Pragmata Performance Review + Best PC Settings

Pragmata, Capcom's second RE engine-based game, offers gameplay reminiscent of the Xbox 360 era but boasts significantly improved visuals. Built on the Resident Evil engine, it runs exceptionally well across a broad spectrum of hardware, even performing adequately on the Nintendo Switch. Most gaming PCs should be able to run Pragmata without major issues, though optimizing the balance between image quality and performance is key. High-end machines with cards like the RTX 5080 might simply crank all settings, including path tracing and frame generation, to maximum. However, for the majority of players, some thoughtful adjustments can yield substantial benefits. The game is primarily set on a lunar space station, featuring numerous reflective surfaces and intricate lighting effects that are well-suited for ray tracing. While ray tracing undeniably enhances the game's aesthetics, its full potential is largely accessible only to users with high-end Nvidia graphics cards. Pragmata offers two main types of ray tracing: a general toggle for RT global illumination and reflections, and path tracing, which completely replaces the rasterized lighting engine with ray tracing. Surprisingly, in environments with many shiny surfaces, the standard ray-traced reflections can sometimes degrade the visual quality. This is particularly noticeable in the hideout, a recurring hub, where metallic floors with a dark gray reflective sheen look excellent with path-traced lighting but exhibit incredibly noisy reflections from indirect lighting at lower ray-traced settings. In one hallway, this setting created an illusion of raindrops indoors in outer space. Interestingly, these specific floors appear better with no ray tracing at all, which is a boon for performance optimization. Conversely, in areas with more transparent reflective surfaces, ray tracing genuinely looks fantastic. However, the trade-off of noisy, static floors makes this less appealing. For Nvidia cards, DLSS ray reconstruction could offer a solution, but it's only available when path tracing is enabled, likely due to its performance cost, yet it would significantly improve baseline ray tracing, especially when combined with upscaling. For those with mid-to-high-end Nvidia cards, path tracing is highly recommended for its incredible visual impact, though it's currently unavailable for AMD graphics cards, even with FSR. Given Pragmata's efficient performance, most players can run the game at high settings even with modest graphics cards. For example, an RTX 3060Ti at 1080p can achieve a stable 97 FPS with ray tracing enabled and no DLSS upscaling. Path tracing, however, challenges this card, dropping frame rates to 44 FPS, especially since it doesn't support frame generation. The crucial question is individual performance goals. For a comfortable 60 FPS, setting the preset to "quality" or "balanced" should suffice for most. Yet, PC gaming's essence lies in fine-tuning. Pragmata allows for adjustments that can deliver performance close to the balanced preset while maintaining visuals akin to the quality preset. A good starting point is the balanced preset, tweaking from there. The settings menu provides preview images, showing the impact of each setting on VRAM and GPU. The primary objective is to maintain image quality, particularly during combat, while maximizing frame rate. Lighting is a significant performance drain in many modern games. Pragmata offers three lighting settings, with the balanced preset setting global illumination quality to high. While this greatly enhances atmospheric lighting and reflections, it's performance-intensive. Reducing global illumination from high to medium can yield an 11% performance gain. Though it slightly impacts image quality, an RTX 5080 saw an increase from 101 FPS to 113 FPS at 4K by making this change. Hair technology, often included in modern games, typically incurs a substantial performance cost, and Pragmata is no exception, despite only one character having noticeable hair. It's generally recommended to set this to low, though it can look poor at the lowest setting. A middle ground, like medium, is suggested, or turning it off entirely for maximum frame rate, especially on handhelds. Texture settings, including texture quality and texture filtering, primarily affect performance when VRAM is exhausted. If you have at least 8 GB of VRAM, maxing these settings is advisable, only lowering them if stuttering occurs. For 4K gaming, a GPU with more than 8 GB of VRAM is generally recommended. Mesh quality, which dictates how 3D models are rendered, is another VRAM-dependent setting. Maxing it out is preferred for character models, especially given the game's robotic enemies, and only reducing it to high if VRAM becomes a constraint. Shadow quality, set to medium in the balanced preset, offers performance savings. However, given the game's extensive shadow placement, increasing it to high can significantly improve aesthetics with minimal processing load or VRAM increase, particularly if global illumination was previously lowered. Keeping shadows at medium is recommended only if VRAM is severely limited. Shadow cache, a toggle that stores shadow information in VRAM, greatly improves performance by reducing retrieval times. It should be left on unless extreme VRAM conservation is necessary. Contact shadows, which cast shadows on 3D objects, have negligible performance impact and should be enabled for a slight visual enhancement. Effects quality, particularly for the compelling explosions of enemies into fire, metal, and blue goo, is a matter of personal preference. While lowering it can save performance, the visual spectacle might be missed. If environmental lighting is prioritized over explosions, global illumination can be increased instead. Video quality only affects cutscenes, with options for 1080p or 4K. It should match the display resolution, acknowledging a slight frame rate drop during cutscenes, which is generally acceptable. Anti-aliasing depends on upscaling usage. If DLSS or FSR is enabled, the game's built-in anti-aliasing is largely unnecessary. For native resolution play, FXAA + TAA is recommended, or disabling it if performance is critical. Collision, when turned off, can boost frame rates by about 5%, but sacrifices subtle environmental details. While keeping it on is preferred for visual fidelity, it's an early candidate for disabling if aiming for 60 FPS. Bloom, a post-processing effect, has minimal performance impact and its usage is purely aesthetic. Screen space reflections, due to Pragmata's many reflective surfaces, significantly impact visuals. Disabling them can improve frame rates by around 10% if maximizing performance is the goal. Subsurface scattering, which enhances skin realism, mainly affects the character Diana in Pragmata. Its performance cost is generally not worth it, given that most gameplay involves viewing the back of her head while she rides on the player's shoulder. Other post-processing effects like motion blur have negligible performance impact and are subject to personal taste. Testing of these settings involved various resolutions and graphics cards. An RTX 3060Ti at 1080p, with tweaked settings, achieved 100-110 FPS and even managed 60-70 FPS at 1440p. An AMD Radeon RX970 excelled at 1440p, reaching 130-140 FPS, and performed at 70-80 FPS at 4K. The RTX 5080 at 4K delivered 100-110 FPS with recommended settings, leaving room for ray or path tracing, though for the latter, DLSS performance mode is suggested. Further testing with an RTX 5090 at 4K during a complex boss battle revealed the impact of presets. The minimum preset yielded 195 FPS but resulted in a flat, lifeless visual. The balanced preset dropped to 126 FPS but significantly improved visuals. Jackie's recommended settings, surprisingly, increased the average frame rate to 129 FPS while enhancing explosions without sacrificing ambient details. The quality preset, enabling ray tracing, lowered the frame rate to 115 FPS, still solid and improvable with DLSS. Maxing out all settings with path tracing, even with DLSS set to balanced, brought the RTX 5090 down to 59 FPS, suggesting DLSS performance mode and potentially frame generation for a smoother experience. In conclusion, Pragmata demonstrates excellent scalability, running well on older hardware like the RTX 3060 Ti at nearly 120 FPS at 1080p, while also offering ample room for high-end rigs to push visual boundaries. The game's adaptability empowers players to make meaningful choices about performance and visual fidelity.