeatedly in the identical space with out new results showing, making background asynchronous shader compilation an unlikely clarification. It didn’t severely have an effect on our Core i7-14700K, but it surely might have a bigger affect on lower-end CPUs and deserves additional consideration from Frogwares.
The sport additionally seems to make use of many CPU cores, however like most fashionable titles, the bottleneck at very excessive body charges will seemingly be the CPU reminiscence subsystem — AKA the latency and bandwidth of CPU caches and system reminiscence — quite than simply uncooked core depend, efficiency per clock cycle (PPC), or clock velocity previous a sure level. Because of this AMD Ryzen X3D CPUs and well-tuned Intel Core Twelfth-gen and newer methods with high-speed DDR5 system reminiscence might find yourself performing significantly properly in CPU-limited eventualities.
A Deep Dive Into The Sinking Metropolis 2‘s Graphics Settings
On this part, we are going to study the visible and efficiency traits of each related graphics setting in The Sinking Metropolis 2. Every graphics possibility was in contrast underneath GPU-limited situations towards the Extremely preset at 2560×1440, with TSR working at native decision. Movement blur was disabled to maintain the picture clear throughout comparisons.
All assessments used the default gameplay and digital camera area of view as a result of the sport supplies no FoV slider. We additionally returned to the identical take a look at space wherever attainable and monitored GPU utilization, real-time body fee, body time, and devoted GPU reminiscence utilization by way of a CapFrameX/RTSS-based overlay.
The graphics menu is serviceable however pretty primary. It supplies descriptions for its essential high quality settings, but it has no stay comparability preview and exhibits no real-time body fee, CPU/GPU body time, system info, or VRAM and system RAM estimates. These instruments would have made tuning simpler, significantly in such a GPU-demanding sport.
Sadly, most graphics settings produced little to no measurable change in both visible high quality or GPU efficiency. This leaves The Sinking Metropolis 2 with poor scalability in each instructions. Larger-end {hardware} can’t push the graphics considerably past the default presentation, whereas lower-end GPUs can’t get better a lot efficiency by decreasing typical high quality settings.
The principle path to the next body fee is due to this fact temporal upscaling. Body technology can additional enhance perceived smoothness on supported GeForce RTX GPUs, supplied the baseline body fee is already excessive sufficient to protect acceptable latency and picture stability.
Anti-Aliasing And Temporal Upscaling
The Sinking Metropolis 2 helps DLSS Tremendous Decision and Unreal Engine 5’s TSR. AMD FSR seems within the menu however couldn’t be enabled in our testing, whereas Intel XeSS just isn’t supplied in any respect.
For GeForce RTX customers, DLSS Tremendous Decision is the apparent selection. It delivered each higher picture high quality and higher efficiency than TSR in our testing. DLSS SR High quality ought to be the start line at 1440p and 4K, with Balanced or Efficiency modes reserved for conditions the place extra efficiency is genuinely required.
AMD Radeon and Intel Arc house owners presently need to depend on TSR except they resort to a third-party resolution comparable to OptiScaler.
Advice: DLSS Tremendous Decision for GeForce RTX GPUs; TSR for AMD Radeon and Intel Arc GPUs
View Distance
View Distance controls how far into the scene objects are rendered. This ought to be particularly related when shifting by way of Arkham’s open areas or travelling rapidly by boat, the place distant geometry and objects are constantly coming into the body.
In apply, we couldn’t establish a significant efficiency distinction between the out there ranges, nor did decreasing the setting produce a worthwhile visible trade-off. With no measurable profit to decreasing it, Extremely is the good selection.
Advice: Extremely
Anti-Aliasing
The Anti-Aliasing setting controls the standard of Unreal Engine 5’s TSR. It impacts temporal reconstruction high quality quite than choosing the anti-aliasing or upscaling methodology itself.
Medium supplied one of the best total stability in our testing. Low can cut back picture stability, whereas Excessive and Extremely don’t enhance the already underwhelming TSR presentation sufficient to justify their extra GPU value. This setting just isn’t related when DLSS Tremendous Decision is chosen.
