Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Performance Review @ [H]

[FrgMstr]

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Performance Review

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is out; this new game uses the id Tech 6 game engine and Vulkan API to give you a great gaming experience on the PC with today’s latest GPUs. We will compare performance features, see what settings work best, find what is playable in the game and compare performance among several video cards.

 

[TMCM]

Damn looks like I will need to be replacing 970 soon

 

[jardows]

I wonder if GPU culling does anything if you have lower-end hardware? Maybe that's what it's for?

 

[DejaWiz]

Damn impressive Vega results! Thanks for the great review, [H]!

 

[MavericK]

The performance is pretty good for me - a few times the framerate has really tanked; I think it seems to be related to lighting or fog in certain scenes.

 

[JustReason]

I really liked the performance breakdown of the selections one by one and the descriptions.

 

[BloodyIron]

Since the game is native Vulkan, when can we see this native on Linux? All the hard work is already done... and as we have seen with DOOM (2016), id Vulkan engines run flawlessly on Linux (with very little effort).

Seriously, it takes so little effort to get DOOM (2016) working on Linux, it doesn't make sense they don't want to sell to Linux users. They would maybe spend half a day to release native, and the amount of native sales would grossly turn the venture profitable.

I haven't tried Wolf 2 on Linux just yet, but... again... the DOOM example... c'mon...

 

[OutOfPhase]

Come on guys, I really expected more divisive vendor-based arguing at this point. Y'all are slipping.

 

[lucidrenegade]

Come on guys, I really expected more divisive vendor-based arguing at this point. Y'all are slipping.

The night is young.

 

[FrgMstr]

Come on guys, I really expected more divisive vendor-based arguing at this point. Y'all are slipping.

One of the first posts on our FB page was to rip into us how we intentionally did not show 1080 Ti results at 1080p so as to put a good light on NVIDIA. Glad y'all have not gone to that level today.

 

[chenw]

Well, my take away is that, AMD is definitely showing impressive results again, but maybe nVidia's Driver issues AGAIN?

If true, then nVidia needs to get their act together.

If false, kudos to AMD

But unfortunately it still doesn't change the overall landscape at the top...

EDIT: forgot to mention, Vulkan for president?

 

[Brackle]

Well, my take away is that, AMD is definitely showing impressive results again, but maybe nVidia's Driver issues AGAIN?

If true, then nVidia needs to get their act together.

If false, kudos to AMD

But unfortunately it still doesn't change the overall landscape at the top...

EDIT: forgot to mention, Vulkan for president?

I agree with you chew, but lets be honest. Nvidia can easily take their time with drivers etc. It is not like AMD is threatening them with new cards. Vega is late, hot, and Nvidia's new card is around the corner. IMO Nvidia owns the dGPU Market.

 

[Willypants]

Question for Kyle or anyone else: Since this is spilling over Vega's 8GB of HBM, would the HBCC come in handy in a situation like this?

 

[Imhotep]

The take away from this is that Vega is a better buy. Neither card is 4K capable unless you are willing to spent on two cards. Lets sum it up + a Freesync or a gsync monitor.
Setting higher allocation for HBCC nets more performance.

Thanks for the review [H] !

 

[FrgMstr]

Question for Kyle or anyone else: Since this is spilling over Vega's 8GB of HBM, would the HBCC come in handy in a situation like this?

Will make a call on that when we see it work.

 

[lostin3d]

Kyle, seriously awesome review. Great detail on all the unique things this game's engine brings to the table. Thanks!

 

[FrgMstr]

Kyle, seriously awesome review. Great detail on all the unique things this game's engine brings to the table. Thanks!

Brent did all the heavy lifting and did a GREAT job.

 

[RickyJ]

Wow, finally a game that I want to play that my 980 won't be enough for at 1200p@60Hz.

Thanks for another great review guys!

 

[Reality]

I noticed quite a few sites showing the 1070 noticeably faster than the 980ti in this game, any ideas why that would be other than the 2more GB of memory?

 

[IdiotInCharge]

The take away from this is that Vega is a better buy.

Given the departure from Doom performance, it's more likely that Nvidia hasn't gotten around to really optimizing this game yet. Seems to be a pattern with Vulkan games, which is fine: they're naturally AMD-first, and it's not like performance is actually bad, the game even runs better on Nvidia in parts. Something I expect AMD's driver guy to get around to addressing at some point...

And you can never make a 'better buy' claim based solely on one game- unless you're only talking about yourself, and that's the only game you're going to play :-p

 

[noko]

No Vega VRam usage numbers, also if HBCC makes any meaningful difference for gaming in this title?

Love reading everyone of Brent Gaming reviews, they always seems fresh, exciting and at a good fast pace giving a great feel for what the game will offer.

Personally I love this game mostly for the combat experience which is hell of a lot of fun. The finding of the Gold, endless cards etc. I can take only so much. The non-fleshy type characters look great, the robots etc. The people characters look more dated. This game can look rather awesome and awe inspiring and at other times not, just as Brent indicated. For me it is a very good game and well worth the price of admission.

