The Need for Speed Unbound in out, offering lots of fun and nice graphics. The game is released for Windows, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. In today’s article I will take a detailed look at the performance and power consumption that you should expect from a high-end RTX 4090, which is more than enough for this game.
The Need for Speed (NFS) racing game franchise has one more addition, the Unbound, which Criterion Games developed. The graphics engine used is Frostbite, which DICE develops. The same engine is used in Battlefield games, Fifa, Madden, and other games. Programmers say that it is not easy to develop a game in this engine, but I can say that it isn’t taxing on the hardware.
The NFS Unbound was released on 2 December 2022, and I bought it instantly to check if it is worth including in my GPU benchmarks. The store I chose to buy this game from had it at the lowest price, Gamivo.com. If you want to help the site and save money at the same time, you could use the affiliate link below to buy this game.
Test System
| Test System Specs | ||||
| Mainboard | ASUS Prime Z690-A Bios Version 0702 (10/22/2021) |
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| CPU | Intel® Core™ i9-12900KF (all cores @ 5 GHz ) | |||
| GPU | Asus ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC | |||
| SSD | XPG SX8200 Pro 2 TB NVMe | |||
| RAM | Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR5 32GB (2 x 16GB) 5200MHz | |||
| Power Supply | Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000 (Cybenetics Titanium) | |||
| Case | DimasTech Bench | |||
| Ambient Temperature | 25°C ±1°C | |||
| Drivers | Nvidia: 527.37 | |||
I use Powenetics V2 to measure power consumption, which allows for more than 1000 readings per sec of current and voltage from all of its sensors. You can read more about this system here.
Frame Rates
Power Consumption
The peak power measurements I got for the GPU and the system are 510.49W and 700.8W, respectively, which are not high for an RTX 4090 (and a 12900K).
Clocks
Temperatures
The GPU temperatures remain low, since it isn’t stressed enough by the game.
Fan Speed
The game doesn’t push the card hard, so the fans’ speeds stay the same throughout all settings and resolutions I tried.
Conclusion
I didn’t have much time to play the game, only an hour or so, excluding the time I devoted to measurements. In the short period that I played, I liked what I saw, and it looks like it is worth its money. We should support the programmers and, in general, the people behind every game by buying them. We should all do that, or else we won’t have any good games to play.
The game is not taxing, and you definitely don’t need a super expensive RTX 4090 to play it. It will do just fine with previous-generation GPUs, which are way more affordable and common.
Below is an affiliate link should you want to buy the game and support hwbusters. I spent the entire Saturday working on this piece, but it was fun, at least, dealing with the NFS Unbound. I just hope to have more time to enjoy it since this month we will move to a new country to finalize the setting up of our new lab, and before I leave, I have a ton of reviews to finish.