Advice: Medium
Put up-Processing
Put up-Processing controls the standard of results comparable to bloom, vignette, movement blur, depth of area, and different such results. A few of these results are subjective, significantly movement blur, which we disabled for all comparisons.
Altering the general setting produced no significant distinction in efficiency or picture high quality in our take a look at scenes. We due to this fact advocate leaving it at Extremely and adjusting any individually uncovered post-process results based on private desire.
Advice: Extremely
Textures
Textures ought to management texture element and streaming high quality, however we discovered no clear distinction in texture constancy or devoted VRAM consumption between its out there ranges. It’s attainable that the variations solely seem on particular property or after longer traversal, however the setting behaved nearly like a no-op all through our comparisons.
An 8 GB graphics card ought to be enough for 1440p with Extremely textures primarily based on our measurements. From there, 6 GB for 1080p and 10 GB or extra for 4K look like cheap estimates. These figures are usually not arduous ensures, as output decision, upscaling mode, background purposes, and future updates can all have an effect on VRAM strain.
There may be presently little purpose to cut back Textures pre-emptively. Solely decrease the setting if a lower-capacity GPU exhibits clear VRAM-related signs comparable to persistent hitching or delayed texture loading.
Advice: Extremely
Results
Results determines the standard of the sport’s visible results. In a survival horror title full of supernatural enemies, climate, particles, and fight results, decreasing it too aggressively might diminish the presentation throughout busier encounters.
Medium was one of the best compromise in our testing. It contributes helpful efficiency financial savings with out visibly stripping away the consequences that outline fight and Arkham’s environment throughout abnormal play.
Advice: Medium
Foliage
Foliage adjusts the standard of vegetation. Arkham is primarily a dense city surroundings, so this setting is much less outstanding than it might be in a foliage-heavy open-world sport.
We discovered no worthwhile visible or efficiency distinction between the out there ranges. Since decreasing Foliage supplied no sensible acquire, it will possibly safely stay at Extremely.
Advice: Extremely
Reflections
Reflections controls reflection high quality and backbone. Medium and better settings use {hardware} Lumen ray-traced reflections, making this greater than a easy decision slider.
The Low setting ought to be prevented as a result of reflections can look visibly damaged. Excessive retains the supposed Lumen reflection presentation whereas trimming the surplus value of Extremely, and the visible distinction between the highest two settings is tough to note throughout regular gameplay.
Advice: Excessive
International Illumination
International Illumination controls oblique lighting and ambient occlusion. As with Reflections, Medium and above use {hardware} Lumen ray tracing.
Low is visually damaged and might severely compromise the lighting, so it shouldn’t be handled as a viable efficiency mode. Medium retains {hardware} Lumen enabled and preserves the broad character of the scene with out paying for the restricted enhancements supplied by Excessive and Extremely.
Advice: Medium
Shading
Shading controls the standard of shadows, lighting, and reflections. Its broad description suggests some overlap with the devoted reflection and world illumination controls, which makes its exact visible scope tougher to isolate.
Excessive supplied one of the best stability. It seems to be very near Extremely in movement whereas contributing to the efficiency enchancment of our optimized profile. Decrease values didn’t provide a sexy sufficient visible compromise.
Advice: Excessive
Hair
Hair controls the standard of hair rendering. Extremely permits real-time hair strands and is noticeably extra demanding than Excessive.
Excessive is the higher selection for precise gameplay. It avoids the heavier Extremely hair-strand implementation whereas retaining character hair convincing at regular digital camera distances.
