Preface
Many soul players have been waiting for two years for the large-scale DLC "Golden Tree Phantom" finally launched last Friday, but the game was launched within a few days of frying, STEAM from the beginning of the rave reviews to the current mixed reviews, to say that Miyazaki Hidetaka fell off the altar, it seems that there will be no for a while, this amount of DLC for other games will become a sequel, maybe the Golden Tree Phantom has too many expectations, the unique soul frustration has once again mentioned the limit, in the eyes of the hard core, the BOSS value is adjustable, and the exploration reward can be set, only the pinnacle box garden design can not be humiliated.
ONLINE PLAYERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES, AND THIS IS THE STEAMDB LIVE DATA ON THE MORNING OF THE 25TH
"Elden Ring: Shadow of the Golden Tree" is essentially the old engine of the original body, but the game art and map design are completely different, this article will test the performance in the DLC through AMD graphics cards, so as to give players who are ready to enter the pit for reference, and at the end of the article, I will talk about my personal light experience in the shadow of the Golden Tree.
Introduction to Test Hardware
The first is the sapphire RX 7900 XTX platinum version from the flagship level, the appearance style is mainly made of red line embellishments to be more concise, and it is also in line with AMD's theme color, with 14 layers of PCB, aluminum capacitors, six nickel-plated heat pipes and other high-specification materials, 4K gamers choose it very cost-effective.
The second is the sapphire RX 7900 XT ultra platinum OC L, which is positioned as the sub-flagship, with a silver-gray metal shroud + single-sided dynamic island RGB light bar design, with seven nickel-plated heat pipes, all-copper base, aluminum-magnesium alloy frame and other luxury materials, which is the representative work of AMD's high-end non-public version.
The third is the high-end sapphire RX 7900 GRE ultra platinum, the appearance of the silver-gray metal shimmer + single-sided dynamic island RGB light bar design, and XT is different from the specifications - five nickel-plated heat pipes are pressed, and other configurations are available such as alloy frames, flying wing axial flow quick-release fans, and thickened fins.
The fourth is the same high-end positioning of the sapphire RX 7800 XT ultra platinum, the overall materials are on par with the above GRE, and RX 7000 ultra platinum series has two major designs that are very good, the first aspect is the external auxiliary fan interface, which is not to provide more interfaces, but to allow the case fan to better link the graphics card to work. The second aspect is the convenient switching of dual BIOS, which can also be cut in the system software.
The fifth is the mid-to-high-end positioning of the sapphire RX 7700 XT platinum version, the appearance is still embellished with the representative red elements of the platinum version, and the design of the large-size dual-wing axial fan also makes its size reach 280mm long, which is a proficient 2K resolution game graphics card, and the 4K resolution can still be started.
The sixth is the mid-range Sapphire RX 6750 GRE 12GB Polar Edition, the appearance adopts a completely pure white shroud design, blessed with a knife-edge axial fan, four heat pipe cooling system, and completely crushes the RTX 4060 at the same price in terms of performance, at least one body ahead, which is a pretty good cost-effective player in the 2K game graphics card.
The last one is the Sapphire RX 6750 GRE 10GB Platinum Edition, the appearance adopts a pure black and elegant design, with three nickel-plated heat pipes inside, 10 layers of PCB, thickened fins, and dual ball bearing fans, which is positioned as a non-public cost performance, which is cheaper than the 12GB version, and is also an additional 2K game graphics card choice.
In order to better reduce the CPU bottleneck, the test CPU is Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which is very suitable for players who focus on fever games, the threshold of the radiator is low, here is the use of overclocking three This Zhen RZ620 twin tower air cooling to suppress, the simple modification of triangular geometric elements and pure black style are perfectly integrated, the official heat dissipation power consumption reaches 275W, use it to suppress Ryzen 7 7800X3D is as easy as drinking water, and the more important effect is to reduce fan noise.
The RZ620 is equipped with two F5 R120 pure black performance fans, built-in FDB dynamic hydraulic bearings, four-corner shock and noise reduction pads and m/g level dynamic three-axis balance correction to balance performance and noise, and each fan has a male and female 4PIN power supply cable for easy connection.
The RZ620 is equipped with six 6mm heat pipes that fit snugly on a slightly convex CD-patterned copper base, and the heat pipes are specially balanced to maintain consistent performance both horizontally and vertically.
RZ620 accessories list, all of them are made of metal, the texture is very good, equipped with a tube of EX90 silicone grease with a thermal conductivity of 14.8W/m-k, and there is also a fan governor, which can be manually switched between quiet, PWM and OC three modes, which is quite user-friendly.
With the motherboard of Ryzen 7 7800X3D, the MAG B650M MORTAR WIFI DDR5 mortar from MSI features a pure black matte and a unique texture of the mortar, equipped with the strongest 12 (80A) + 2-way luxury power supply at the same price with dual 8PIN power supply, which can stably bring a full Ryzen 9 7950X processor of this level, and it also has two sets of M.2 GEN 4 slots to meet the storage needs of mainstream gamers.
