TITLE: There are seven days left until the official release of Black Myth: Wukong, let's run the official performance test tool first

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Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark Tool

Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark Tool

At 09:51 GMT+8 (Beijing Time), Game Science released the Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark Tool on Steam.

Opening the tool, the screen reflects the "Game Science" LOGO, followed immediately by the game art LOGO of "Wukong" (C'estbon) [doge], with "Press any key to start" written below. Even though I knew before opening it that it was just a "benchmark tool," seeing the start screen made me feel a burst of excitement, as if I could immediately play the highly anticipated domestic 3A game "Black Myth: Wukong."

This tool tests PC hardware performance by real-time rendering a scene from within the game. I have to say, Game Science's approach is very clever. Releasing the benchmark tool a week before launch allows players who can't wait for the game's release to experience the visual feast of the game in advance, while also providing Game Science with rich sample data for final optimization adjustments before release. Of course, the release of the benchmark tool will definitely attract a wave of traffic, after all, players want to know if their computers can run "Black Myth: Wukong" smoothly. In my view, this is also a good marketing move.

Performance Test

The actual gameplay demo of "Black Myth: Wukong" released by Game Science has already proven its excellent game graphics powered by Unreal Engine 5, but it is worth noting that if the optimization is done poorly, players will certainly not buy it.

Without further ado, let's look at my benchmark scores first.

Test Platform: ASUS TUF Gaming F15 Pro (Ryzen Edition)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU

RAM: 32GB DDR5 5200

This is most likely the graphics setting I will use when playing the full version. Below, I want to test my bottom line, that is, what level of graphics I can achieve while maintaining a stable 60fps, as shown in the figure below.

Under both the Ultra Quality Preset and the Cinematic Quality Preset, I conducted multiple tests and adjusted the super-resolution resolution to meet a frame rate of around 60fps. Turning DLSS to Performance Mode does indeed result in some loss of detail, but for someone like me who doesn't pursue graphics quality, I am satisfied.

However, we shouldn't get our hopes up too early. The benchmark tool released by the officials this time only provides one benchmark scene, mostly rendering water, trees, and buildings, with a small number of characters. The combat scenes with many special effects from the previous PVs did not appear, so we can only see the game's true performance after the full version is released.

Summary

When writing this article, there are only a little more than six days left until the release of "Black Myth: Wukong." I first noticed this domestic 3A game on August 20, 2020, the day Black Myth Wukong released its first game gameplay demo on Bilibili. This game gave all players, including me, hope for the rise of domestic games. What really touched me about "Black Myth: Wukong" is the Chinese story. It shows the world the rich heritage of Chinese culture, builds a bridge for cross-cultural communication, and not only inherits tradition but also innovatively expresses Chinese culture. Subsequently, every gameplay demo released by Game Science has gone viral across the internet, always giving people surprises, leading to higher and higher expectations for it. Some even gave it the title of Game of the Year in advance. This undoubtedly reflects the charm of "Black Myth: Wukong," but with the lesson of Cyberpunk 2077, we should learn to be a bit more rational. The saying "the greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment" is not without reason.

On August 20, let us witness the birth of "Black Myth: Wukong" together.