NACON has released the latest part in the Test Drive series, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. Powered by the KT Engine, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 560.94, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
KT Racing has added a lot of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Lighting, Shadows, Global Illumination and more. The game also supports NVIDIA DLSS 3 with Frame Generation. Sadly, though, there is no support for AMD FSR 3.0. Instead, the game uses AMD FSR 2. That’s a bummer as those who don’t have an RTX GPU won’t be able to use FG so that they can improve their performance.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for both our CPU and GPU benchmarks, we used the game’s starting area. This appears to be the most demanding area early in the game. Thus, it should give us a pretty good idea of its overall performance.
To see how the game runs with different types of CPUs, we simulated dual-core, quad-core, and hexa-core CPUs. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was completely unplayable on our dual-core PC system. As such, you’ll at least need a modern-day quad-core CPU. Ideally, that CPU should support SMT/Hyper-Threading.
It’s also worth noting that this game is one of the few that sees great benefits with SMT/Hyper-Threading. Take a look at the minimum framerates of our 7950X3D (with all of its eight cores enabled). Thanks to SMT, we saw an 18% performance increase in the minimum framerates. So, make sure to enable it for this title.
To get 60fps at 1080p/Ultra Settings, you’ll need a really powerful GPU. Even our NVIDIA RTX3080 was unable to offer a 60fps experience at that FullHD resolution. On the other hand, the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT was able to push 60fps at all times. The game seems to favour AMD’s GPUs over NVIDIA’s GPUs. After all, the gap between the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the NVIDIA RTX 4090 is not that big in this title.
At 1440p/Ultra Settings, the only GPUs that were able to offer a smooth gaming experience were the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the NVIDIA RTX 4090. And as for Native 4K/Ultra Settings, there is currently no GPU that can offer a 60fps experience.
Now the good news here is that the game can scale down via its graphics settings. At Native 4K with High Settings, the NVIDIA RTX 4090 was able to push 60fps at all times. And, if you don’t want to lower your settings on such a high-end GPU, you can enable DLSS 3 Frame Generation. As I’ve already reported, the DLSS 3 implementation is great in this title.
Graphics-wise, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown looks fine. Its biggest feature on Ultra settings is its amazing LOD. Object and texture pop-ins are kept to a minimum, something that can result in a smoother and more coherent image. The cars also look detailed, and your headlights will cast shadows on all objects. However, the textures of the environments could have looked better (as you will easily spot some low-res textures). The game’s default AA solution is also awful (and you’ll need DLAA to smooth out many of the aliased edges). Overall, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is not a bad game. However, it doesn’t seem to really justify its huge GPU requirements on Ultra settings.
All in all, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is a mixed bag. It’s not the worst-optimized PC game, but it’s also nowhere close to Forza Horizon 5. I’d also say it feels better than The Crew Motorfest. While The Crew Motorfest runs with 60fps at Native 4K/Ultra on the NVIDIA RTX 4090, it lacks a lot of the PC features that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown supports. Not only that but TDUSC has an unlocked framerate. It also has a WAY BETTER draw distance. Oh, and we didn’t experience any major stutters while playing it. And while there is room for improvement here, it’s nowhere close to what you may have initially thought. It’s fine. Not great but also not awful!
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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