MindsEye Becomes the Latest Unreal Engine 5 Powerhouse That Even an RTX 5080 Struggles at 4K Without DLSS

Build a Rocket Boy’s ambitious open-world game MindsEye, released this week on PC and consoles, is rapidly gaining notoriety not just for its cinematic visuals and narrative scope—but for its intense GPU demands. Running on Unreal Engine 5, the game has joined the ranks of graphically stunning titles that push even next-generation hardware to its limits.

A detailed performance breakdown by MxBenchmarkPC shows that even NVIDIA's powerful RTX 5080 struggles to hit 60 FPS at 4K resolution unless NVIDIA DLSS (Quality Mode) and Frame Generation are enabled. Without those technologies, MindsEye frequently dips below 60 FPS at native 4K, and only with Multi Frame Generation enabled does it begin to deliver a smoother, high-refresh-rate experience. At 1440p, performance is slightly improved but still hovers near the 60 FPS threshold at native resolution—uncharacteristically low for a GPU of the 5080’s caliber.

Unreal Engine 5: A New Benchmark in Visual Fidelity—And GPU Stress

Powered by Lumen, Nanite, and other next-gen UE5 features, MindsEye showcases a dense, highly detailed open world that looks breathtaking—but it's also a GPU stress test. These performance bottlenecks reinforce growing concerns among PC gamers that UE5 titles may require upscaling and frame interpolation features like DLSS and Frame Generation as standard, even on high-end hardware.

While the RTX 5090 seems to be the only card currently capable of brute-forcing through MindsEye’s demands at native 4K, the game’s performance limitations underline the importance of software optimization and support for scaling technologies.

Turbulent Development & Day-One Issues

Expectations were high for MindsEye, as it’s the debut release from Build a Rocket Boy, the studio founded by former Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies. But despite the talent behind it, the game’s launch has been marred by reports of poor optimization and instability—issues not entirely smoothed over by a substantial day-one patch. Two executives also departed the company just before release, hinting at potential internal strife during the final stretch of development.

Regardless, MindsEye has now launched globally on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. For those with cutting-edge hardware—and a tolerance for performance quirks—it offers a glimpse into what Unreal Engine 5 is capable of in its most demanding form.

Is MindsEye’s performance acceptable considering its visual ambition, or is this a sign that next-gen optimization needs a serious rethink? Let us know what you think in the comments.