Besides being one of the year'due south biggest blockbuster games, the arrival of Gears of War four a few days ago is specially exciting for a number of reasons: Windows/Xbox cross-platform multiplayer, the exclusion of older DirectX APIs, the use Unreal Engine 4 versus UE3, and for the simple fact that this is the showtime GoW championship developed exterior of Epic Games.

Gears of War 4 is DX12-only, meaning the game has been built from the ground up to leverage this low-level API on both the PC and Xbox versions, and considering developer 'The Coalition' is a subsidiary of Microsoft, it should come up as no surprise that they worked together on incorporating the applied science, nor that Epic Games assisted in allowing Gears of State of war 4 to take full advantage of UE4'south DX12 support.

Information technology's said that DX12 has increased performance thanks to more direct control over the hardware, simplifying the driver layer, and allowing the developer to make fully informed decisions on how to optimally manage graphics resources.

In an attempt to figure out operation, we've thrown not 20 or even 30 graphics cards at this title, simply 40 -- 41 to be verbal.

Because Gears of War 4 simply supports DX12, it's exclusive to Windows 10 and sadly at this point can only exist purchased through the clunky Windows Store, a rubbish alternative to popular services such as Steam (information technology had to be said...).

In fact, gamers require the latest version of Windows ten with Anniversary Update and it must exist the 64-bit version. On top of that, your arrangement'due south hardware needs to be pretty decent every bit well. The developer suggests at least a Core i5 (Haswell) or AMD FX-6300 (in other words a quad-core processor), 8GB of organisation memory, 2GB of VRAM on either the GeForce GTX 750 Ti or Radeon R7 260X. Oh, and you need 80GB of drive space!

Once again, those are simply the minimum requirements to play the game, so what if you intend to relish it in all of its glory?

In an endeavor to figure that out, nosotros've thrown not 20 or even 30 graphics cards at this title, merely 40 -- 41 to be exact. Equally the ruddy on peak, we've also tested a number of Intel and AMD chips to encounter the impact processors have on operation.

As usual, we've published a separate slice for gameplay commentary, simply having been well received thus far, you might say this marks a new beginning of sorts for the franchise.

Testing Methodology

Our job has been fabricated quite a bit easier thanks to Gears of War 4's built-in benchmark. The test runs for roughly 90 seconds and we institute it to be an authentic representation of actual gameplay performance.

Since the game appears to be well optimized, we didn't test a heap of quality presets for this championship and instead we focused on getting every graphics menu nosotros could. The 'Ultra' preset was used and async compute along with tiled resources were enabled. The ultra preset was re-applied after every resolution alter as some of the options seem to revert back to recommended settings upon a resolution switch. Speaking of resolution, we also tested at 1080p, 1440p and 4K.

The latest AMD and Nvidia graphics drivers were used for testing and for those wondering, multi-GPU technology isn't supported at this fourth dimension.

Examination System Specs

  • Intel Core i7-6700K (4.50GHz)
  • 8GBx4 Kingston Predator DDR4-3000
  • Asrock Z170 Extreme7+ (Intel Z170)
  • Silverstone Strider 700w PSU
  • Crucial MX200 1TB
  • Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
  • Nvidia GeForce 373.06 WHQL
  • AMD Red Edition 16.10.1 Hotfix
  • Radeon RX 480 (8192MB)
  • Radeon RX 470 (4096MB)
  • Radeon RX 460 (4096MB)
  • Radeon R9 Fury X (4096MB)
  • Radeon R9 Fury (4096MB)
  • Radeon R9 Nano (4096MB)
  • Radeon R9 390X (8192MB)
  • Radeon R9 390 (8192MB)
  • Radeon R9 380X (4096MB)
  • Radeon R9 380 (2048MB)
  • Radeon R7 360 (2048MB)
  • Radeon R9 290X (4096MB)
  • Radeon R9 290 (4096MB)
  • Radeon R9 285 (2048MB)
  • Radeon R9 280X (3072MB)
  • Radeon R9 280 (3072MB)
  • Radeon R9 270X (2048MB)
  • Radeon R9 270 (2048MB)
  • Radeon Hd 7970 GHz (3072MB)
  • Radeon HD 7970 (3072MB)
  • Radeon Hard disk drive 7950 Boost (3072MB)
  • Radeon Hard disk drive 7950 (3072MB)
  • Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB)
  • Nvidia Titan Ten (12288MB)
  • GeForce GTX 1080 (8192MB)
  • GeForce GTX 1070 (8192MB)
  • GeForce GTX 1060 (6144MB)
  • GeForce GTX 1060 (3072MB)
  • GeForce GTX Titan (6144MB)
  • GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6144MB)
  • GeForce GTX 980 (4096MB)
  • GeForce GTX 970 (4096MB)
  • GeForce GTX 960 (2048MB)
  • GeForce GTX 950 (2048MB)
  • GeForce GTX 780 Ti (3072MB)
  • GeForce GTX 780 (3072MB)
  • GeForce GTX 770 (2048MB)
  • GeForce GTX 760 (2048MB)
  • GeForce GTX 750 Ti (2048MB)
  • GeForce GTX 680 (2048MB)
  • GeForce GTX 660 Ti (2048MB)

Ultra Doesn't Ever Mean Ultra

Something I noticed when testing many GPUs was the difference in image quality, despite the settings remaining the same. Forcing the settings to ultra, in that location were notwithstanding singled-out differences between the 3GB and 6GB versions of Nvidia'southward GeForce GTX 1060 for example.

The character resolution seemed lower at times on the 3GB model. It was almost similar a dissimilar anti-aliasing method was being used. The characters would appear blurrier and feature lower textures. The environments would often feature lower quality textures likewise, less lighting and lower quality shadows.

Hither are a few examples between the 3GB and 6GB 1060 models:

I admit the close up of this screen doesn't make the divergence super obvious, but the GTX 1060 6GB is showing a slight shadow over the green support while there is no shadow at all for the 3GB card. This is easier to spot when looking at the screenshot in its entirety.

Here you lot can see that the grapheme is clearly softer/blurrier on the 3GB 1060.

Now let'south look at a 2GB vs 4GB comparing with the RX 460.

The commencement case isn't exactly day and night merely the 4GB texturing is meliorate than what we see on the 2GB model.

This shot shows a singled-out deviation between the two RX 460 models, the 4GB version is clearly providing a superior epitome with much greater texture and shadow item.

At present, nosotros're well enlightened that the GTX 1060 and RX 460 are in no way competitors, so please calm yourselves fans of the cerise team. The purpose here, since we take already looked at these 2 cards, was to see what kind of image quality difference there is between a 3GB GeForce to a 2GB Radeon graphics card. Over again, they are not competitors and don't occupy the aforementioned price brackets.

Here nosotros see that the 3GB 1060 provides much more detail over the 2GB RX 460, merely every bit the 4GB RX 460 did. All the same, it is interesting to note that there is significantly more shadow particular on the Nvidia graphics menu, this is also truthful when compared to the 4GB RX 460.

With limited VRAM and a dynamic environment, it'due south difficult to accurately compare the two and texture popular-ins make this even harder. With the character staring at the aforementioned scene for a minute nosotros compared screenshots and y'all tin meet that the 3GB card can house more than texture data.

This makes Gears of War 4 difficult to test GPU performance-wise, as two GPUs can deliver similar performance though one might offer better paradigm quality. Keeping that in listen allow's bank check out the performance numbers…