Gadgetory

rise of the Tomb Raider is about to go on sale and fans of the series will no doubt be chomping the beard to delve into the story and discover what the latest installment has to offer if 2013's reboot is anything to go by the second reboot to its series is going to be amazing unfortunately for PC gamers rise of the Tomb Raider was released a few months prior and Xbox they'll be it with vastly inferior graphics and frame rates therefore I feel like we're really seeing this game for the first time and I'm PC we really are rise of the Tomb Raider utilizes AMD's pure hair technology which is an updated version of tress effects featured in the previous title in addition to the pure hair technology which has also been utilized in upcoming Square Enix games such as Deus Ex mankind divided PC games are also able to adjust textures shadows immune occlusion depth of field level of detail and dynamic foliage you might think that because the game uses AMD's open-source hair technology and the fact that the previous title was AMD sponsored that this is also the case with rise of the Tomb Raider sadly this isn't the case and it said in videos once again got their hands and yet another triple-a title so what does this mean for NVIDIA users essentially nothing I mean yes there is a game ready driver ready prior to the official launch and a video has been able to ensure their GPUs are performing optimally these are all things that could have been done if AMD had sponsored the title meanwhile the free spirit that is AMD looks to be getting shafted once again and ultimately so - a game is rocking the Radian GPU MD claims that because this is an Nvidia game west title they don't get the same level of access than they would otherwise this makes optimizing for the game and fixing any issue is extremely difficult therefore it's unlikely we'll see the true AMD Radeon performance and rise of the Tomb Raider even within the next few weeks and it could be longer that being said please let me make it clear that we're testing using a game ready driver from video designed specifically for rise of the Tomb Raider well we're having to rely on AMD's latest Crimson addition 16.1 driver which isn't optimized at all for testing we use this 70 second cutscene which accurately represented the most demanding performances saw throughout the game the cutscene was preferred over game players extremely easy to accurately reproduce over and over again all tests were conducted with pure hair enabled and the very high quality setting preset was used along with some 1080p results using the medium quality preset it's very high quality setting of the tested at 1080p 1440p and 4k both the average and minimum frame rates were recorders and we've included almost all the latest current generation G's many of my people prisoner you should leave this place before it's too late I can't do that I came here for something important so did they if I see you again I'll put an arrow in your throat you and I are on the same side I hope I can prove that to you what's going on down there rise of the Tomb Raider is an incredibly beautiful looking game and damn is the demanding here at 1080p we find that the GTX 960 is good for just 28 FPS with frame rates dip to an unplayable 18 fps and the r9 380 is a much better even the 380 X struggles in 234 fps on average and a 20 FPS minimum that's around 40% less performance than what we were seeing in Just Cause 3 at the same resolution interestingly these frame rates are very similar to what we've seen when testing the witcher 3 while at times with the quality settings maxed out as the GC x 960 average is just 29 FPS with an 18 FPS minimum at 1080p for playable performance at 1080p gamers are going to require geforce gtx 970 or even better a radeon r9 390 it's nice to see the 390 not just outperforming the 970 here but also delivering a solid gaming experience the higher end card such as the nano provided a nice performance boost as did the GTX 980 though as usual it's the gtx 980ti that really stands out dropping the quality preset from very high down to medium while skipping high in the process it's possible to receive smooth playable performance the gtx 960 and r9 381 the I know 380 in particular delivered excellent performance with the 30fps minimum interestingly however the GTX 970 is able to overtake the 390 under these conditions to match the 390x perhaps reducing the amount of VRAM acquired under these lower quality settings helps give the 970 an advantage here something we'll look at a bit later is how much of an impact reducing the quality preset from very high to medium has on the image quality for now let's move on to the 1440p results I suspect they're going to be brutal given what I'm seeing at 1080p at 1440p I know 390 and GTX 970 you were really stretched to their limits it's very surprising to find that at this high resolution the 970 overtakes the 390 by 3 FPS to come within just one frame of the 390x meanwhile the nano and 980 produced similar performance with an average of just 40 FPS while the game was perfectly playable at times you would notice those sub minimums for silky-smooth gameplay the gtx 980ti will be desired at this resolution now at 4k we find that isn't a single GPU capable of delivering smooth playable performance and rise of the Tomb Raider using the very high preset it is worth pointing out that it's possible to customize the quality settings further so the very high preset isn't actually cranking every setting to the max pure hair for example can be turned up even higher in short games want a pair of fury acts or gtx 980ti graphics card a smooth 4k rise of the Tomb Raider gameplay that said even then you're looking at well under 60fps on average ouch personally I like to crank up all the quality settings and enjoy a game in all of its glory however doing so doesn't always make it noticeable difference to the image quality take god rays and fallout 4 as a perfect example in the case of rise of the Tomb Raider we could really find any one quality setting that had a huge impact on performance probably the most significant settings we impact performance was pure hair while it wasn't outrageous for the most part many of these minimum frame rates can be attributed to the use of this setting still this technology looks amazing and frankly without it Lara looks like she could have jumped out of a 10 year old game effects such as motion blur don't do a lot for me and while I often prefer them disabled especially if they're over the top they don't have any meaningful impact on the framerate here we have a quick comparison of the game running at 1080p using the medium high and very high preset in this first set we have a good view of a snow-covered ground please note this image hasn't been blown up or zoomed in the very high texture quality is clearly better when looking at the snow and if I move ahead a bit and pause see the shadow quality is much more detailed the comparison isn't exactly night and day but it's the subtle details like this that really do add to the overall experience the difference here as Lara draws her bow is almost impossible to spot between the high and very high settings the medium quality setting also looks much the same the exception of the bridge in the background which isn't as well lit looking at Lara's face up close there's almost no difference to be seen again the high and very high setting is much the same and that works playing what I saw miss no difference in framerate when comparing the two the medium quality settings is noticeably less shadow in a large space and the texturing of our scarf is much lower in this scene which focuses on Sofia we can see that the very high setting offers more realistic lighting and shadows most noticeable around her waist area the rock behind her also features noticeably better texturing and you can see the improved quality of the depth of field setting when looking at the bridge in the background this scene which looks at Lara and the surrounding environment from a distance shows almost no image quality difference between medium high and very high that's said in the top corner behind the on screen statistics you'll see the very high setting features more dynamic fog finally all three settings set pure hair to on and as you can see the quality setting is the same on medium high and very high it was interesting to discover that for the most part PC gamers can still enjoy a high level of image quality with the medium quality preset that's good news those it affords those with lower end cards such as the GTX 960 and r9 380 to receive a little over 40% more performance despite the lack of optimization provides the Tomb Raider I'm surprised by how well the game runs on Radian based GPUs such as the r9 390x if we take a look at a time-lapse graph you can see the 390x as the times able to match the gtx 980 the issue for the Radian based graphics cards at this point seems to be the margin between the minimum and maximum frame rate is quite large if Andy can reduce this fluctuation in performance then will very likely see some strong numbers from the Radian graphics cards in the future as expected and video has already afforded themselves the chance to optimize the drivers to rise of the Tomb Raider so we don't expect performance to improve much from this point forward as for rise of the Tomb Raider itself I would say despite the linear gameplay it's a heap of fun and those gorgeous graphics keep it activated from start to finish the highly detailed sets and cinematic in-game cutscenes help keep the game fresh and exciting even after hours of gameplay thanks for joining me for another game performance video let me know what you think of the rise of the Tomb Raider game in the comments and I know for my harbour and box comm don't forget to hit like and subscribe and I'll see you guys next time yeah you