Why it matters: As modern PC games grow more demanding, developers increasingly assume players will rely on upscaling to hit target resolutions. Mafia: The Old Country not only follows this trend, but leans into it fully. Its 4K preset doesn't just suggest upscaling; it builds an elaborate, multi-step pipeline around it, signaling a broader shift in how games are designed to run on today's hardware.
Hangar 13 and 2K Games have released a highly informative spec sheet for their upcoming third-person shooter, Mafia: The Old Country. Although the game isn't the most demanding overall, the resolution settings for its highest preset may confuse some readers.
Hangar 13 recommends upscaling at all performance levels. To achieve medium settings with a 1080p output resolution, the company suggests an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT or Nvidia RTX 2070, with upscaling set to "Balanced."
This results in an internal resolution of just 1,114 x 626 pixels. Our recent analysis of upscaling presets suggests this is near the lower limit of acceptable image quality.
Using high graphics settings at 1440p requires at least an RX 6950 XT or RTX 3080 Ti, with upscaling set to "Quality," resulting in an internal render resolution of 960p. This preset also calls for 32 GB of system memory and 12 GB of VRAM.
The "Epic" setting adds yet another layer of upscaling. First, players must select borderless fullscreen mode on a 4K display to establish the output resolution. Then, they must set the render resolution to 75%, yielding 2,880 x 1,620, and finally enable "Quality" upscaling – dropping the internal resolution to 1080p.
Hangar 13 tested all presets using Unreal Engine 5's built-in TSR upscaling, but the game also supports DLSS, FSR, and XeSS. Simply enabling DLSS 4 or FSR 4 in performance mode – without adjusting the resolution scale – might achieve similar results.
While some users may lament that modern games no longer recommend native rendering, upscaling can extend the usefulness of aging graphics cards like the Radeon 5700 XT and GeForce RTX 2070, now six and seven years old, respectively. Additionally, playing Mafia: The Old Country at maximum graphics settings with upscaling only requires recent mid-range GPUs such as the Radeon 9070 and RTX 4070 Ti.
Playing high-end titles at native 4K (much less with native anti-aliasing) is not advisable without enthusiast-class cards such as the RTX 5080, 4090, or 5090. Fortunately, recent improvements in DLSS 4 and FSR 4 have significantly reduced the image quality loss typically associated with upscaling.
The spec sheet for Mafia: The Old Country also does something that should become standard – it lists every setting for every feature in the PC graphics menu, eliminating the need to cycle through them during initial setup. Players should also be pleased to discover that the game only requires 55 GB of storage space.
Mafia: The Old Country launches on Steam on August 7.
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