Square Enix released the Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail benchmark test yesterday. This is common, as the Japanese company always releases benchmark tests when preparing to release a new expansion for the popular MMORPG. However, this one is especially interesting because Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail will introduce several graphical improvements as well as the AMD FSR 1.0 and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0. In addition, the system requirements have been slightly increased.
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Let's start with the graphical improvements. The game now supports dynamic interaction with grass as characters walk through it, denser and more detailed vegetation, improved terrain rendering, improved shadow resolution and soft shadowing, improved reflection for metals and wet surfaces, improved character models (especially their skin), increased polygon counts for objects, and even wave simulation. The graphical improvements are evident during the benchmark test.
Square Enix has also added a new anti-aliasing option called TSCMAA, or Temporally Stable Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing. Intel originally developed TSCMAA as an alternative to MSAA in virtual reality applications.
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Of course, TSCMAA cannot be used simultaneously with NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, so you will have to make a choice in this area. Unfortunately, the image upscaler implementation does not offer users the ability to switch between the usual performance, balance, and quality presets.
Instead, users are offered a 'minimum frame rate' setting, which presents the following options:
- Always on
- Activate when frame rate drops below 30 FPS
- Activate when frame rate drops below 60 FPS
However, there are already reports of users being able to adjust the default setting and even force DLAA with SpecialK or DLSSTweaks.
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However, with DLSS always enabled and graphics settings maxed out at 4K resolution, a powerful PC (AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, GeForce RTX 4090, 32GB DDR5 RAM) scores 25646 points, with an average frame rate of 174.2 FPS and a minimum frame rate of 97. This is without the ShadowPlay performance hit of the recorded video, which shows a slightly lower score of 23674 (average FPS rate 161, minimum FPS rate 90).
For the announcement, Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail will be released on July 2 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 , and Xbox Series S|X. The expansion could have been released earlier, but Square Enix admitted that it chose this date to allow players enough time to play the upcoming Elden Ring expansion (scheduled for June 21).
Source: wccftech
