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Digital Foundry called The Last of Us Part 1 for PC a disappointing and problematic port, which recently released an extensive, hour-long technical analysis of the game, including the inevitable comparison to the PS5 version.
It all starts with a known problem with shader compilation, an exaggeratedly long process that can put processors in a difficult position, but, nevertheless, with the second patch of The Last of Us Part 1, it has been significantly reduced: benchmarks made by Alexl Battaglia show results in 41 minutes before the update and 25 minutes after.
The editors ran the game on different configurations, confirming the exaggeratedly high requirements for everything to work correctly, as well as the clearly absent video memory management, which makes it very difficult for all owners of video cards equipped with 8 GB of video memory.
For comparison, the Max preset textures match those used on the PS5, but switching to Ultra doesn’t make any noticeable difference other than VRAM usage. Digital Foundry confirms that with the Max preset, you can enjoy a good experience, but with an eye on CPU usage, which is also exaggerated.
When using the AMD Ryzen 3600, this factor heavily affects performance, loading up all the CPU cores and causing obvious frame rate drops: in short, you need to have a significantly more powerful processor than the Sony console to get the same results and play at 60 stable frames per second.
Ultimately, writes Digital Foundry, the port was a deep disappointment, and it’s hard to believe that the developers and publisher weren’t aware of these big issues before they released the game. Updates are already underway, but the path to the optimal PC version seems to be a long one.
