Gears of War 4 DirectX 12 Performance Analysis

Final Thoughts

Price

Gears of War 4 is available on PC and Xbox One Play Anywhere for £49.99.

Overview

Gears of War 4’s PC version is impeccable and probably the most competent release this year from a technical perspective. The game’s unbelievably detailed options menu allow you to modify loads of settings and find a suitable balance between visual fidelity and performance. Not only that, Gears of War 4 supports asynchronous compute and has a really handy integrated benchmark which can be deployed to accurately assess performance. This is a wonderful addition because benchmarking DirectX 12, especially on Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform is a nightmare. Once the test scene has finished, the game outlines the minimum and average figures as well as a chart detailing the performance fluctuations.

When it comes to performance, the game scales beautifully across a wide range of graphics cards and more affordable solutions can achieve surprisingly high frame rates. Alongside a 1080p display, the entire field barring the GTX 1050 and RX 460 outputted a 60 frames per second average or above while driving the ultra preset. Not only that, the minimum figures aren’t far off the averages which create a perfectly fluid user experience. Interestingly, top-tier NVIDIA cards dominate and this is to be expected due to the lack of competition from AMD in this performance category. The R9 Fury X cannot contend with the GTX 980Ti and offers similar performance to the ASUS STRIX GAMING GTX 1060 OC. Looking further down the ranking order, it’s clear that the R9 390X, R9 Nano, GTX 980 and other popular GPUs perform very similar. Rather surprisingly for a DirectX 12 title, the GTX 1060 fares much better than the RX 480.

Throughout 1440p testing, the ranking order remains largely unchanged at the top although it’s now quite challenging to obtain the desired 60 frames per second target. Only the GTX 1080, GTX 1070, GTX 980Ti, GTX Titan X and R9 Fury X manage this feat. The R9 Fury enjoys an impressive lead over the ASUS STRIX GAMING GTX 1060 OC and isn’t outclassed by the GTX Titan X. Lower down the order, the R9 390X, R9 Nano, RX 480 and R9 390 all slot in above competing Maxwell alternatives and surpass the 50 frames per second range. Also, the RX 470 almost defeats the GTX 980 which is another strong showing. Evidently, AMD mainstream cards excel in 1440p benchmarking and greatly benefit from the architecture’s support for asynchronous compute.

As expected, running the ultra preset on a 4K monitor requires hefty graphics hardware and it’s recommended to scale back the settings. Even the GTX 1080 struggles to break the 50 frames per second barrier and records a 47.6 average. Additionally, the GTX 1070, GTX Titan X and GTX 980Ti perform pretty well but the minimum hovers around 30. Next up is the R9 Fury X which provides a decent performance improvement over the ASUS STRIX GAMING GTX 1060 OC and attains an average above 30. I still wouldn’t describe it as playable unless you’re willing to accept the 30 frames per second experience. Less expensive options like the R9 Nano, R9 390 and RX 480 cannot cope with the graphical demands and designed for lower resolutions.

Overall, the performance across the board is stellar and you shouldn’t encounter any issues maintaining a fluid frame rate with relatively modern GPUs up to 2560×1440. NVIDIA’s premium Pascal products are in a class of their own and comprehensively beat AMD’s current flagship. This isn’t a shocking revelation because AMD hasn’t unveiled their response to NVIDIA’s offerings just yet. Putting the top spots aside, AMD graphics cards like the R9 390X, R9 390, RX 480 and RX 470 perform admirably and seem in their element during 1440p testing.

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