Vindictus: Defying Fate Demo - PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards and Processors
We have tested Vindictus: Defying Fate Demo on maximum graphics settings with video cards of the GeForce RTX 20, 30, 40 and 50 series, as well as Radeon RX 6000, 7000 and 9000. Also, during the tests we conducted, we assessed the quality of the graphic display of the game itself.
| THE GRAFICAL PART |
This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.
| Supported OS and Graphics API |
Action RPG Vindictus: Defying Fate is built on the Unreal Engine and offers dynamic fights with slasher elements, focusing on physical animation, lighting and spectacular finishing moves. The game is designed for both older video cards of the last generation and modern RTX series, using DirectX 12, but without support for ray tracing or other photorealistic technologies. Despite the increased requirements for GPU и CPU, the project is optimized for a wide audience.
Minimum system requirements:
Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-9400F @ 2.9 GHz / AMD Ryzen 7 1800X @ 3.6 GHz
Memory: 16 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB) / AMD Radeon RX 480 (8GB)
This configuration is designed for 1080p gaming with Low-Medium graphics settings. Some visual effects and textures will be simplified, draw distance and anti-aliasing will be reduced, but overall combat readability will be maintained.
Recommended system requirements:
Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-10700K @ 3.8 GHz / AMD Ryzen 7 3700X @ 3.6 GHz
Memory: 16 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 / AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
| DEVELOPMENT HISTORY |
Vindictus: Defying Fate started out as an attempt to revive the legendary action series, while transforming its format from a classic MMO linear experience to a rich single-player and co-op ARPG. As a result, the game abandoned the formulas of massive online services, shifting from massive raids to a hybrid between a hardcore action system and interactive storytelling.
Development kicked off in early 2024 after a closed phase, where the goal was to bring back the dynamic and responsive combat mechanics that fans loved in the original. This meant preserving the unique physics, broken armor, and intuitive dodges, but adapting them to a modern technological base. During the revision process, PvE content components were introduced - Big Boss Conquerors are now encountered in both solo and group gameplay.
The main goal was to create a catalog of game mechanics that would combine fast attacks, dodges and parries with complex animation and environmental influences. Combat design was built around the principle: "every hit counts." New characters (Delia and Karok) appeared, which added variety to combo skills, speed and strategy of the game.
The monolithic project required a major technological breakthrough, so a transition was made to Unreal Engine 5The new architecture allowed us to recreate destroyed armor, complex environment geometry, and physically-based weapon mechanics at a realistic scale. UE5 tools were used to optimize processes related to parametric effects and impact destruction.
Compared to the classic MMORPG format, Defying Fate has a more elaborate single-player campaign: as preview tests and trailer showed, the game uses scenario segments, cutscenes and localized PvE events. It is a mixture of action, narrative and co-op - where the setting and narrative structure work as slices of an epic story, without turning the game into kitsch.
During the open alpha (June 8-16, 2025), players tested new mechanics, including the "companion" system. AI-CNPCs now accompany the player and help with bosses. This is done to balance the solo playthrough, providing support without intrusive hints.
The result is that the original's physics and combat challenge is preserved, but a level of accessibility and scale is added, while up to 4-player co-op and a rich storyline are preserved. And while a release has yet to be announced, the alpha launch allows us to assess the depth and quality of the rework.
| GRAPHICS |
The visual style of "Defying Fate" is based on a balance between photorealism and artistic approach. The world is textured using photogrammetry, but the emphasis is on environmental details, armor destruction and interactions of the environment with the player.
The wastelands and dark corners are reminiscent of the old series, but now they are enriched with dynamic atmospheric effects. Dust, particles, smoke from impacts, sparks and blood are all controlled by Niagara and reflected through the system Lumen, which provides realistic reflections and light penetration. The contrast of light and shadow emphasizes the danger: precipitation and smoke absorb the light, and bright flashes reflect the spotlights and magic.
Each character has received new development: their armor is detailed down to every crack, the folds of the armor can deform or burn from blows. The facial expressions and emotions of the characters are conveyed through animation systems and Metahuman — even without cut scenes, the hero’s face reacts to the mood and situation.
The environment is not just stationary, but interactive. Explosions destroy walls, break through floors, collapse ceilings - the result is built through Chaos Physics и nanite, where high-poly models are combined with mobility and responsiveness of reactions.
