Kingdom Come: Deliverance Notebook and Desktop Benchmarks

My kingdom for a role-playing game. Kingdom Come: Deliverance was originally financed through Kickstarter and is an extremely ambitious Open World RPG. Will the medieval graphics look good, or suffer from performance problems? Find out in this benchmark article.

Florian Glaser, ✓ Tanja Hinum (translated by Katherine Bodner), Published 02/21/2018 🇩🇪 🇫🇷

Technology

The Czech developer's studio Warhorse was founded in 2011 and the goal of its first project was definitely to go big: Kingdom Come: Deliverance presents itself as an enormous and very detailed role-playing game, whose scope comes close to other well-established games such as The Witcher 3, Elex, Fallout 4 or Skyrim.

Compared to the Elder Scrolls series, whose graphical content (the landscape, for example) often appears generic, Kingdom Come: Deliverance can boast with realistic medieval surroundings that offer a lot of depth and work well, even without fantasy elements such as dragons, elves and goblins. With skills to improve, trading to do and quests to fulfill, you will find a diverse range of possibilities and might lose yourself in this game for hours.

Unfortunately, Kingdom Come: Deliverance still has to deal with various bugs (graphics glitches, clipping errors, ...), as well as some more general issues which annoyed us during our trial gaming session. This started with the controls, which - particularly during combat - seemed spongy and imprecise. The developers should also improve the way the game can be saved. Although you can use detours to save manually (sleeping in a bed, drinking special potions), your progress is usually only saved at specific events, which is why you often have to repeat long sequences after turning off the game.

Kingdom Come also has some performance issues which are not connected to the graphics card or chosen settings - we have not been able to find out where they are coming from. Even when you just stop your character in the middle of the countryside and do not move the camera, some systems suffer from extreme frame rate fluctuations. This means that PCs and notebooks that would actually offer sufficient performance can have issues with displaying this game.

Apart from that, we enjoyed Kingdom Come so far. Thanks to its depth, this RPG is a nice change to the current casual trend. If you are willing to spend a substantial amount of time getting used to the game, and can accept the game's smaller and larger deficiencies, you will be rewarded with a surprisingly unique experience.

Kingdom Come has made use of the CryEngine from Crysis-developer Crytek. Although many textures could be sharper even at maximum settings, and the animations and character's expressions leave a little to be desired, the title can impress with a harmonious overall look. This includes not only the generous views (there are some great panoramas), but also the thick vegetation with lots of grasses, plants and trees. The changing weather conditions also contribute to this special atmosphere.

Kingdom Come offers plenty of configurable settings which you can use to adapt the optics to your system's capacities. Tuning fans will find 16 options in the expanded graphics menu, which are all explained shortly in separate windows. If you do not want to play around with these settings, you can simply use one of the five presets in the "normal" graphics menu. This still offers controllers to adjust resolution, image mode, vertical field of view and gamma. If necessary, you can also add an FPS display.

Talking of FPS: If you do not deactivate vertical synchronization through the console (press ^ in the game and then type the command "r_vsync 0"), the frame rate will be limited to the display's refresh rate. Of course, the FPS lock was turned off for our tests.

Great: After changing settings you do not have to wait for the game to restart (unlike with many other games), although changing between the various presets on an HDD can feel like an eternity. If you install Kingdom Come on an SSD, you will be rewarded with noticeably shorter loading times. The game currently takes up about 34 GB of storage.

Benchmarks

Due to the subpar saving options, we used the beginning of the game for our speed tests. After the main character has a short discussion with his mother, he is quickly free to roam the first settlement. As you can see in the video below, we ran from our parent's house towards the village center for about 20 seconds, during which the frame rates dropped dramatically at some points.

As Kingdom Come generally tends towards drops in performance, 50 FPS would be ideal - although even then you cannot avoid temporary judders.

Results

Games with low-end GPUs on the level of the Intel HD Graphics 630 or GeForce 920M / 940M will not be able to play this medieval RPG. Even low details and 1280x720 pixels are too demanding for cheaper GPUs. In order to play Kingdom Come at all, you will have to at least have a lower mid-range chip such as the GeForce MX150 or GTX 950M. For 1920x1080 pixels and a medium preset, the minimum is a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or GTX 970M.

