Mass Effect Andromeda Hdr Pc

Mass Consequence: Andromeda PC performance analysis

After five years a new Mass Effect is here, and a whole lot has inverse since BioWare made Mass Effect 3. It'south switched from Unreal Engine 3 to the Dice Frostbite iii engine used for Battleground ane and Dragon Age: Inquisition. With Frostbite iii, Mass Outcome is running on a modern graphics engine—it'southward a major jump in applied science, although currently Mass Effect is missing the DirectX 12 back up that Battlefield 1 has with Frostbite.

Mass Event: Andromeda's environments range from dense psychedelic rainforests to sterile rocky plains that stretch out into gorgeous mountain vistas, all set against skyboxes that'd make Sagan shed a happy tear—information technology looks astonishing, character animations at times notwithstanding. The huge depict distances populated with outposts, vegetation, enemies, and brute accept a lot of graphics horsepower to run. Being something of an open up world game, the engine is going to acquit differently from a Battleground game. And by that, I mean information technology's going to run slower than Battlefield i—sometimes framerates are even lower by half.

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Speedily running through the features and settings options, Andromeda covers nigh of the bases. Resolution support is good, though at ultrawide resolutions the loading screens are cropped. FOV adjustment are bachelor, though the setting is strangely located under the 'gameplay' carte du jour rather than in the video or graphics settings, and the FOV automatically changes to accommodate ultrawide displays. Mods are unfortunately not likely to be a major undertaking, at least not initially, but Dragon Age Inquisition did stop up with some community hacking opening things up, and so there's hope.

<a href="http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ncWYm2ecKytqQgbdXvCGud.jpg" target="_blank">1080p depression quality, click for total size.</a>

As far every bit the settings go, yous can meet the diverse video and graphics options in the top gallery, while this gallery shows how the game looks at each setting. In that location are four presets, depression, medium, loftier, and ultra, plus the custom option that opens everything up. While low represents the minimum quality on all the options, even the ultra setting doesn't quite max things out—HBAO full for example isn't enabled—and I've included that, along with an ultrawide screenshot, as the 'max' quality.

Note that everything beneath the ultra preset by default uses resolution scaling—1080p for high, 900p for medium, and 720p for low—so if you apply 1 of those presets you won't actually go the resolution you lot set. Unless you choose to and then customize the setting and disable resolution scaling, which is what I did for the testing.

A discussion on our sponsor

Every bit our partner for these detailed performance analyses, MSI provided the hardware we needed to examination Mass Effect: Andromeda on a bunch of different AMD and Nvidia GPUs and laptops. Full details of our test equipment and methodology are detailed in our Performance Assay 101 article. Thanks, MSI!

Today we're going to exist showing some benchmarks of Andromeda from a sequence we ran on the planet Eos, one of the more demanding areas early in the game. But proceed in heed Andromeda is a huge game with open world combat and exploration, so performance tin and will vary. Expect significantly college framerates on ships and space stations, for case.

For parts of the game like Eos, entry-level cards like the GTX 1050 and RX 460 volition handle 1080p medium, and even then you're not going to get a full 60 frames per second. Motility upward to the next level with the GTX 1060 and RX 470 and you'll be able to run 1080p ultra, just you'll however see drops below 60 fps unless you tweak some settings. 1440p ultra will need a GTX 1080 or higher for 60 fps, though the 1070 comes shut. And if you demand 4K at 60 frames per second, you're going to want at least a GTX 1080, and probably a 1080 Ti—and and so drop some of the settings to medium/high.

Along with the usual suite of benchmarks and assay, we're as well providing something new: existent-fourth dimension framerate comparisons via video. We have a framerate overlay chart with a choice of likely candidate GPUs at each setting. If you want to run into more than of what each setting looks like and how it runs, bank check it out.

MSI provided all of the hardware for this testing, mostly consisting of its Gaming/Gaming X graphics cards, which were very quiet during our benchmarking—fan noise is never a serious effect and the fans will even shut off completely when the graphics card isn't being used.

Our main test system is MSI'southward new Aegis Ti3, a custom case with an overclocked iv.8GHz i7-7700K, 64GB RAM, and a pair of 512GB Plextor M8Pe Yard.2 NVMe solid-land drives in RAID0. In that location's a 2TB hard drive equally well—not that I used it when I had a fresh 1TB SSD array waiting to be filled. (Note: due to various constraints, the 1080 Ti was tested on my normal GPU testbed, which uses an overclocked i7-5930K.)

For drivers, I tested Nvidia with 378.78 and AMD with 17.3.two. Nvidia has at present released the 378.92 drivers, simply I spoke with Nvidia reps last week and they indicated in that location should be no difference in single GPU performance. SLI on the other hand will work properly with the newer drivers, which is something I'll look at presently. I did retest 1080 Ti performance with the new drivers and saw no significant changes.

MSI also provided three of its gaming notebooks for testing, the GS63VR with GTX 1060, GT62VR with GTX 1070, and GT73VR with GTX 1080. Unfortunately, our early access press business relationship didn't allow us to run the game on more hardware combinations, but I've added gaming notebook results below. (If you're wondering, the retail release appears to lock you out of the game if you 'play' information technology on more than four hardware combinations in a 24 hour period.)

