Overkill’s The Walking Dead is a four-player co-op first-person shooter, similar to Left4Dead. The game has just been released on the PC so it’s time now to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.

For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i7 4930K (overclocked at 4.2Ghz) with 16GB RAM, AMD’s Radeon RX580 and RX Vega 64, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti and GTX690, Windows 10 64-bit, GeForce driver 416.34 and Catalyst driver 18.10.2. NVIDIA has not included any SLI profile for this game, meaning that our GTX690 performed similarly to a single GTX680.

Overkill has included a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of textures, effects, post-process, shadows, anti-aliasing, view distance and foliage. The game also supports uncapped framerates, native 4K resolutions and there is also a Field of View option.

In order to find out how the game performs on a variety of CPUs, we simulated a dual-core and a quad-core CPU. Since the game does not feature any built-in benchmark tool, we’ve tested the second main mission which features a lot of zombies on screen. As such, this scenario should, theoretically, give us a proper idea of how the really demanding scenes of this game run on the PC.

Overkill’s The Walking Dead is powered by Unreal Engine and appears to be running smoothly even on a dual-core system. With Hyper Threading disabled, our simulated dual-core was able to run the game with a minimum of 48fps and an average of 55fps. With Hyper Threading enabled, we were able to get a constant 60fps experience experience. Moreover, we did notice some performance improvements when we moved from our simulated quad-core to our six-core.

Now while this game appears to be running smoothly on a variety of CPUs, it requires powerful GPUs in order to be enjoyed on Ultra settings. Not only that but similarly to Call of Cthulhu, the AMD GPUs did not perform well. Our AMD Radeon RX 580 was unable to offer a constant 60fps experience at 1080p whereas the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 was a few frames faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX980Ti.

Overkill’s The Walking Dead is powered by Unreal Engine and it seems that all the games that are powered by Epic’s engine run significantly faster on NVIDIA’s graphics cards. Now I’m pretty sure that some will say that our AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 is not working properly so we’ve included below a screenshot showing the GPU being used at 98% at 2560×1440 (and running the game with 56fps). It’s pretty clear that Unreal Engine loves NVIDIA’s hardware, especially when using the DX11 API.

This basically means that the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 is unable to offer a smooth 60fps experience at 1440p. The only GPU – at least from those we own – that can offer such a thing is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX2080Ti. NVIDIA’s flagship is also able to run the game in 4K on Ultra settings (Low Anti-aliasing) with 60fps, though we did notice some scenes in which our framerate dropped at 52fps. Still, and for the most part, this GPU was able to offer a smooth gaming experience even in native 4K.

As we wrote in our article that was dedicated to the RTX2080Ti, Overkill’s The Walking Dead is a surprisingly good looking game. This is perhaps one of the few times that the actual game looks better than its pre-release screenshots. Overkill has used numerous high-resolution textures, the lighting is really good and there are some lovely volumetric lighting effects. Of course this isn’t a perfect game as environmental interactivity is limited and the zombies could have looked better. Still, Overkill’s The Walking Dead is overall a good looking game.

All in all, Overkill’s The Walking Dead performs like most Unreal Engine-powered games. We did not notice any mouse acceleration/smoothing issues and there are proper K+M on-screen indicators. We did experience some frustrating network issues in the first days but with the release of the two first patches things have improved. Even though the game displays a lot of zombies on screen, it does not require a high-end CPU. On the other hand, its GPU requirements are a bit high but at least the game is a looker. Moreover, AMD’s GPUs once again under-perform and the red team really needs to step up its game when it comes to overall DX11 performance and especially in games powered by Epic’s engine.

Enjoy!