Microsoft has just released the latest game by Compulsion Games, South of Midnight. Powered by Unreal Engine 4, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 572.83, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.3.2 drivers.
Compulsion Games has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Shadows, Shading, Textures and more. The game also supports DLSS 3, however, there is no support for Intel XeSS or AMD FSR. Not only that, but the Microsoft Store/Game Pass version does not have any option for Frame Gen. So, if you’re planning to get it, I recommend the Steam version (which does support Frame Gen).
South of Midnight does not come with a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, we used the following scene. This area seemed to be more demanding than the others one early in the game. So, it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game runs.
South of Midnight is mainly a GPU-bound title, and it can run smoothly on a wide range of GPUs. Even the NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti was able to offer a smooth gaming experience at 1080p/Ultra Settings (provided you use a G-Sync monitor).
At 1440p/Ultra, the NVIDIA RTX 3080 and AMD Radeon RX 6900XT were able to offer a smooth gaming experience. There were some drops to mid-50s. However, if you’re using a G-Sync/FreeSync monitor, you won’t notice them.
As for Native 4K/Ultra, only NVIDIA’s GPUs were able to run it with over 60FPS at all times. To be more precise, the NVIDIA RTX 4090, RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 were able to offer a smooth gaming experience.
Graphics-wise, I wasn’t particularly impressed by South of Midnight. The game uses a Stop Motion style that feels weird in motion. I’m also not a fan of the art style. There are some cool weather effects but this isn’t a graphical showcase, even on a high-end PC. It doesn’t look bad. It just doesn’t look impressive in any way.
Before closing, I should note that the game does not suffer from shader compilation stutters. When you first launch it, it will pre-compile its shaders. However, I did notice some traversal stutters here and there.
All in all, South of Midnight can run smoothly on a wide range of GPUs. As such, a lot of players will be able to run it on their PCs. The game does not have any shader compilation stutters, but it does have some traversal stutters. Mouse sensitivity is a bit low on default settings, though the camera movement felt fine with a high DPI mouse.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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