Best GPUs for Black Myth: Wukong (2026)

Black Myth: Wukong is the UE5 plus ray tracing showcase that still gets the most "what GPU do I actually need?" questions in 2026, and the answers have shifted under DLSS 4. The card you want depends on two things only: the monitor you're playing on, and whether you want Full RT path tracing on or off.

Cinematic settings hit a comfortable floor with surprisingly modest hardware. Full RT is a separate, much steeper ask. We sorted picks by that trade-off, with one card per monitor tier and an honest read on where each one stops being playable.

Our top pick: ASUS TUF RTX 5070 Ti OC

The 5070 Ti is the practical Full RT floor for Wukong at 1440p, and the ASUS TUF OC is the AIB we'd ship with. Cool, quiet, the 16 GB pool you need for Cinematic textures plus path-traced lighting without spilling.

Quick picks

Specs at a glance

Benchmarks

Numbers below are pulled from reviewer testing on the chip-level cards (Hardware Unboxed, Eurogamer Digital Foundry, TechPowerUp) during the post-DLSS-4 patch cycle in early 2026. Per-AIB variance against the chip-level baseline is typically inside a few percent.

Black Myth: Wukong at 1080p Cinematic (DLSS 4 Quality)

Black Myth: Wukong at 1440p Cinematic (DLSS 4 Quality)

Black Myth: Wukong at 1440p Full RT (DLSS 4 Performance plus MFG 4x)

Black Myth: Wukong at 4K Cinematic (DLSS 4 Quality)

Black Myth: Wukong at 4K Full RT (DLSS 4 Performance plus MFG 4x)

How we picked

Wukong is two games hiding inside one preset menu. At Cinematic settings without ray tracing, it's a pretty UE5 action game that runs comfortably on a wide ladder of cards. Flip Full RT path tracing on, and the BVH overhead plus the higher render resolutions for path-traced light samples push the cost into a different category. Some of our picks are great for the first game and unplayable on the second; we'd rather flag that than pretend a 5070 is a Full RT card.

The other lens is VRAM. Wukong's high-resolution texture pack at 1440p and 4K wants 12 GB minimum, and 16 GB if you want to keep the high-quality textures with any RT load. The 8 GB SKUs in this generation are unacceptable for this game; the 12 GB 5070 is the floor for a Cinematic-only 1440p target; 16 GB is what we'd actually buy at any tier above the budget pick.

Finally, DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation moves the conversation. The "playable" framerate floor at Full RT shifts because MFG 2x and MFG 4x are real options on every Blackwell card, and we factored that in by listing the framerate with MFG on at the preset we'd actually play. We hedge MFG 4x where it noticeably hurts melee combat. Those numbers aren't lies, but the latency feel is real.

Best Overall: ASUS TUF RTX 5070 Ti OC

The RTX 5070 Ti is the only card under flagship pricing that handles Wukong's Full RT path-traced lighting at 1440p with playable framerates after DLSS 4 Performance and MFG kick in. Hardware Unboxed's post-patch testing puts the chip at a 96-FPS average at 1440p Full RT with MFG 4x, with 1% lows in the mid-60s. Comfortable for the open-world traversal and tolerable in the boss fights where MFG's input latency is more noticeable. The 16 GB GDDR7 pool on a 256-bit bus is the floor that lets Cinematic textures sit alongside the BVH structures without spilling, which is what kills the 12 GB cards on this same preset. ASUS's TUF OC variant lands the chip in a vapor-chamber-adjacent cooler with a 3.125-slot footprint, dual BIOS for quiet mode, and DisplayPort 2.1 support on the bigger AIBs of this tier.

What you give up is the 3.125-slot height. SFF builders should look at the SFF-Ready Prime version of the same chip if clearance matters; the TUF wants a real mid-tower and a stable PSU. MFG 4x is doing visible work in the Full RT framerate number, so set MFG to 2x in the dense forest fights where the latency adds and the framerate drops back into the high 60s. Native plus DLSS 4 Performance without MFG lands around 52 FPS at 1440p Full RT, playable on a slow-paced exploration playthrough but not the headline number.

If you have a 1440p 165 Hz monitor and you want Full RT on as the default rather than a screenshot toggle, this is the card. It is also the reasonable single-card answer for the Wukong-specifically buyer in 2026 who plans to keep the GPU through the next two cycles.

Best Value: ASUS Prime RTX 5070 OC

The 5070 lands the 1440p Cinematic sweet spot for buyers who don't want Full RT and don't want to spend top-tier money. TechPowerUp's post-patch numbers put it around a 108-FPS average at 1440p Cinematic with DLSS 4 Quality and MFG 2x, and the 1% lows hold above 70 in the open-world combat segments. The Prime OC variant from ASUS keeps the cooler simple, the footprint at 2.5 slots, and the BIOS profile dual-mode for quiet operation. For 1440p without RT, this is more than enough card and it'll fit cleanly in SFF builds where the TUF can't.

What you give up is Full RT. The 192-bit memory bus plus the 12 GB VRAM ceiling combine into a wall at 1440p Full RT. Average framerates collapse into the high 30s with DLSS Performance, and the 1% lows hit single digits in the dense forest biomes. MFG can't paper over BVH overhead that the card doesn't have raw RT cores to process. The 12 GB pool also pressures Wukong's late-game biome textures even at Cinematic; you'll see VRAM hits around 11.5 GB in the worst sections, which is close enough to the ceiling to be uncomfortable.

