Dying Light: The Beast PC Performance Analysis Highlights Smooth Gameplay, Underwhelming Visuals

Dying Light: The Beast launched last week on PC, and performance testing has now provided a clearer picture of how Techland’s new C-Engine title holds up across modern hardware. The survival action sequel runs consistently well, even on older GPUs, but its visuals have been described as dated by today’s standards.

According to DSOG, the analysis covered a range of AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, including the Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, and NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, 3080, 4090, 5080, and 5090. Testing on an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D system paired with 32GB DDR5 memory, Dying Light: The Beast proved capable of maintaining high framerates across the board.

All tested GPUs managed to deliver a stable 60FPS experience at 1080p on High settings, with even the older RTX 2080Ti performing reliably. At 1440p, the five most powerful GPUs achieved framerates above 60FPS. Native 4K is more demanding, with only NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 sustaining smooth performance above 60FPS at High settings.

Credit: DSOGaming

Players can adjust a wide range of settings, from texture quality to global illumination, shadows, and reflections. There is also support for NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 4.0, and Intel XeSS 2.0 from launch, offering flexibility for those seeking higher framerates at higher resolutions. However, ray tracing support is absent, and while Techland has confirmed it will arrive in a later update, the lack of the feature has limited the game’s visual impact at launch.

The lack of ray tracing helps explain the game’s excellent performance profile. The current version relies solely on rasterized rendering, which reduces GPU load and allows older hardware to maintain competitive framerates. While this ensures smooth gameplay, it comes at the expense of graphical fidelity.

Credit: DSOGaming

Visual evaluation found Dying Light: The Beast to be serviceable but underwhelming compared to recent releases. Pop-in issues remain noticeable, textures appear flat in some areas, and while the lighting system is an improvement over Dying Light 2, it does not compare to the fidelity seen in modern ray-traced titles.

“Dying Light: The Beast looks really, really dated. Textures could have looked better, and there are major pop-in issues,” wrote John Papadopoulos, who conducted the analysis. “Still, it’s nowhere close to what ray-traced games currently offer.” — John Papadopoulos

Despite this criticism, the overall impression is that Dying Light: The Beast achieves what it sets out to do in performance terms. Smooth framerates, no major stuttering, and support for multiple upscaling technologies create an accessible experience across hardware tiers. For players aiming at high-resolution performance, enabling DLSS, FSR, or XeSS is strongly recommended.

Dying Light: The Beast may not push graphical boundaries in its current state, but its stability, scalability, and performance efficiency stand out in an era where many PC releases struggle with optimization. Once ray tracing support arrives, the title may see its visuals elevated to meet contemporary standards, but at launch, it is defined more by its technical smoothness than its presentation.