GamingGPUs

NVIDIA RTX 4080 Runs at Just 30 FPS in “Lord of the Rings: Gollum” at 4K with Ray Tracing

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is set to launch tomorrow on Steam, Epic Games, and consoles. An NVIDIA partner title, it will leverage ray-traced lighting alongside DLSS 2 and DLSS 3 to keep the performance from plummeting. Unfortunately, things aren’t looking good for the PC port. Even the mighty RTX 4090 manages only 48 FPS at 4K ultra (ray-tracing on) in a game that looks mediocre at best. The RTX 4080 is limited to 33 FPS, while the RTX 4070 Ti averages just 26 FPS.

Luckily for GeForce RTX 40 series gamers, DLSS 3 ensures that even the RTX 4070 delivers over 60 FPS at 4K Ultra (with ray-tracing). Above, you can see the benchmarks conducted by NVIDIA’s performance labs. Remember that DLSS 3 was used for the benchmark with the quality set to “Performance”.

On gaming notebooks, things look equally dire at 1440p. The RTX 4060 mobile nets just under 32 FPS, while the RTX 4070 mobile averages 38 FPS. The RTX 4080 and 4090 net 56 FPS and 62 FPS on average, respectively, when paired with a Core i9-13900HX and 32GB of DDR5 memory. In this case, DLSS 3 “Quality” mode boosts the frame rates by nearly 2.4x, pushing the RTX 4080 and 4090 mobile past 120 FPS. The RTX 4060 and 4070 average 74 FPS and 88.5 FPS, respectively.

Revisiting the official PC System Requirements, things no longer look so bad. The RTX 4080 is recommended for 4K RT Ultra and does offer over 60 FPS at that preset with DLSS turned on. The RTX 4070 should deliver ample performance when paired with DLSS 3 at 1440p RT High, while the RTX 3060 should do the job at 1080p, thanks to DLSS 2. This doesn’t make it alright, though. Gollum looks exactly like Shadow of War, a game released several years ago that runs buttery smooth on almost anything. I suspect Daedalic’s first attempt at an open-world game won’t go smoothly.

Meanwhile, there’s no mention of AMD Radeon GPUs in the chart, which means you’ll probably have a tough time with this game if you own one. Unless the game comes with FSR 2 support, there’s no way you’ll be able to run this game with ray-tracing on Red hardware.

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Divinity, Torment, Baldur's Gate and so much more... Contact: areejs12@hardwaretimes.com.
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