Light and shadow, lighting, reflections, warm and cold contrasts - everything is formed through dynamic Post processing. And as a result, empty corridors under the light of torches look not just atmospheric - they feel alive, as if they have their own breath and memory.
No corner of the world is repeated: each biome and room has unique geometry, coloring and acoustics - the acoustic accompaniment works on the principle: stone halls sound like wells, and wooden bridges - like drums.
The fight visually feels like an action movie: strikes, blocks, counterattacks are documented - each effect doubles the physical impact. This is not stylization, but an almost documentary reconstruction of each movement, tuned for a spectacular effect.
| GAME ENGINE |
Vindictus: Defying Fate uses engine Unreal Engine 5 in full. The main goal in switching to this engine was to ensure stable performance in conditions of high geometry and particle density, as well as to simultaneously support cooperative multiplayer with a precise combat system.
The engine allows the use of virtualized geometry without loss of detail due to the use of Nanite. This reduced the load on performance and simplified work with large objects of the environment, especially in scenes with destruction and a dynamic camera. Nanite also made it possible to abandon the manual adjustment of the levels of detail of models, accelerating the assembly of scenes.
Light in the game is calculated using global illumination via Lumen. Unlike the baked lighting that was used previously, this system allows you to change the light source in real time and get reflections from surrounding objects. This applies to both indoor locations and street scenes with dynamic time of day. Thanks to this, it was possible to get rid of unnecessary work with lightmaps and simplify the setup of visual effects.
The game environment is not loaded entirely — the World Partition system is used. The map is divided into logical segments that are loaded as the player moves. This allowed the integrity of the world to be preserved without loading screens and ensure a stable frame rate at all stages of the game. Zone streaming works through asynchronous calls, which reduces the number of spikes when moving across large areas.
The physics of destruction is based on the Chaos Physics system. It controls the interaction of objects during collisions, destruction and animations of debris. This applies not only to decorative elements, but also to some gameplay situations: objects can lose stability, react to damage and interfere with movement. The system was configured in such a way as not to create excessive load on the processor.
Character animations are adapted to the environment through procedural adjustments. When bending, crossing obstacles, or interacting with surfaces, limb movement is adjusted to minimize visual artifacts. This does not make the animations completely physical, but it increases their visual fidelity when walking, falling, and rolling. Scripted animations are used for combat, with the ability to be interrupted depending on the player's actions.
Particles, magic effects and weather are controlled via the Niagara system. It ensures that the effects behave in a consistent manner with wind direction, light sources and interactions with the environment. This ensures that the visual effects remain stable even with a large number of active sources. The effects are scaled according to the situation so as not to exceed the set limit. GPU-resources.
Interaction between players is implemented through a client-server architecture, where most of the combat logic is processed locally. This reduces response latency, especially in combat, where precise timing of strikes and reactions is important. The server only processes the event summary, which allows maintaining network synchronization without constantly monitoring all animations.
The game's audio engine is synchronized with the visual part. The sound of footsteps, impacts, breaks and voices is processed depending on the surface material and the type of event. This is used primarily for the player's orientation in space and does not directly affect the gameplay.
The entire project logic is implemented in a hybrid of Blueprints and C++, where heavy functions are moved to low-level code. This allowed us to reduce compilation time and improve stability, especially with frequent changes to logic in the alpha version. Also, combat action and state templates were introduced to speed up the addition of new characters and skills.
In general, Vindictus: Defying Fate uses all core modules Unreal Engine 5, but it does so not for the sake of demonstrating capabilities, but for specific purposes: stability, visual readability, and gameplay scalability. Decisions were made based on performance requirements and the nature of the game - with a focus on combat mechanics, physics, and modularity.
| QUALITY |
Low settings simplify the environment detail, disable particle effects, and make lighting more static. Elements like impact marks, sparks, and dynamic shadows are kept to a minimum. Characters and enemies are rendered with simplified models and basic animations, while performance remains stable even on graphics cards from 2011–2013.
At maximum settings Vindictus: Defying Fate looks much more alive: with more realistic reflections on armor, soft shadow rendering, dense post-effects on explosions and powerful attacks. Animations of blows become smoother, and the frame rate remains stable on modern GPU. The game is capable of running at 1440p with high detail, while the load on CPU remains moderate.