The device will need to be equipped with a real high-end GPU in order to play this game in high details. Only a GeForce GTX 1060 /GTX 980M can reach the 50 FPS mark. Maximum settings demand a GeForce GTX 1070 or GTX 980. Only few manage resolutions above 1920x1080. Even the current king of notebook GPUs, the GeForce GTX 1080, will reach its limits when playing this game at 2560x1440 pixels and the ultra-high preset. Not a single test unit was able to display 3840x2160 pixels smoothly.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance
3840x2160 Ultra High Preset 2560x1440 Ultra High Preset 1920x1080 Ultra High Preset 1920x1080 High Preset 1920x1080 Medium Preset 1280x720 Low Preset
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (Desktop), 4790K Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition	31 (24^min) fps ∼53% 55.3 (42^min) fps ∼51% 73 (53^min) fps ∼56% 96 (65^min) fps ∼56% 122 (102^min) fps ∼61% 155 (131^min) fps ∼65%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Desktop), 6700K Desktop PC	27.4 (22^min) fps ∼47% 53.4 (44^min) fps ∼49% 75 (59^min) fps ∼58% 98.3 (79^min) fps ∼57% 123 (101^min) fps ∼61% 144 (122^min) fps ∼61%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile, i7-7820HK Alienware 17 R4	25.3 (20^min) fps ∼44% 46.6 (36^min) fps ∼43% 62.1 (47^min) fps ∼48% 78.4 (59^min) fps ∼46% 96.6 (73^min) fps ∼48% 113 (92^min) fps ∼48%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (Desktop), 6700K Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070	23.1 (18^min) fps ∼40% 47.1 (37^min) fps ∼43% 68.9 (57^min) fps ∼53% 92.7 (74^min) fps ∼54% 114 (91^min) fps ∼57% 145 (116^min) fps ∼61%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile, 6820HK Asus G752VS	21.2 (17^min) fps ∼37% 41.9 (30^min) fps ∼38% 59.6 (45^min) fps ∼46% 77.4 (58^min) fps ∼45% 93.4 (64^min) fps ∼46% 109 (90^min) fps ∼46%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, 6700K Desktop PC	16.1 (12^min) fps ∼28% 33.4 (27^min) fps ∼31% 50.1 (38^min) fps ∼39% 69.4 (55^min) fps ∼40% 84.1 (70^min) fps ∼42% 145 (116^min) fps ∼61%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (Desktop), 6700K Desktop PC	14.8 (12^min) fps ∼26% 31.4 (25^min) fps ∼29% 50.2 (42^min) fps ∼39% 63.8 (54^min) fps ∼37% 82.9 (73^min) fps ∼41% 145 (120^min) fps ∼61%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile, 6820HK MSI GT62VR	13.7 (11^min) fps ∼24% 28.4 (23^min) fps ∼26% 45.2 (37^min) fps ∼35% 62 (52^min) fps ∼36% 74.7 (65^min) fps ∼37% 112 (93^min) fps ∼47%
AMD Radeon RX 480 (Desktop), 4790K AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB Reference	14.5 (12^min) fps ∼25% 30.2 (25^min) fps ∼28% 44.7 (34^min) fps ∼34%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M, 6700HQ Asus G752VY	12 (9^min) fps ∼21% 24.1 (19^min) fps ∼22% 38.4 (33^min) fps ∼30% 51.8 (42^min) fps ∼30% 62 (53^min) fps ∼31% 97.3 (77^min) fps ∼41%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (Desktop), 4790K MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti	26.6 (20^min) fps ∼20% 35.2 (28^min) fps ∼20%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile, i7-7700HQ MSI GE72 7RE-046	6 (3^min) fps ∼10% 16.9 (13^min) fps ∼16% 28 (22^min) fps ∼22% 40.5 (32^min) fps ∼24% 49.5 (42^min) fps ∼25% 107 (84^min) fps ∼45%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M, 6700HQ MSI GS60 6QE	8.2 (5^min) fps ∼14% 18.5 (13^min) fps ∼17% 29.3 (23^min) fps ∼23% 41.4 (35^min) fps ∼24% 49.9 (45^min) fps ∼25% 96.1 (84^min) fps ∼41%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop), 4790K Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 2GB	22.9 (17^min) fps ∼18% 32.5 (26^min) fps ∼19%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile, i7-7700HQ MSI GL62M 7RD-077	25.1 (20^min) fps ∼19% 33.3 (23^min) fps ∼19% 41.6 (36^min) fps ∼21% 93 (65^min) fps ∼39%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile, i7-7700HQ Asus GL753VD	6.5 (5^min) fps ∼11% 14.1 (11^min) fps ∼13% 22.2 (17^min) fps ∼17% 31 (26^min) fps ∼18% 37.4 (33^min) fps ∼19% 74.2 (58^min) fps ∼31%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, i7-7700HQ MSI GL72 7QF	4.2 (2^min) fps ∼7% 10.3 (8^min) fps ∼9% 17.5 (14^min) fps ∼13% 24 (20^min) fps ∼14% 28.4 (25^min) fps ∼14% 68.4 (57^min) fps ∼29%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M, 6700HQ MSI PE60 2QD	15 (12^min) fps ∼12% 19.8 (16^min) fps ∼12% 23.8 (20^min) fps ∼12% 55.6 (47^min) fps ∼23%
NVIDIA GeForce MX150, i7-7700HQ MSI PL62	12 (9^min) fps ∼9% 18.1 (14^min) fps ∼11% 22.1 (18^min) fps ∼11% 51.6 (44^min) fps ∼22%
AMD Radeon RX Vega 11, R5 2400G MSI B350I Pro AC - DDR4-2933 - 2GB GPU	14.1 (11^min) fps ∼11% 18.7 (15^min) fps ∼11% 22.3 (18^min) fps ∼11% 50.6 (41^min) fps ∼21%
AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 (Ryzen 2000/3000), R3 2200G MSI B350I Pro AC - DDR4-2933	18.3 (16^min) fps ∼9% 36.8 (25^min) fps ∼16%
NVIDIA GeForce 940MX, 6700HQ MSI CX72 6QD	7.9 (6^min) fps ∼6% 9.7 (8^min) fps ∼6% 11.3 (9^min) fps ∼6% 27 (19^min) fps ∼11%
NVIDIA GeForce 940M, 5700HQ MSI GP62 2QD	7.5 (4^min) fps ∼6% 10.1 (7^min) fps ∼6% 12 (9^min) fps ∼6% 29.3 (24^min) fps ∼12%
NVIDIA GeForce 920M, 2970M MSI CX61 2QC 2970M MS-16GD	15.2 (4^min) fps ∼6%
Intel HD Graphics 630, i7-7700HQ MSI PL62	5.8 (4^min) fps ∼3% 15.2 (11^min) fps ∼6%
Intel HD Graphics 615, i7-7Y75 Eve-Tech Eve V i7	8.3 (1^min) fps ∼4%