The motherboard is equipped with four DDR5 memory slots, and the official can be overclocked up to DDR5 7600MHz, which is the best overclocking partner for Ryzen 8000G.
In order to meet the fever game combination of Ryzen 7 7800X3D+RX 7900 XTX, it is equipped with MSI MPG A1000G PCIE5, which is a new standard power supply that supports ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0, equipped with a 12VHPWR power supply interface that can output 600W for the graphics card, which can meet the current and future flagships, and it can withstand up to 2 times the instantaneous power of the graphics card, and supports a 10-year after-sales warranty, which is a must-have choice for high-end gamers.
Test configurations, game options, ray tracing quality, and test scenarios
After all, DLC runs on the basis of the ontology,Natural image quality options are also the same,As an open world + box garden system design game,The specific options can cover as many as fourteen,Among them, the special effects of the light and shadow part are particularly comprehensive and in-depth,In addition to the conventional shadows、Light quality、Screen space ambient occlusion and reflection,It also includes global illumination、Light and shadow detail presentation quality This comprehensive and detailed option,Although it is the ancestral engine of the FS society,But the overall picture quality will be better than other soul games。
Like other souls games, "Elden Ring" also locks the upper limit of 60 frames, which is determined by the game's judgment mechanism, so the unlocking frame rate tool rumored on the Internet is not recommended to use (it will increase the difficulty and risk of banning, which is meaningless), and this test is also tested according to the original 60 frame limit. There are four types of preset image quality: Low, Medium, High, and High, and ray tracing is also the same four levels, and ray tracing only involves ambient occlusion and shadow levels, which is quite restrained.
Screenshot of the highest 2160P quality configuration
2160P quality configuration + ray tracing highest screenshot
Ray tracing ambient occlusion and shadows are most easily reflected in the scene outdoors, especially in locations with a lot of vegetation, rocks or buildings, from an aesthetic point of view, these objects will become more three-dimensional, and the shadows can also be rendered correctly according to the light in the game, but because the game does not have FSR or DLSS This kind of improvement technology, turning on ray tracing in these scenes is quite resource-intensive, although this style of painting has little impact on the visual effect, but the game is also locked at 60 frames anyway, My personal suggestion is to be more stable at 60 frames, so let's turn it on.
2160P quality configuration + the highest ray tracing, cemetery plain blessing point scene
2160P quality configuration + the highest ray tracing, facing the scene of the flame wicker giant
DLC's graphics card test scene,Originally, it was decided to fight with the Flame Wicker Giant as the whole process,After all, it has a wide range of fire moves,The fight is more in line with the player's daily life,But later I found that when ray tracing was turned on,I found that the frame rate dropped significantly after entering the vegetation dense forest on the right rear of the initial point cemetery plain,In contrast,The scene on the side of the Flame Wicker Giant has little impact on the performance,So it can be inferred that the former is more costly graphics card performance,It's good to choose it as a test item。
The specific test route is shown in the figure above, before the test, it will be refreshed to noon at the blessing point of the cemetery plain, the weather is fixed and does not rain and there is not much fog to cover it, starting from the blessing point, riding a spirit horse until the end of the door of the church, passing through the dense vegetation forest, the lost path, the small plain in front of the church and the water source area of the church, the scene changes are relatively rich, and it is indeed very suitable for testing the graphics card. Each card is tested twice, taking the average of normal data and showing it at AVG FPS and 1% LOW FPS.
Three resolution presets for maximum image quality and ray-traced frame rate performance
1080P resolution,Mainstream graphics cards are quite easy to run,Even RX 6750 GRE 10GB can run to an average of 60 frames,Even 1% LOW frames are a little more stable than high-end graphics cards,After all, high-end graphics cards will be lazy at this intensity,All the above graphics cards are very stable in the whole frame,It can be seen that it is better optimized than when the game was first launched two years ago,Of course1080P resolutionI personally recommend a graphics card with more than 6GB video memory to run,It will also occupy more than 5G video memory when it is full。
2K resolution,The frame rate of the above graphics card has not changed much,It can still meet the smooth needs of an average of 60 frames,At this time, I saw some high-end positioning graphics cards1% LOW frames are better,The graphics card usage rate has also come up a little,At this time6GB video memory should be just enough。
The 4K resolution is really a bit of a stretch of rendering, and I personally recommend using the RX 7700 XT level to match the minimum smoothness conditions, but its frame rate performance is not as big as other games, with only 9.5% of the difference. The RX 7900 GRE and above can guarantee an absolute smooth level of 60fps on average, and if you have a lower budget, it is not bad to choose the RX 7800 XT, which also has an average of 57fps and 46fps for 1% LOW frames.