Advice: Excessive
Optimized Graphics Settings For The Sinking Metropolis 2
Primarily based on all of the testing above, these are our optimized graphics settings for The Sinking Metropolis 2:
| Graphics Setting | Optimized Worth |
| Anti-Aliasing / Upscaling Methodology | DLSS Tremendous Decision for GeForce RTX GPUs; TSR for AMD Radeon and Intel Arc GPUs |
| View Distance | Extremely |
| Anti-Aliasing | Medium |
| Put up-Processing | Extremely |
| Textures | Extremely |
| Results | Medium |
| Foliage | Extremely |
| Reflections | Excessive |
| International Illumination | Medium |
| Shading | Excessive |
| Hair | Excessive |
These settings protect the sport’s supposed presentation whereas decreasing the handful of choices that carry a worthwhile GPU value. View Distance, Put up-Processing, Textures, and Foliage stay at Extremely as a result of decreasing them supplied no measurable profit in our assessments.
GeForce RTX house owners ought to pair this profile with DLSS Tremendous Decision. DLSS Body Era or Multi Body Era can then be used to enhance visible smoothness if the bottom body fee is already snug and the show has sufficient refresh-rate headroom. AMD and Intel customers presently need to depend on TSR and can’t allow a local body technology resolution.
Extremely Preset Vs Optimized Graphics Settings
To quantify the good thing about our optimized graphics settings, we in contrast them within the above video towards the Extremely preset in a GPU-limited 1440p (with TSR enabled at native decision) take a look at scene. Each runs have been captured with an altered CapFrameX/RTSS-powered overlay displaying GPU utilization, common FPS, 1% lows, 0.1% lows, real-time body fee, and body time.
The averaged efficiency metrics from each runs are proven beneath:
| Graphics Settings | Common FPS | 1% Low FPS | 0.1% Low FPS |
| Extremely Preset | 102 | 87 | 76 |
| Optimized Graphics Settings | 120 | 98 | 86 |
| Enchancment | +18% | +13% | +13% |
Our optimized graphics settings elevated the common body fee from 102 to 120 FPS, an enchancment of 18%. The 1% lows rose from 87 to 98 FPS, whereas the 0.1% lows improved from 76 to 86 FPS, representing a 13% acquire in each metrics.
It is a helpful uplift, although not a transformative one. The comparatively modest outcome displays the sport’s weak settings scalability quite than a failure of the optimized profile. A number of settings merely don’t change efficiency, leaving Anti-Aliasing, Results, Reflections, International Illumination, Shading, and Hair to offer practically the entire out there financial savings.
The visible downgrade is minor throughout regular gameplay, significantly as a result of {hardware} Lumen stays enabled for reflections and world illumination. Gamers who want considerably extra efficiency should cut back inner decision by way of DLSS Tremendous Decision or TSR quite than proceed decreasing typical high quality settings.
Last Phrases
The Sinking Metropolis 2 is an uncommon Unreal Engine 5 launch. It’s demanding on the GPU and gives disappointingly little scalability throughout most of its graphics menu, but its shader-compilation habits is significantly higher than that of many different video games constructed on the engine. We barely encountered any apparent shader stutters, and traversal hitches have been rare sufficient {that a} VRR show ought to clean over most of them.
CPU efficiency is much less constant. The common body fee could be excessive, however occasional body time spikes throughout fast boat traversal pull down the 1% and 0.1% lows. The unexplained bursts of heavy CPU exercise additionally deserve investigation, significantly for gamers utilizing lower-end processors.
The characteristic set wants work as properly. A contemporary PC launch this demanding ought to provide purposeful FSR/XeSS help, HDR, DLAA, and a field-of-view slider. TSR’s poor picture high quality and efficiency make the shortage of usable AMD and Intel options particularly irritating. Even with these weaknesses, the optimized settings enhance common efficiency by 18% and percentile lows by 13% with out noticeably undermining the sport’s visible id. Mix them with DLSS Tremendous Decision on a GeForce RTX GPU, or TSR the place no different exists, and The Sinking Metropolis 2 can ship a smoother and extra balanced PC expertise than the Extremely preset suggests.
In regards to the author: Sebastian Castellanos is a knowledge scientist by schooling and coaching. He is additionally deeply keen about PC gaming {hardware} and software program. He has not too long ago began writing technical articles and guides on Wccftech about PC hardware, video games and mods.
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