Overview

Test Systems

Device	Graphics Card	Processor	RAM	Operating System
Desktop-PC I	MSI GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB GDDR5X) MSI GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB GDDR5) Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB GDDR5) Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 (4 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-6700K	2 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
Desktop-PC II	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB GDDR5X) Asus GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6 GB GDDR5) XFX Radeon R9 Fury (4 GB HBM) Sapphire Radeon R9 290X (4 GB GDDR5) Sapphire Radeon R9 280X (3 GB GDDR5) MSI Radeon R7 370 (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-4790K	2 x 4 GB DDR3	Windows 10 64 Bit
Alienware 17 R4	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB GDDR5X)	Intel Core i7-7820HK	1 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
Asus G752VS	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-6820HK	2 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI GT62VR	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-6820HK	2 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI GE72	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-7700HQ	2 x 4 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
Asus GL753VD	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 (4 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-7700HQ	1 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI GL62	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-7700HQ	2 x 4 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
Asus G752VY	Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M (4 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-6700HQ	2 x 16 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI GS60	Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M (3 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-6700HQ	2 x 4 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI GE72	Nvidia GeForce GTX 965M (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-6700HQ	1 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI GL72	Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-7700HQ	1 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI PE60	Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-6700HQ	2 x 4 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI PL62	Nvidia GeForce MX150 (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Core i7-7700HQ	1 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI CX72	Nvidia GeForce 940MX (2 GB DDR3)	Intel Core i7-6700HQ	2 x 8 GB DDR4	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI GP62	Nvidia GeForce 940M (2 GB DDR3)	Intel Core i7-5700HQ	1 x 8 GB DDR3	Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI CX61	Nvidia GeForce 920M (2 GB DDR3)	Intel Celeron 2970M	1 x 8 GB DDR3	Windows 10 64 Bit
Asus N551ZU	AMD Radeon R9 M280X (4 GB GDDR5)	AMD FX-7600P	2 x 4 GB DDR3	Windows 10 64 Bit

4K Monitor	Nvidia Driver	AMD Driver
2 x Asus PB287Q, Philips 328P6VJEB	ForceWare 390.77	Adrenalin 18.2.2

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Editor of the original article: Florian Glaser - Managing Editor Gaming Laptops - 615 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2009

I discovered my interest in computers in my childhood, growing up with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 in the early 1990s. I was especially fascinated with computer games, even from an early age. From Monkey Island through Lands of Lore to Doom, I tried every game I could get my hands on. I have been working for Notebookcheck since 2009 with my focus mostly being on high-performance gaming laptops.

Translator: Katherine Bodner - Translator - 308 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2017

I completed my master's degree in translation at the University of Vienna a few years ago and have been working as a translator for English, German and French ever since. I first started translating for Notebookcheck in 2017 and have learned more about computers than I ever imagined, and I have even become the person my family turns to for advice when it comes to consumer electronics. Other than that I also focus on everything connected to sustainability and renewable energy.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Reviews > Kingdom Come: Deliverance Notebook and Desktop Benchmarks

Florian Glaser, 2018-02-21 (Update: 2022-01-21)

Legend
5	Stutters – This game is very likely to stutter and have poor frame rates. Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, average frame rates are expected to fall below 25fps
	May Stutter – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, stutters and poor frame rates are expected.
30	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 25fps
40	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 35fps
60	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 58fps
	May Run Fluently – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, fluent frame rates are expected.
?	Uncertain – This graphics card experienced unexpected performance issues during testing for this game. A slower card may be able to achieve better and more consistent frame rates than this particular GPU running the same benchmark scene.
	Uncertain – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game and no reliable interpolation can be made based on the performances of surrounding cards of the same class or family.
The value in the fields displays the average frame rate of all values in the database. Move your cursor over the value to see individual results.