# Bad performance in the horror sample project level

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/bad-performance-in-the-horror-sample-project-level/2670890>\
**Category:** Rendering\
**Tags:** unreal-engine, Performance, question\
**Created:** [November 2, 2025, 4:00am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/bad-performance-in-the-horror-sample-project-level/2670890 "2025-11-02T04:00:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jak6jak](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@jak6jak](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/jak6jak)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2025, 4:00am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/bad-performance-in-the-horror-sample-project-level/2670890/1 "2025-11-02T04:00:11Z")

</div>

Hello,  
I decided to start a project using the horror sample project and right out of the bat I am getting really bad performance which I don’t think is intended. Based on what I can tell it is because of the default postprocessing setup in the level. Any ideas on what settings I should change to increase performance the most? Is this a common issue?.  
Specs:  
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT  
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16 Core Processor  
Windows 11  
UE 5.7 Preview

 ![image](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/c/d/6/cd6e7ce477a46f35bb4d108ff8fe709e6d510077.jpeg)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nande](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/nande/32/1057698_2.png) [@nande](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/nande)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2025, 4:53am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/bad-performance-in-the-horror-sample-project-level/2670890/2 "2025-11-02T04:53:44Z")

</div>

what screen resolution, and quality settings are you using?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ZacD](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@ZacD](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/ZacD)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2025, 7:44pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/bad-performance-in-the-horror-sample-project-level/2670890/3 "2025-11-03T19:44:18Z")

</div>

Looks like you’re CPU bound, not GPU bound.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RedZFlame1](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@RedZFlame1](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/RedZFlame1)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2026, 2:57pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/bad-performance-in-the-horror-sample-project-level/2670890/4 "2026-08-03T14:57:50Z")

</div>

don’t know if it’s still relevant for OP, but maybe this might help someone

based on a unreal insights trace, i found that hardware ray tracing is extremely demanding in this scene (at least for me), making up a majority of my render thread 0 (~80-90%) which was anywhere from 90 up to almost 150 ms long.