 

[DrezKill]

Thanks Brent and Kyle, this article had EXACTLY the information I needed. I been waiting a long time to play this game, but with my current hardware I think I will continue to wait. Maybe I'll grab a friend's copy and test the game out, but already it's looking like my 970 will have to go.

Damn looks like I will need to be replacing 970 soon

Yyyeeeaaahhh that's what's been running through my head after I read this. Honestly the 4GB has been hurting me for a while, just not all that badly. Not until now. I still feel like the 970's GPU is more than capable, if only the card had more vRAM on it. This is one of those times when I wish vRAM on graphics cards was upgradeable.

Wow, finally a game that I want to play that my 980 won't be enough for at 1200p@60Hz.

Yeah I too am at 1920x1200 on a 60 Hz display, except I'm on a 970. So uuhh, time to upgrade I guess. It's already late in the year though, I'm looking to see what shows up next year. Vega 64 wasn't what I had hoped it would be. Vega 56 was interesting and seemed like a much better buy than the 1070, but now the 1070 Ti is out. Naw I think I'll wait to see what next year brings. I'm a patient dude, I'm not absolutely dying to play Wolf2 right this minute. I can wait for a better experience on more powerful hardware. Wow, I wasn't expecting the game to turn out like this though. Honestly I was hoping for something closer to Doom 4. With that game, the only compromises I had to make were that I couldn't use Nightmare level shadows or virtual textures. Wolf2 seems to be decently more demanding.

Since the game is native Vulkan, when can we see this native on Linux? All the hard work is already done... and as we have seen with DOOM (2016), id Vulkan engines run flawlessly on Linux (with very little effort).

Seriously, it takes so little effort to get DOOM (2016) working on Linux, it doesn't make sense they don't want to sell to Linux users. They would maybe spend half a day to release native, and the amount of native sales would grossly turn the venture profitable.

I haven't tried Wolf 2 on Linux just yet, but... again... the DOOM example... c'mon...

No native Doom 4 or Wolfenstein 2 on Linux cuz Bethesda, that's fucking why. Linux releases are a no-brainer, but Bethesda are asshats. Any engine and game built for OpenGL or Vulkan should be on Linux no question, but alas that's not the world we live in. If Bethesda didn't own these IPs, and if id Software was still independent, we would have seen Linux versions no doubt. They woulda helped MachineGames get Wolf2 on Linux with tha quickness. Most id Software games (even games developed by other devs like Raven Software) had Linux versions if I am not mistaken, but that came to an end when Bethesda got their mitts on the company. Well, hopefully the community can fix what the publisher didn't allow the devs to do.

 

[Olle P]

I'm curious to just how well lesser hardware works. The article only provide speculations.
For example: How does reducing Image Streaming below "Ultra" effect the visuals? How does it effect VRAM usage?
How well (or poor) does the popular 3GB version of GTX 1060 work?

 

[ole-m]

I'm curious to just how well lesser hardware works. The article only provide speculations.
For example: How does reducing Image Streaming below "Ultra" effect the visuals? How does it effect VRAM usage?
How well (or poor) does the popular 3GB version of GTX 1060 work?

medium->high textures res and rest high->uber @ 2560x1440.

It should be equal to a gtx970 which does above.

 

[renz496]

I wonder if GPU culling does anything if you have lower-end hardware? Maybe that's what it's for?

i think we should see performance improvement when culling being enabled regardless the what GPU being use. though some said nvidia GPU took slight hit using this feature while AMD GPU get slight performance increase. but from what i heard nvidia have this function inside their hardware since maxwell? so they don't need software solution since it is being done on hardware level on their GPU (i'm not really sure on AMD side).

 

[renz496]

Well, my take away is that, AMD is definitely showing impressive results again, but maybe nVidia's Driver issues AGAIN?

If true, then nVidia needs to get their act together.

If false, kudos to AMD

But unfortunately it still doesn't change the overall landscape at the top...

EDIT: forgot to mention, Vulkan for president?

isn't that this game using some specific feature on AMD GPU just like Doom? it is why they running faster on Radeon. but even with all that 1080ti still come out on top. just showing what kind of brute force nvidia have with 1080ti. and that is not even the fastest implementation of pascal.

 

[ole-m]

isn't that this game using some specific feature on AMD GPU just like Doom? it is why they running faster on Radeon. but even with all that 1080ti still come out on top. just showing what kind of brute force nvidia have with 1080ti. and that is not even the fastest implementation of pascal.

Or you have an API that allows devs to do what they want.
it goes both ways.
Devs can fuck up everything or they can provide awesome results as the ID engine seemingly always does.

 

[lostin3d]

Even though different generations, the ID engine has become one of my favorites since Doom. I keep hoping(know its not gonna happen) that Bethesda would use this studio and engine for future Skyrim and Fallout.