To continue things relatively simple for testing, I've used four settings/resolution combinations. For entry level hardware, I tested at 1080p medium, but I disabled the resolution scaling. Andromeda past default enables scaling from 900p at the medium preset (and 720p using the low preset, with 1080p at the loftier preset). It's non a horrible option to have, but on a PC where you can merely set the game to return at a non-native resolution, I'm not certain what the point is, and forcing users to switch to the custom preset to change the scaling pick is abrasive. For the other three resolutions, 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, I used the ultra preset, which doesn't enable scaling by default.

Jumping into our testing—or at least, repeatedly sprinting around the barren mural of Eos—1080p medium is a adept target for moderate graphics cards. I've tested the GTX 1050, 1050 Ti, and RX 460, but if y'all're looking for older equivalents, the GTX 950, 960, and R7 370 should be pretty like. Low-end cards may not be able to handle 1080p ultra with great operation, but 1080p medium is a viable alternative.

Turning off the high quality temporal AA and running FXAA is a painful visual tradeoff, but temporal anti-aliasing does cause a relatively large 10-xv percent performance hitting. Even with temporal AA on, the entry level cards run Andromeda pretty well—non 60 fps shine, just certainly playable.

Above the 1050 Ti, everything easily runs 1080p medium, which ways you can bump up a few settings and nonetheless run well above 60 fps. The high preset, incidentally, drops framerates by about 40 percentage, so most mainstream cards will want to find a balance between the medium and high presets.

Shooting for 1080p and ultra settings volition require a surprisingly high-cease card if you lot desire a abiding 60 frames per second. The 1060 3GB and 6GB come but shy of that marker, along with the Radeon 470, 480, and Fury X. In fact, only the 1070 and above from Nvidia will nail 60 fps at 1080p ultra. Previous generation cards like the 980 should be right effectually the 60 fps mark also, while the 970 will exist closer to 45 fps.

Notice that the current RX series from AMD does essentially better than the previous R9 serial. There are several possibilities here. Either it'southward due to less VRAM, though this doesn't announced to hinder the RX 470 much, or more probable it's due to lower geometry processing capabilities compared to AMD'due south Polaris GPUs. And I can't rule out driver tuning being focused on the RX series. That doesn't bode well for older AMD cards, but hopefully AMD will better their performance with a future driver.

While the game does contain shooter elements, I'd also note that 60 fps isn't absolutely required—particularly if yous have a M-Sync of FreeSync display. twoscore fps and above is definitely playable. Looking at the entry-level cards, you can also see that 2GB VRAM cards struggle with ultra settings in Andromeda. You'll actually need at to the lowest degree 3 gigabytes of VRAM, with a bill of fare similar the GTX 1060, to get close to lx fps ultra.

If yous take a high-end PC yous'll want to creepo upwards the resolution right forth with all the bells and whistles. And y'all'll need a high-end card like the GTX 1080 or 1080 Ti, which are the only ii that average more than 60 frames per second at this resolution.

By style of comparison, Battleground 1 generally gets in a higher place 60 fps on everything from GTX 970/1060 3GB or R9 390/RX 470 and upwards. Of course that also depends on the map and other factors, but overall I've found Andromeda tends to be a bit more demanding than Battlefield ane. That's using the latest drivers along with DX12 (on AMD cards), and as mentioned already there are many less enervating areas of the game where operation volition be college.

And finally, 4K gaming as usual remains an absolute beast. Even the GTX 1080 only gets about xl fps, and the mighty 1080 Ti still can't get to 60 fps in our criterion sequence. Dropping to high settings adds another 10 percent in performance, which is only about there—toss in a GPU overclock and you should finally break 60 fps. Or merely tweak a few other settings and you'll exist fine.

Other cards will take to make much greater compromises on settings if they're going to have a chance at 4K in Mass Event. Merely considering the Steam hardware survey says less than three percentage of gamers have 1440p or higher resolution displays, the requirements for 4K gaming won't thing to virtually people.

And if you're hoping to take things to the next level and max out all the settings, that will drop performance another 10 percent or so from ultra quality. You lot'll need two GPUs in SLI to have a chance at 4K threescore fps in that case, and Nvidia's 378.92 drivers provide that—come across beneath for more on SLI testing. (AMD's latest 17.3.three drivers also support CrossFire with Mass Effect: Andromeda.)

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Due to the business relationship lock issue, I wasn't able to fully test CPU scaling in advance of the launch, but I have at present run the GTX 1080 Ti with a 4.5GHz i7-5930K using all six cores, and so again with only 4 cores (simulating an i7-4790K, more or less), and then one more than time with only ii cores (i3-7350K estimate). I also ran with four cores just with Hyper-Threading disabled (i5-4690K), and and then I tested notwithstanding over again with a Ryzen 7 1700 overclocked to 3.9GHz.

