Last week, Frogwares released a new Sherlock Holmes game on PC, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One. Powered by Unreal Engine 4, it’s time to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.

For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3600Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64,  RX 6900XT, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti and RTX 3080. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 496.84 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 21.11.2 drivers.

Frogwares has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of View Distance, Anti-Aliasing, Post-Process, Textures, Effects, Foliage and Shadows.

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. As such, we’ve decided to benchmark the first mansion area. This area appears to be one of the most demanding ones at the beginning of the game, so it can give you a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game will run.

In order to find out how the game scales on multiple CPU threads, we simulated a dual-core, a quad-core and a hexa-core CPU. Without Hyper-Threading, our simulated dual-core system was unable to offer a smooth gaming experience. With Hyper-Threading enabled, however, we were able to get an almost constant 60fps experience at 1080p/Epic settings. Sherlock Holmes Chapter One does not require a high-end CPU, at least for gaming at 60fps. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement. We also noticed a small performance gain when we moved from 6 CPU threads to 8/12 threads, something that pleasantly surprised us.

Although the game does not require a high-end CPU, it does require a powerful GPU. At 1080p/Epic, both our GTX980Ti and RX Vega 64 were unable to offer a constant 60fps experience. On the other hand, the RTX2080Ti, RTX3080 and RX 6900XT had no trouble running the game. It’s also worth noting that Sherlock Holmes Chapter One uses DX12 and as such, the RX 6900XT is noticeably faster than the RTX3080 in this “CPU-limited” resolution.

At 1440p/Epic, our top three most powerful GPUs pushed framerates higher than 80fps at all times. However, there wasn’t any GPU that could offer a constant 60fps experience at 4K/Epic Settings.

Disappointingly enough, the graphics settings do not really have a major impact on the game’s performance. By lowering our settings to “Highest”, we were able to improve performance by only 3fps on our RTX3080. Do note that we are GPU-limited in 4K, so this wasn’t any CPU bottleneck. Similarly, the drop to “High” settings boosted performance by 5fps. The only way we could significantly improve our performance was by dropping all our settings to Low. And, let’s be honest here, the game does not really look that good to justify this performance on an RTX3080, even at 4K.

Graphics-wise, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One looks fine. Let’s keep in mind that Frogwares is a small studio. As such, you can’t really expect this game to compete with any triple-A games. Despite that, the environments look quite good and the character models are fine for a cross-gen title. In general, it doesn’t look bad but there is also nothing particularly impressive here that can ‘wow‘ you.

All in all, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One does not require a high-end CPU. However, the game’s graphics do not really justify its GPU requirements. This is an area that Frogwares will have to improve via post-launch updates. Other than that, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One looks and feels like a cross-gen game. We also did not experience any stability issues, and the game offers proper on-screen K&M indicators!