A surprise hit.

ARC Raiders has rocketed into the hearts of gamers and critics alike, earning widespread praise as one of the standout extraction shooters of the year. In our review, we’ll find out whether its Unreal Engine 5 foundation delivers technically - or if it’s once again haunted by the usual assortment of issues. Florian Glaser, 👁 Florian Glaser, ✓ (translated by DeepL / Ninh Duy) Published 11/06/2025 🇩🇪 Gaming Laptop Desktop Gamecheck

An extraction shooter for the masses - that’s the simplest way to sum up ARC Raiders from Embark Studios. While other games in this genre, such as Escape from Tarkov, have struggled to break into the mainstream - likely due to their steep learning curves and limited accessibility - ARC Raiders manages to get almost everything right, making it inviting for a broad audience.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time with this third-person title and immediately wanted to keep playing. Much of that comes down to its gripping introduction - both the cinematic opening and the tutorial - packed with atmosphere and clear explanations of the game’s core systems. The first few matches are incredibly intense, sparking curiosity about the unique, immersive world while raising your pulse with tense encounters against both humans and machines. Smooth, responsive controls and stylish animations add to the excellent sense of movement. Long-term engagement feels almost guaranteed, thanks to the satisfying mix of loot and crafting systems, engaging quests, and a deep skill tree that rewards continued play.

The game’s visual style deserves real credit - it blends natural landscapes with modern industrial and technological elements in a remarkably cohesive way. The clean, futuristic design also stands out as a major plus. We did encounter a few bugs during testing, particularly when changing the resolution, which sometimes caused the HUD to scale incorrectly. It’s also a bit disappointing that certain objects or effects, like shadows, occasionally pop in regardless of the chosen settings. Still, ARC Raiders showcases one of the most stable and visually impressive implementations of Unreal Engine 5 to date.

Performance is excellent, and the game is surprisingly compact, with a download size of about 27 GB (as of November 3, 2025). That said, startup times could use some optimization. On the bright side, shader preloading is noticeably shorter than in many other UE5-based titles.

The team behind ARC Raiders also deserves credit for its extensive options menu, which conveniently applies most changes instantly - no restart required. Many developers could learn a thing or two from the game’s clear, detailed explanations of each setting. As expected, this shooter supports a full suite of modern graphical features, including frame generation, ray tracing, and various upscaling technologies. Alongside TAAU and TSR, ARC Raiders also supports DLSS, XeSS, and FSR.

The only slightly puzzling aspect is the inclusion of three separate resolution controls (see screenshots) - a bit of overkill that could easily confuse players.

The different graphic presets primarily affect draw distance - especially level of detail and vegetation density - as shown in our comparison images. Texture quality remains impressive even on the lowest preset, but you’ll definitely want to enable anti-aliasing. Without it, many elements in the scene, like the protagonist’s hair, tend to flicker noticeably.

The so-called practice range serves as our benchmark sequence, accessible after completing four matches. During testing, we sprinted in a straight line down a street in the outdoor area for about 20 seconds—until the character ran out of stamina (see video). Unlike real matches, which lack a fixed starting point, this method provides consistent, reproducible results.

As mentioned earlier, the hardware requirements for an Unreal Engine 5 title are surprisingly moderate. While weaker iGPUs - like the Radeon 820M - struggle to reach playable performance at 1,920 × 1,080 resolution on minimal settings without upscaling, mid-range GPUs such as the GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop handle the game smoothly at maximum settings, delivering nearly 60 FPS in Full HD - with full ray tracing enabled, no less.

ARC Raiders 1920x1080 Low Preset 1920x1080 Medium Preset AA:TSR 1920x1080 High Preset AA:TSR 1920x1080 Epic Preset + Epic Raytracing AA:TSR NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, i9-13900K Desktop-PC Asus ROG Strix Z790-F

247 (183.4min, 217P0.1, 227P1) fps ∼100%

203 (180.8min, 184.1P0.1, 187.2P1) fps ∼100%

135.3 (115.3min, 125.8P0.1, 127.6P1) fps ∼100%

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop, Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Razer Blade 16 2025

182.5 (101min, 110.5P0.1, 132.4P1) fps ∼74%

167 (123.4min, 127.5P0.1, 143.9P1) fps ∼82%

116.1 (66.1min, 91.9P0.1, 106.6P1) fps ∼86%

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop, Ultra 9 275HX Tuxedo Stellaris 16

194.4 (145.9min, 162.1P0.1, 180.5P1) fps ∼79%

156.1 (133.7min, 139.6P0.1, 143.7P1) fps ∼77%

106.4 (98.6min, 99.4P0.1, 101.5P1) fps ∼79%

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, R9 7940HS Razer Blade 14 Mid 23