Interesting irony though with Doom and my 1080TI, it completely defeated the point of G-sync on my display(144hz) since it averaged 120-160fps w/ ultra settings. But it's really cool playing a FPS that fast and clean.

 

[OutOfPhase]

isn't that this game using some specific feature on AMD GPU just like Doom? it is why they running faster on Radeon. but even with all that 1080ti still come out on top. just showing what kind of brute force nvidia have with 1080ti. and that is not even the fastest implementation of pascal.

It's the best-case scenario for AMD - low level API more or less bypassing their drivers, and the best engine team in the business driving the card.

As such, the big raw horsepower AMD has gets used a lot better than in typical titles.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

Even though different generations, the ID engine has become one of my favorites since Doom. I keep hoping(know its not gonna happen) that Bethesda would use this studio and engine for future Skyrim and Fallout.

There's no stopping them- they may very well be doing said development as we speak, and that was probably their motivation behind scooping up id in the first place. I don't take Fallout 4 coming out on their dated Gamebryo engine as evidence of Bethesda not using id tech- I expect they'll roll a bit like EA with DICE's Frostbyte and put id tech in all the things.

Interesting irony though with Doom and my 1080TI, it completely defeated the point of G-sync on my display(144hz) since it averaged 120-160fps w/ ultra settings. But it's really cool playing a FPS that fast and clean.

Some of the point, but not all of it- Doom and shooters like it grant an advantage to quick reflexes, and G-Sync enhances that by minimizing input lag as much as possible, beyond just the no-tearing + no judder benefit!

 

[Geforcepat]

Damn looks like I will need to be replacing 970 soon

Yeah, i replaced mine this year. thanks for explaining the settings and going in depth about em. glad I've got 8gb vid ram now instead of 3.5.

 

[britjh22]

Any chance we could get a look at Ryzen vs. Intel with the same GPU, I've been hearing that Wolfenstein actually can make good use of a huge number of threads, the DX12/Vulkan dream coming true finally?

 

[Taldren]

Great job [H] , my only complain (as always) is the lack of 3440x1440 resolution results. Extrapolation is not a reliable method and texture memory issues becomes hard to predict.

 

[JustReason]

Great job [H] , my only complain (as always) is the lack of 3440x1440 resolution results. Extrapolation is not a reliable method and texture memory issues becomes hard to predict.

That would be awesome as I have a Samsung 3440/1440p Freesync, however the amount of time they spend with just what they do is a bit insane already.

 

[FrgMstr]

Great job [H] , my only complain (as always) is the lack of 3440x1440 resolution results. Extrapolation is not a reliable method and texture memory issues becomes hard to predict.

That would be awesome as I have a Samsung 3440/1440p Freesync, however the amount of time they spend with just what they do is a bit insane already.

At some point we just have to cut the workload. This review took a LOT of time. Some of these runthroughs are very long so we get a good look at overall performance in those games.

 

[noko]

The newest update appears to have fixed FreeSync, it is working now - Hurray! finished story of game at a measly 37% completion status, now I am about at 60% mopping up. Also in my setting it has Async Compute option listed and turned on. I did not have to do anything to have that option in the settings. The game runs very smooth at 4K, especially with FreeSync working at max settings. Just doesn't get much better than this at 4K. About ready to start over at the hardest game play level. Every Wolfenstein I've always had more fun the second and third time around and hopefully this will be the case again.

 

[psyclist]

Thanks for the review fellas! Hard to dethrone the King, usually 30-35% faster than Vega 64, now cut back to 10%. Strong showing by AMD, kudos to the driver team! Makes me feel good about my new Vega's on the way!

 

[lostin3d]

There's no stopping them- they may very well be doing said development as we speak, and that was probably their motivation behind scooping up id in the first place. I don't take Fallout 4 coming out on their dated Gamebryo engine as evidence of Bethesda not using id tech- I expect they'll roll a bit like EA with DICE's Frostbyte and put id tech in all the things.



Some of the point, but not all of it- Doom and shooters like it grant an advantage to quick reflexes, and G-Sync enhances that by minimizing input lag as much as possible, beyond just the no-tearing + no judder benefit!

All I can say is that I agree with all of what you said. I'd already thought similarly about ID/DICE.

 

[primetime]

we did try this trick on the Radeon RX 580 but the game would always crash with Async Compute turned "ON" with that video card. The game would only play without crashing with Async Compute turned "OFF." Another reason to just keep it off, if you are having stability issues.

I can say without question your crashes are because the newer drivers than 17.7.2 have major issues with our cards. That game was driving me crazy until i removed the driver check and played with the older driver. Async Compute seems to give my card a nice boost with zero crashes now.​

 

[JustReason]

I can say without question your crashes are because the newer drivers than 17.7.2 have major issues with our cards. That game was driving me crazy until i removed the driver check and played with the older driver. Async Compute seems to give my card a nice boost with zero crashes now.​

Is that with a newer Vulkan version between those packages?