The project is aimed at comfortable work both on old hardware and on modern systems, offering a balance between visual richness and stable performance.
| TEST PART |
Below you will find a table of equipment that was kindly provided by our sponsors: GIGABYTE, ASUS, Kingston и Deep Cool. It reflects the list of motherboards, video cards, memory modules and cooling systems used in the tests, and also indicates the current configuration of the operating system and drivers.
| Test configuration | |
| GIGABYTE | |
| motherboards | |
| ASUS | |
| motherboards | |
| Video Cards |
Asus GeForce RTX 5070 TUF Gaming OC ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC |
| KINGSTON | |
| RAM |
16 GB DDR4 4600 CL19 Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB DDR4 3600 CL16 Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB DDR4 4000 CL18 Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB DDR5 5600 CL40 Kingston FURY Beast 32 GB DDR5 6000 CL30 Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB DDR5 7200 CL36 Kingston FURY Renegade 48GB DDR5 7200 CL36 Kingston FURY Renegade |
| Storage devices |
Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD |
| Deep Cool | |
|
Cases and cooling |
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| Software configuration |
|
| Operating system | Windows 11 24H2 |
| Graphics driver |
Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 576.66 WHQL AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.6.1 |
| Monitoring programs | MSI Afterburner 4.6.6 Beta 5 Build 16555 |
All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. Below is a video of a test segment from the game:
Our video cards were tested at different screen sizes 1920x1080, 2560x1440 и 3840x2160 with maximum graphics quality settings without upscales.
| TEST GPU |
In the video card test, the default resolution is 1920x1080, other resolutions are added and removed manually. You can also remove and add any video card positions. You can also select any of our test processors from the list in the drop-down menu, comparing its performance with the given video card tests (the most productive solution is selected by default). The test is carried out on the most productive in this game CPU and scales to other processors, taking into account their testing on NVIDIA and AMD video cards.
- Max
When resolved 1920x1080:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Reached on video cards of the level of Radeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 3060.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the Radeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 2080 Ti level.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with video cards of the Radeon RX 9070 or GeForce RTX 5070 Ti level.
When resolved 2560x1440:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Reached on video cards of the level of Radeon RX 9060 XT or GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the Radeon RX 9060 XT or GeForce RTX 5060 Ti level.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with GeForce-level video cards RTX 4090.
When resolved 3840x2160:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Achieved on Radeon RX 9070 or GeForce RTX 4070 Ti S level graphics cards.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the Radeon RX 7900 XT or GeForce RTX 5070 Ti level.
| VIDEO MEMORY CONSUMPTION |
Testing of the video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the MSI Afterburner program. The results on video cards from AMD and NVIDIA at separate screen resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 with different anti-aliasing settings were taken as an indicator. By default, the most current solutions are displayed in the graph. Other video cards are added and removed from the graph at the reader's request.
- Max
GameGPU
Resolution 1920x1080:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 7 GB
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 7 GB
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 7 GB
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 7 GB
Resolution 2560x1440:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 7 GB
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 8 GB
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 8 GB
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 8 GB
Resolution 3840x2160:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 9 GB
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 10 GB
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 10 GB
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 10 GB
| TEST CPU |
Testing was carried out at a resolution of 1920x1080. In the processor test, you can remove or add any processor positions. You can also select any tested video card from the list in the drop-down menu, comparing its performance with the given processor test results (by default, the most productive solution from NVIDIA is selected). Testing takes place on the most powerful NVIDIA and AMD video cards and scales to low-end models.
- Max
When using NVIDIA video cards:
- Processors for acceptable FPS (not lower than 25 frames per second):
- AMD Ryzen 3 3100
- Intel Core i3-10100
- Processors for comfortable FPS (at least 60 frames per second):
- AMD Ryzen 7 5700
- Intel Core i5-12400
When using AMD video cards:
- Processors for acceptable FPS (not lower than 25 frames per second):
- AMD Ryzen 3 3100
- Intel Core i3-10100
- Processors for comfortable FPS (at least 60 frames per second):
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900
- Intel Core i5-12400
- Max
Loading and using streams:
- Maximum load: The game can load up to 24 streams.
- Optimal loading: Uses up to 16 threads as efficiently as possible.
| RAM TEST |
The indicator was taken as all used RAM. The RAM test on the all system was conducted on various video cards without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.). In the graphics, you can add and remove any resolutions and video cards as desired.
- Max
GameGPU
Resolution 1920x1080:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
Resolution 2560x1440:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
Resolution 3840x2160:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 17 GB of RAM
| SPONSORS TESTS |
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