If you have a 1440p 144 Hz monitor and you treat Full RT as an experiment you'll toggle off after a screenshot or two, the Prime RTX 5070 OC is the card. The reasonable alternative for a buyer who values VRAM over raw cores is the next pick down (the 5060 Ti 16 GB), which trades the cores for a much bigger buffer at a lower price.

Best Premium: MSI Ventus 3X RTX 5080 OC Plus

The 5080 is the 4K Cinematic card. It handles native 4K Cinematic with DLSS 4 Quality at a comfortable 94-FPS average per TechPowerUp's testing, and MFG 2x clears 120 if you want HDR plus ultra texture pass-throughs. The MSI Ventus 3X OC Plus packages the chip into a 2.6-slot TORX 5.0 cooler that runs quiet enough at this thermal envelope that the card doesn't dominate the build's acoustic profile. The 16 GB GDDR7 pool is the same as the 5070 Ti, but the wider 256-bit bus and the bigger raster horsepower are what carry 4K rendering at the rasterization side of the bill.

What you give up is 4K Full RT. Even with MFG 4x, the framebuffer pressure plus BVH overhead at native 4K path tracing drops 1% lows into the 40s, with average framerates around 58. The framerate looks playable on paper, but the frame-to-frame consistency is rough enough that it doesn't feel that way. Treat the 5080 as the 4K Cinematic floor with optional RT toggles for cutscenes and screenshots, not the 4K Full RT card. The 16 GB VRAM is also the same pool you have on the 5070 Ti, and at 4K with high-quality textures plus any RT load, you'll pressure-test it.

If you have a 4K 120 Hz monitor and your target preset is Cinematic plus RT-off with the option to play with RT settings in cutscenes, the Ventus 3X OC Plus is the card. The jump from a 5070 Ti to a 5080 is mostly raster headroom, not RT headroom; the buyer who wants Full RT at 4K should look at the flagship pick below.

Best Budget: ASUS Prime RTX 5060 Ti OC (16 GB)

The 5060 Ti 16 GB exists in this guide for the buyer who plays at 1080p Cinematic and wants the most VRAM they can get at a small power and price envelope. DLSS 4 Quality at 1080p Cinematic comfortably clears 60 FPS with 1% lows in the high 50s, and the 16 GB pool absorbs Wukong's high-resolution texture pack without spill. The Prime OC variant from ASUS is the 2.5-slot triple-fan compact card with Dual BIOS for quiet operation and a single 8-pin power connector. It fits in cases that don't have room for the TUF or Ventus 3X.

What you give up is everything ray-traced. Full RT at any framerate target is off the table even with MFG 4x, and 1440p Cinematic puts the 128-bit memory bus under more pressure than the chip can absorb. The 5060 Ti is a 1080p card with a generous VRAM pool; treating it as anything else is the trap. No reviewer has published Wukong-specific Cinematic benchmarks on this exact AIB; the chip-level 1080p Cinematic numbers from TechPowerUp's launch-window testing are the basis here, with the post-patch performance variance noted in their April 2026 driver-review piece.

If you have a 1080p 144 Hz monitor, you're playing Wukong on Cinematic with DLSS 4 Quality, and you want a card that survives the next two GPU cycles on a small power budget, this is the pick. The 8 GB variant of the 5060 Ti exists at a similar price and is a trap for this game specifically. Wukong's texture streaming is exactly the workload that makes 16 GB the floor at this tier. Confirm the variant before checkout.

Editor's Pick: ASUS TUF RTX 5090 OC

The 5090 is the only single card that handles Wukong Full RT at 4K with playable framerates after DLSS 4 Performance and MFG 4x. Hardware Unboxed has it at a 98-FPS average at 4K Full RT, 1% lows in the low 70s. The framerate isn't paper FPS in the sense that even without MFG the card lands around 60 native, so the MFG layer is smoothing rather than carrying. The 32 GB GDDR7 framebuffer on a 512-bit bus eats every texture pack the game ships and leaves headroom for HDR pass-throughs. The TUF OC vapor-chamber cooler keeps the 575 W power envelope thermally calm at the cost of physical size: 3.6 slots tall, with a length that wants a real mid-tower or full tower.

What you give up is sanity, in the sense of sticker price and physical footprint. The card is enormous and demands a proper PSU and case; building around a 5090 is a separate exercise from picking a 1440p card. MFG 4x is doing some real work in the Full RT framerate, and the input latency in melee exchanges is perceptible. Set MFG to 2x in the boss fights where reaction timing matters, and the framerate drops to around 72 average, still playable but not the headline number. The price gap from a 5080 is enormous, and the framerate gap shrinks at Cinematic settings where 4K isn't bottlenecked by RT cost.

If you have a 4K 144 Hz monitor and you want Full RT path tracing as a default across many UE5 titles (not just Wukong), this is the pick. The buyer who wants the chip but doesn't want the ROG Astral price tier should confirm the listing is the standard TUF OC and not a separate higher-tier flagship. The listing titles are easy to misread at a glance.

FAQ

Bottom line

If you play Wukong at 1440p and you want Full RT on as the default, the ASUS TUF RTX 5070 Ti OC is the card. It's the practical RT floor and the most defensible single pick across the spread of monitor tiers. If your monitor is 1080p, the ASUS Prime RTX 5060 Ti OC 16 GB gives you Cinematic with DLSS 4 Quality on a small footprint and a generous VRAM pool.

If you're a 4K player who wants Cinematic plus RT-off, the MSI Ventus 3X RTX 5080 OC Plus is the rational answer. And if you want Full RT at 4K, the ASUS TUF RTX 5090 OC is the only single card that gets there, at a price and physical footprint that takes a separate build conversation.