The challenge of ray tracing is very difficult,For A card,4K resolution is very difficult to cope with without the blessing of FSR technology,But the flagship can be played in a 2K environment,RX 7900 XTX is more recommended,The average frame、1% LOW frame has stepped into the threshold of smoothness,RX 7900 XT frame rate has dropped slightly,But it has little impact on the experience。 As for other graphics cards,Personally, I think it's better to look at the scenery.,Simply put, the ray tracing performance of this game has to be run with a sub-flagship to be enjoyable.。
The Shadow of the Golden Tree DLC is a light experience
Due to the limited time, this Golden Tree Shadow DLC game content experience is only one day, the actual play time is about 7 hours, and the DLC level is 155 (only a week of completion of 80%~90%, you can clear the ending at any time), which is basically the same as the official recommendation.
Because the DLC has a mechanism that ignores the level to a large extent, it is to balance the consistency of different levels of characters after entering the DLC, you need to collect shadow tree fragments and spirit ash (the second most important) in the DLC to increase the BUFF level, which is considered to be the practice of setting up a DLC independent character growth curve and difficulty system, "Elden Ring" is originally a weak guide, encouraging players to explore, but the shadow tree shelter mechanism is difficult to match with the game progress, which is the biggest problem.
So the hardcore entered the DLC at the beginning just like when he played the main body - first take the fragments that can be taken (without playing any boss) first, and try to unlock more blessing points and maps as much as possible, at least a lot of ghost tree fragments and blessing points are bound, and some are more hidden and easy to miss, but as long as you go to the goal of unlocking the whole map, you can collect a lot, like the hardcore unlocks the map, upgrading the ghost tree and the ash shelter can reach level 10 and level 2 respectively, as you can see from the picture above, In the case of asylum, the character attributes are indeed much stronger.
DLC has also added a lot of new weapons and equipment, among which the blood monster arm is called a must-have powerful wheelchair for novices, picking up fragments in the overlook town to hit the blood monster drop, the cumulative damage of bleeding is particularly high, with the battle of the gray lion slash (brave and tough) strong and tenacious start, in most cases, you can use heavy blows to cause AOE bleeding, of course, heavy armor is a must, but also with damage reduction patience runes, and then make a big brother ashes Most bosses directly become stakes, if you encounter some ADHD bosses, The pace of changing the ashes to the hounds is a must, and this genre of blood exchange is quite fragrant in the DLC, at least there is a sense of participation.
Then the backhand sword was found near the cemetery plain, and it is also one of the few weapons that can bring a refreshing feeling to the hard core in the early stage, with the two-handed sword talisman picked up near the ruins of the temple town to double the damage, especially since it was originally equipped with the combat skills of the rear, and then there is a god-level tumbling in the state of light armor with double insurance, and it is not bad to fight against some humanoid and conventional giant monsters, which can be regarded as regaining the essence of game interaction, but for the alien boss with light pollution and combo madness, using it is to find death.
In addition to the above two weapons,Generally, when pushing the picture, I still like to use a stable shield to poke the flow.,Especially in the face of the boss of the beast lion dance.,The beauty of the power of the show is really good.,But the toughness and flexibility are really off the charts.,All kinds of random locks can't be played.,I don't know what you think.,Anyway, I'm directly using the shield to poke the flow two or three times.,But there's no kind of soul game after many frustrations.,And then the boss sees the unique sense of achievement for the last time.。
As I said at the beginning, whether it is a boss or a character, the values and performance of the DLC are adjustable, and the DLC really has a huge improvement in the map design, the art style has been further improved, the open world and the box garden structure are getting better and better, and after finding the right route in many inconspicuous places, a new area can often be found, and it is a layered relationship, such as finding a hidden door in the sewer from the shadow city, where you can sit in a coffin to reach the huge area of the hermit river, At first glance, it feels like the atmosphere is very underworldly, and it turns out that there are layers of complex structures of dark underground graveyards here.
The depth of the map is far from that, after beating the "torture old man" in the catacommeter, he came to a gloomy valley forest area, and if you look closely, you will find that the map changes mentioned above are like this: Find the secret passage in the large area of the shadow city - the hermit river large area - the dark underground graveyard box garden structure - the valley bottom forest area, and then without looking for two steps at the bottom of the valley, it prompts the spirit horse to be afraid of something that cannot be summoned, which doesn't drive your desire to explore? After unlocking the whole map in the hardcore, I glanced at it and found that the valley forest was actually close to the Punishment Fortress, and maybe it was connected to a box court structure.
However, the overall reward setting of the map is a bit empty.,It often takes a lot of time to run the map.,The harvest is not proportional.,In general, the value、Performance and item rewards can be adjusted by updating the game (although the FS club should not do this),But in terms of map design, I personally think that the FS club has reached a new height.,Do you have to look forward to the next work? This mixed DLC,Priced at 198 yuan, I feel that the comprehensive experience is okay,What do you think?
epilogue
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Golden Tree is a fan-oriented game, and some players may be disappointed by crazy combos, neural knife bosses, and shelter mechanics that don't match the game, but the surprise is that the relationship between the open world and the box garden structure is more integrated, and the art style has been shaped in the eyes of the general public. There's nothing wrong with game performance optimization,It's a lot better than when the base was launched,RX 6750 GRE 10GB This level can already play 2K&60 frames,But the ray tracing requirements are still relatively high,Turn it on as needed。