The launch of Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR’S CUT took place yesterday and was accompanied by the usual performance tests, which allow us to see not only the degree of actual optimization of the game, but also which graphics cards are best for each resolutionsomething that is ultimately essential if we were planning to buy the game.

Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR’S CUT is a game that It was originally developed for the PS4, which means that its technical base is limited by the capabilities of the said console. This explains why the minimum requirements are so low and that we can only push it with 8GB of RAM, a Core i3-7100 or Ryzen 3 1200 and a modest GeForce GTX 960 or Radeon RX 5500 XT.

But when we scale the resolution and graphic quality settings, the demand skyrockets and for smooth movement in 4K you need to have a relatively powerful graphics card. Fortunately Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR’S CUT supports NVIDIA DLSS 3which includes Super Resolution and Frame Generation, and is also compatible with FSR 3which includes scaling and frame generation as Intel XeSS.

A bit of a technical point of view

Ghost of Tsushima uses DIRECTOR’S CUT graphics engine developed by Sucker Punch Productions, which has been specially optimized to display open scenarios while maintaining a high level of detail and depth without loading. This makes the gaming experience very good and the immersion in the game is complete.

Geometry borders on good, and the same can be said for textures and lighting and shadow effects. I miss that they didn’t decide to implement ray tracing, but I imagine it would require a lot of effort given the concept of the game itself and the use of such open scenarios, and that in the end it would have a big impact on performance from Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR’S CUT.

As I said earlier, we can use NVIDIA DLSS 3, AMD FSR 3 and Intel XeSS. If we have GeForce RTX 30 or GeForce RTX 20 we will be able to combine DLSS Super Resolution with AMD Fluid Motion Frames without a problem, something that is undoubtedly good news for those who want to improve the game’s fluidity a little more through frame generation.

Introducing Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR’S CUT

In order to play at 1080p with maximum quality, we have a minimum level to maintain stable averages between 30 FPS and 40 FPS in GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and Radeon RX 6600. By activating DLSS or FSR technology in quality mode, we get about 10 FPS. This would be the minimum level, but the optimal level for 1080p playback at 60 FPS with maximum quality would be GeForce RTX 4060 or Radeon RX 7600.

If we wanted to play Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR’S CUT at 1440p with a GeForce RTX 4060, we would average over 40 FPS and By activating DLSS 3 with rescaling in quality mode, we would achieve peaks of 93 FPS. With Radeon RX 7600 we could also achieve a good result with FSR 3. In case we want 60 stable FPS without rescaling or frame generation, we will need GeForce RTX 4070 or Radeon 7800 XT.

When you go to 4K, the level of demand increases significantly. With the GeForce RTX 4070, we will be in the range of 40 FPS, but if we activate NVIDIA DLSS 3 in performance mode, we will reach 108 FPS. If we want to maintain a stable 60 FPS at this resolution without resorting to rescaling and frame generation, we will need at least one GeForce RTX 4080.

Now we can get it on notebooks with GeForce RTX 4050 stable average 40 FPS in 1080p with maximum qualityand when using DLSS 3 in quality mode, the performance increases to 86 FPS. The difference this technology makes is huge because as we can see it doubles the frame rate per second and transforms an acceptable experience into a completely optimal one.

GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile is able to achieve 60 FPS on average without DLSS 3 with the same configuration and activation of these technologies, performance increases up to almost 120 FPS, and GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile pushes the game at 79 FPS without DLSS 3 and 193 FPS with the mentioned technology activated. The improvement in the latter case is also spectacular.

Final remarks

The overall performance matches the game’s requirements well. If you have a GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB or Radeon RX 580 8 GB graphics card, you can wait 30 stable FPS in 1080pif you adjust the level low quality, all without having to use scaling. If you decide to use 1080p upscaling with these graphics cards, remember that when you enable FSR, the loss of sharpness will be quite noticeable.

Frame generation that includes FSR 3 can help us gain a lot of fluency, and can be activated without any problems with those graphics cards through the menu of game options. It’s a big difference and represents a very interesting value that makes the game accessible even to those with older and less powerful equipment.

It is strongly recommended to have 16GB of RAM for Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR’S CUT to perform really well. This way we avoid micro jerks because the game will have enough RAM available to accommodate all the necessary data. Depending on the area we may be in It can easily consume more than 14GB of RAM.