183.1 (112.7min, 139.6P0.1, 154.9P1) fps ∼100%

113.5 (103.4min, 104.7P0.1, 106.3P1) fps ∼46%

91.7 (83.8min, 84.1P0.1, 85.6P1) fps ∼45%

58.7 (54.5min, 54.8P0.1, 55.5P1) fps ∼43%

AMD Radeon 820M, Ryzen AI 5 330 Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 16AKP10

19.4 (17.1min, 17.2P0.1, 17.6P1) fps ∼11%

9.85 (1.711min, 2.07P0.1, 8.76P1) fps ∼4%

6.54 (5.48min, 5.53P0.1, 5.68P1) fps ∼3%

You don’t need a high-end GPU to enjoy ARC Raiders in QHD either. An RTX 4060 Laptop delivers solid frame rates here as well, hitting roughly 60 FPS at 2,560 × 1,440 with the Epic preset when using DLSS on Quality mode.

ARC Raiders 2560x1440 Epic Preset + Epic Raytracing AA:TSR 2560x1440 Epic Preset + Epic Raytracing + DLSS Quality NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, i9-13900K Desktop-PC Asus ROG Strix Z790-F

102.7 (86.9min, 95.9P0.1, 97P1) fps ∼100%

136.5 (91.3min, 121.7P0.1, 127.4P1) fps ∼100%

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop, Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Razer Blade 16 2025

87.5 (81.4min, 82.2P0.1, 83P1) fps ∼85%

116.9 (83.9min, 88.1P0.1, 104.9P1) fps ∼86%

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop, Ultra 9 275HX Tuxedo Stellaris 16

78.9 (72.6min, 72.8P0.1, 75.1P1) fps ∼77%

106.5 (96.5min, 98.8P0.1, 100.8P1) fps ∼78%

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, R9 7940HS Razer Blade 14 Mid 23

40.5 (37.5min, 37.6P0.1, 37.9P1) fps ∼39%

59.1 (55.2min, 55.5P0.1, 56.1P1) fps ∼43%

You’ll only need a top-tier GPU if you plan to play in 4K without upscaling. For 3,840 × 2,160 resolution with maximum settings and ray tracing enabled, we recommend at least a mobile GeForce RTX 5080. With DLSS set to Quality, that GPU breaks the 60 FPS barrier in our benchmark.

ARC Raiders 3840x2160 Epic Preset + Epic Raytracing AA:TSR 3840x2160 Epic Preset + Epic Raytracing + DLSS Quality NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, i9-13900K Desktop-PC Asus ROG Strix Z790-F

61.3 (55.9min, 56P0.1, 56.3P1) fps ∼100%

93.5 (87min, 88P0.1, 89P1) fps ∼100%

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop, Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Razer Blade 16 2025

51.1 (42.1min, 42.2P0.1, 47.8P1) fps ∼83%

78 (72.3min, 73.3P0.1, 74P1) fps ∼83%

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop, Ultra 9 275HX Tuxedo Stellaris 16

46.1 (41.4min, 42.1P0.1, 43P1) fps ∼75%

69.2 (45.1min, 50.1P0.1, 65P1) fps ∼74%

As expected, additional performance gains can be achieved through Frame Generation. Using the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 laptop GPUs as examples, we analyzed the resulting frame rate improvements. As always, the perceived smoothness of Frame Generation doesn’t perfectly match the measured FPS numbers. However, in ARC Raiders, the overall image felt noticeably smoother than in many other titles with Frame Gen enabled.

3.840 x 2,160, Epic Preset + Epic Raytracing	DLSS Quality	DLSS Quality + MFGx2	DLSS Quality + MFGx4
GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop	78 fps	124 fps	207 fps
GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop	69 fps	107 fps	175 fps

Because gaming benchmarks are time-consuming and sometimes delayed by activation restrictions, we can only include a limited number of results at the time of publication. Additional GPU benchmarks will be added later.

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Editor of the original article: Florian Glaser - Managing Editor Gaming Laptops - 683 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2009

I discovered my interest in computers in my childhood, growing up with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 in the early 1990s. I was especially fascinated with computer games, even from an early age. From Monkey Island through Lands of Lore to Doom, I tried every game I could get my hands on. I have been working for Notebookcheck since 2009 with my focus mostly being on high-performance gaming laptops.

Translator: Ninh Ngoc Duy - Editorial Assistant - 650972 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2008

My main responsibility as an editorial assistant is maintaining the Library section, which aggregates reviews from other publications and channels. In addition, my daily breakfast is Notebookcheck’s long list of new content, which I comb through to select the most interesting topics for translation from English to French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch.“

Florian Glaser, 2025-11- 6 (Update: 2025-11- 6)