For Honor test GPU (updated with release version)

developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment
Game release dates: February 14, 2017
Genres: Action
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4

In For Honor, players will find both exciting multiplayer and a fascinating story campaign, which can be played alone or with friends. Intense gameplay will require organization and coordination of actions in the best traditions of team tactical action games, and the dynamics of what is happening will force you to act skillfully and clearly, as when playing shooters. The innovative control system of The Art of Battle will give complete control over the weapon in the character’s hands: the moment for defense or attack can be chosen incredibly precisely, literally adapting on the fly to what is happening in the heat of battle.

This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.

For Honor is supported only Windows 7/8/10 Other operating systems are not currently supported by developers and are unlikely to receive support. 

The priority and main graphics API for For Honor is DirectX 11.

For Honor was developed on Anvi Next engine 2.0, a game engine created by Ubisoft Montreal, a subsidiary of publisher Ubisoft. "Anvil" is a commercial proprietary cross-platform game engine designed for use on the personal computer (Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X) and on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii game consoles. First used in the game Assassin's Creed.

The first game to use the Anvil engine was the third-person action game Assassin's Creed, developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released in 2007 for game consoles, and in 2008 for PC. In this game, the engine was called "Scimitar". Even before the release of Assassin's Creed, in August 2006, Claude Langlais, technical director of Assassin's Creed, confirmed that a separate game using the Scimitar engine was in development and would be shown in 2007. However, no announcement was made in 2007.

This game turned out to be the snowboarding simulator Shaun White Snowboarding, which was expected to be released before the end of 2008 for all major platforms. However, the game was released in November and December 2008. The Wii version of the game supports the Wii Balance Board accessory.

The third game to use the engine is Prince of Persia (2008), released in December 2008, also developed by Ubisoft Montreal. In this game the engine was renamed to Anvil. In addition, this version of the engine uses cel shaders to give the visual style of the game a “fairytale” effect.

The latest version of Anvil engine supports DX11 capabilities. But that's not all. The engine was also equipped with high-resolution textures.

For Honor has a very wide range of graphic settings, but still, there are a few of them...

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between the minimum and maximum graphics quality settings. 

The difference between low and high settings is quite impressive.

Activating smoothing completely removes all surface irregularities.

Well, SSAA, of course, makes the picture somewhat detailed, although the requirements in this case are exorbitant...

The graphics in For Honor Beta are very, very good, but all the physics of the surrounding world are very wooden - I want more advanced interaction with the open world. But it’s still a pleasure to play, since the picture looks quite up to par.

NVIDIA has published its system requirements for video cards that can provide stable 60 frames in the For Honor game at high quality settings. 

At a resolution of 1920x1080, the recommended solution is the GeForce GTX 1060, for a resolution of 2560x1440 GeForce GTX 1070/1080, and for 4K, at least SLI from the GeForce GTX 1070.

Next, we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.   

Our video cards were tested at separate screen resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 at maximum graphics quality settings (the maximum available for the game). All measurements were carried out in a gaming benchmark.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon RX 460 or GeForce GTX 750 Ti level showed acceptable FPS. The optimal solutions would be video cards like the Adeon RX 460 or GeForce GTX 950.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 SSAA

With these settings, an acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the level of Radeon R9 Nano or GeForce GTX 1060. The optimal solutions will be video cards of the level of Adeon R9 Fury X or GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1440

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon R7 370 or GeForce GTX 1050 Ti level showed acceptable FPS. The optimal solutions would be video cards like the Adeon R9 380X or GeForce GTX 780.

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1440 SSAA

With these settings, acceptable FPS was shown by video cards of the level  Radeon R9 Fury X or GeForce GTX 1070. The optimal solutions will be video cards of the GeForce GTX 1080 SLI level.

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2160

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 1060 level showed an acceptable FPS. The optimal solutions will be video cards of the level Radeon RX 480 CF or GeForce GTX 1070.

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2160 SSAA

With these settings, video cards of the GeForce GTX 1080 SLI level showed an acceptable FPS. 

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on the results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes of 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory quality settings GPU

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920x1080 will be 2048 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560x1440 - 3076 MB of video memory, and for a resolution of 3840x2160 about 4096 MB of video memory. 

Testing at maximum memory quality settings GPU SSAA

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920x1080 will be 4096 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560x1440 - 4096 MB of video memory, and for a resolution of 3840x2160 about 6144 MB of video memory. 

We tested processor dependence on 16 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of the video card for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920x1080.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 

Processor performance in the game is at a decent level.

Loading of processor cores with maximum quality settings 1920x1080 Intel % 

Loading of processor cores with maximum quality settings 1920x1080 AMD % 

For Honor uses up to 16 computing threads. The entire game uses 4 cores.

The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 5960X@4.6 GHz with 32 GB DDR4 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. The entire used operational memory was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing the game's RAM consumption at various quality settings 

As we can see, with various quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in For Honor was within 3300 megabytes.

Testing system RAM consumption  

With a system with 8 gigabytes, For Honor consumed 5 gigabytes of RAM. In the presence of a system with 12 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 5.2 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, the total memory consumption was almost 5.7 GB. And with 32 gigabytes of RAM, the system consumes 6.3 gigabytes of RAM.