Aphelion Benchmarks & PC Performance Analysis

DON’T NOD will release Aphelion on PC later today. Powered by Unreal Engine 5.5.4.0, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.

For our benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 596.21, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 26.3.1 drivers.

DON’T NOD has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Shadows, Reflections, Lights, and more. There is also support for AMD FSR 3.1 and NVIDIA DLSS 4. Sadly, though, there is no support for Intel XeSS 2.0.

Aphelion does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our tests, I used this scene. This appeared to be one of the most demanding I could find early in the game. As such, it should give us a pretty good idea of how it runs.

Aphelion is a GPU-bound title. At 1080p/Very High settings, our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D was not stressed at all. So, it’s kind of pointless to benchmark it when even the NVIDIA RTX 5090 is used to its maximum at that resolution.

Our top five GPUs were able to provide framerates over 60FPS at 1080p/Very High Settings. It’s worth noting that Aphelion is a game that seems to favour AMD’s GPUs. The AMD Radeon RX 6900XT was faster than the NVIDIA RTX 3080. The AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX was also able to compete with the NVIDIA RTX 5080.

For gaming at native 1440p with Very High Settings and 60FPS, you will need an NVIDIA RTX 4090 or an RTX 5090. Owners of a FreeSync or G-Sync monitor will also be able to get a smooth gaming experience with the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX or the NVIDIA RTX 5080.

Finally, there is no GPU that can run the game with 60FPS at Native 4K/Very High Settings. The NVIDIA RTX 5090 was averaging between 51FPS and 56FPS.

Aphelion is using UE5’s Lumen and Nanite techs. As such, you won’t notice any major pop-ins. For the most part, the lighting also looks great. However, contrary to other UE5 games, there are some scenes here that can look a bit flat. Take, for instance, our benchmark scene. It does not look particularly impressive. You can also see some low-quality textures. I’m not saying this is a bad-looking game. However, some areas can look worse than others.

I should also note that Aphelion suffers from traversal stutters. Even though the game uses Unreal Engine 5.5.4.0, it has noticeable traversal stutters. So, in case you’re wondering, no. Newer versions of UE5 will not magically resolve traversal stutters. This is something the devs will have to take into account when developing their games.

All in all, Aphelion runs like a lot of Unreal Engine 5 games. Due to Lumen and Nanite, it can be quite demanding at Native 1440p and Native 4K. The good news is that you can improve its performance by lowering the graphics settings. That, or you can use AMD FSR 3.1/NVIDIA DLSS 4 to improve performance.

Enjoy!

John Papadopoulos

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.”
Contact: Email