Looking at CPU scaling, the 4-core i7 is a scrap slower at 1080p testing (five-10 percent) compared to the 6-cadre i7. AMD's overclocked 8-core Ryzen part comes next, with a moderate drop in framerates, followed by the four-core Core i5. Mass Outcome: Andromeda clearly benefits from both CPU clocks also as core counts (virtual as well every bit physical). The four-core i5 shows a significant drib in operation, while using the 2-core setup absolutely tanks functioning.

The same blueprint is credible, though not quite every bit pronounced, at 1080p ultra. Core i5 and above beginning to group together, only Core i3 is well off the pace. Fifty-fifty 1440p ultra still pegs the i3 way behind, with most of the other parts now running similarly (with better minimum fps on i7 and Ryzen). AMD does claim a win at 4K, which is somewhat interesting to meet, while the i3 still shows a small-scale drop in performance, with far more prominent stuttering.

Minimum fps actually takes a hit with 'lesser' CPUs. With a 2-core iv.5GHz Haswell CPU, at 4K the 97 percentile minimum fps is 35 percent lower, and at lower resolutions it's 50-threescore per centum slower. The overclocked Core i5 fleck also hurt overall performance at 1080p, though the difference between information technology and the Core i7 quad-core (simulated) becomes a lot less noticeable at higher resolutions.

Still, at that place's a far greater likelihood of stutter with a true quad-core function than with a quad-cadre plus SMT/Hyper-Threading part. Core i5-4690K users take note. But this is with the fastest GPU around, and things aren't quite so dramatic with lesser graphics cards.

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And finally, nosotros have gaming notebook performance. I've used MSI'south GT73VR, GT62VR, and GS63VR for these tests, which are equipped with GTX 1080, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060 6GB, respectively. The GT73VR actually overclocks the GPU relative to stock mobile 1080, and at college resolutions the notebook just edges out the desktop 1080 (also overclocked). If you though gaming notebooks were all bluster, recollect again!

I'm also pleased to report that the GT73VR maintains a reasonable temperature and relatively subdued noise levels fifty-fifty under load. The GT62VR gets a bit louder, while the GS63VR—which is very thin considering the operation level—is very clearly audible. The mobile CPUs prove a bit of a bottleneck at 1080p medium, but I wouldn't worry about information technology.

Y'all might be wondering virtually the resolution support, and for the above slides I used DSR on the GT73VR and GT62VR—a dainty way to get a bunch of anti-aliasing if y'all take performance to spare. (Notation: I tested the GT73VR both with an external 4K display and DSR, and performance was the same either fashion.) Every bit an actress bonus, both the GT73VR and GT62VR are bachelor with 120Hz G-Sync displays, which tend to exist more useful than 4K on a notebook in my experience.

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And as one final wait at performance, I was able to test SLI with two of MSI'southward GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G cards. I updated the test systems to the 378.92 drivers, every bit prior to that SLI actually reduced performance substantially vs. a single GPU.

For this test, I likewise ran the cards in an X99 arrangement (MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon (opens in new tab) plus i7-5930K), to run into if the actress PCIe lanes on X99 would brand a deviation. This is using an HB SLI span also, so that's not a potential bottleneck. The verdict? Aye, except at 1080p medium (which you wouldn't be using with 1080 SLI).

To be clear, information technology's non a huge boost in functioning going from an overclock 7700K to an overclocked 5930K, but minimum fps in particular conspicuously benefits from the additional PCIe lanes. Interestingly, it's at 4K that the X99 system shows the greatest benefit (percentage-wise), maintaining a 5 fps margin of victory even in what is traditionally a GPU-limited scenario.

Looking at AMD versus Nvidia GPUs, after the 17.3.2 driver update, AMD operation improved past x-15 percent on the RX series. That pushes functioning of the RX 470 and 480 ahead of Nvidia'south 1060 3GB and 6GB cards, making AMD's mainstream GPUs a clearly better value. But without Vega, AMD even so can't touch the 1070, let alone the 1080 and 1080 Ti, and the Fury X performance is much lower than I expected. At the high-end of the GPU spectrum, Nvidia's 10-series GPUs reign supreme.

As it stands, Andromeda can be a fairly demanding game, specially if you lot're hoping for a steady threescore fps at 1080p or college resolution and ultra quality. A powerful graphics carte du jour is required, simply don't skimp on your processor—a Core i3 or older AMD CPU tin can definitely put the brakes on your experience. PCs with more moderate specs will likely desire to await at medium to high quality, simply the good news is that high framerates aren't absolutely required to go the well-nigh out of Andromeda. 60 fps or more is keen to have, but in my experience 30 fps and above is sufficient, though if yous're only averaging xxx-40 fps you can await occasional stuttering as the game drops below that level.

Jarred's love of computers dates back to the dark ages when his dad brought home a DOS 2.iii PC and he left his C-64 behind. He eventually built his start custom PC in 1990 with a 286 12MHz, only to discover information technology was already woefully outdated when Wing Commander was released a few months later. He holds a BS in Informatics from Brigham Immature University and has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask almost game performance.