Mortal Shell 2 on older GPUs barely hits double-digit FPS, but FSR helps

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According to benchmark data made public on August 21, Mortal Shell 2 puts older mid-range GPUs under real pressure. Tested at 1080P, maximum settings, on an Intel Core i9-9900K, the modern DX12 title averaged just 20 FPS on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, with a 17 FPS low. The AMD Radeon RX 590 averaged 18 FPS without any upscaling.

This is not just prettier visuals asking for a little extra headroom. The render budget has shifted upward. Modern DX12 engines push more of the workload onto the GPU, and last-generation mid-range cards are showing their age in plain sight. Native 1080P at maximum settings is no longer an easy ask for them.

The GTX 1060 6GB result stands out because the average is only part of the story. A 17 FPS low points to shaky frame-time stability, which is where a game starts to feel heavier than the average suggests. For cards such as the RX 580, RX 570, and RX 470, it is worse: average frame rates sit between 13 and 16 FPS. That is closer to "it runs" than "it plays well," and a long way from how those cards were once positioned.

Turning on AMD FSR Balanced mode helps, but only enough to underline the problem. The GTX 1060 rises to 29 FPS, while the RX 590 climbs to 25 FPS. That is about where the game starts to feel barely playable, not comfortable. It also points to where big next-generation DX12 releases are headed: super-resolution is becoming a baseline, not an extra.

For players still using a GTX 1060 or RX 590, the practical move is not to force native maximum settings and hope for the best. Dropping one preset and letting FSR fill the gap is the more realistic choice.

When numbers like these land, the usual debate is optimization versus upgrades. On the evidence here, Mortal Shell 2 looks less like a simple performance miss than a shift in hardware assumptions. The game seems built around a newer baseline, and older mid-range cards are simply running into it.