Company of Heroes 2 BETA test GPU

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

 

Release date: 2013 year
Genre:RTS
developer: Relic Entertainment
Publisher: SEGA

 

Company of Heroes 2 is a real-time strategy computer game developed by Relic Entertainment. It was announced on May 7, 2012, and the release is tentatively scheduled for early 2013. The game is already available for pre-order on the digital services Steam and Origin. 

The original publisher was THQ, which closed due to financial problems. During the auction on January 23 - 24, 2013, SEGA bought the development studio Relic Entertainment with all its franchises, including the rights to the Company of Heroes series, for $26,6 million.

 

The game will take place during the Great Patriotic War, better known in the West as the Eastern Front, starting from the Battle of Moscow and covering the most brutal battles of this period. The game releases June 25, 2013.

THE GRAFICAL PART

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.

Supported OS and graphics API

Company of Heroes 2 BETA is supported by major operating systems Windows, which includes Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Other operating systems are not currently supported by developers. 

 

The priority and main graphics API for the multiplayer game Company of Heroes 2 BETA is DirectX 11. The game is distributed through the Steam digital store.

Game engine

The game is based on the Essence Engine 3 game engine, which supports many modern graphic effects, including High Dynamic Range (HDR lighting), dynamic lighting & shadows, advanced shader effects and normal mapping. Essence Engine is the first engine designed for RTS games that supports facial animation. In the game Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, the engine began to use early weather effects and DirectX 10/11.

The sequel to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Dawn of War II, uses a redesigned version of the Essence Engine, which allows games to use even more detailed models and textures, realistic lighting, and modern shader effects. Essence Engine 2.0 is optimized for multi-core processors and modern video cards.

 An innovative technology called ColdTech is responsible for displaying the harsh winter. Now your troops will freeze when in open space, snow storms will occur during battle, and ice and snow will dynamically change under the influence of weather, fire, vehicle movement and destructive explosions.

Advanced Game Settings

Company of Heroes 2 BETA, as it seemed to us, has a rather modest arsenal of graphic settings, and considering that this is a PC exclusive, it would be possible to make a much more expanded graphic menu. We can flexibly manipulate the basic graphic settings, setting them to low, medium, high and maximum quality levels. 

 

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

Low quality settings

Medium quality settings

High quality settings

Maximum quality settings

Video comparison of different quality settings

  As we can see, the difference in picture quality between different graphic quality settings is quite significant and at minimum settings all the charm of the Russian winter is lost...

General visual design and game physics

Company of Heroes 2 BETA is a pre-release project and is designed to better evaluate the stability of online battles. In our opinion, it is quite possible that the graphics component will remain approximately at the same level as we saw in this release.

 

We can’t say that the graphics in Company of Heroes 2 BETA impressed us; alas, they could have been made much better and more technologically advanced with modern capabilities. But we also can’t say that the game looks poor, no, the picture is quite up to par, with many little details worked out.

 

But still, let's not make hasty conclusions and wait for the full release of the game. Next, we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.

TEST PART

Test GPU

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using the in-game benchmark. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The performance indicator was the average and minimum FPS, which was measured manually in the in-game benchmark, since automatic FPS measurement is currently not working in the game. Below is a video of the test segment: 

Our graphics cards were tested at separate screen resolutions of 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 at maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Company of Heroes 2 BETA. Multi-chip configurations from NVIDIA and AMD showed poor scalability gains, which is a consequence of rather mediocre optimization. CrossFire showed terrible performance, both in terms of image smoothness and in terms of work results.

 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080

 

At a resolution of 1920x1080 at maximum settings, video cards of the level showed an acceptable level of performance Radeon HD 6850 or GRFORCE GTX 650. The optimal video cards will be solutions Radeon HD 6950 or GRFORCE GTX 650 Ti.

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600

 

At a resolution of 2560x1600 at maximum settings acceptable level of performance was shown by video cards of the level Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 570. The optimal video cards will be solutions Radeon HD 7850 or GRFORCE GTX 660 Ti. 

As we can see, AMD video cards showed excellent performance and would have completely defeated NVIDIA, if not for the GRFORCE GTX TITAN, which reached us literally a few hours before the review was published and showed simply phenomenal performance... A more detailed review will appear on our website a little later.

VRAM test

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory quality settings GPU 

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for this game is about 1536 MB for basic graphics quality settings. For ultra resolutions and maximum settings, you will need about 2048 megabytes of video memory.

CPU test

 

We tested processor dependence on 17 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the video card value for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920x1080 with maximum graphics quality settings.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080

 

Intel processors showed the most significant performance, although playing Company of Heroes 2 will be very comfortable on all tested models.

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

 

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

 

Multi-threading optimization for Intel and AMD is almost the same this time, which means the game largely prefers the Intel architecture.

RAM test

Testing of the RAM consumed by the game was carried out by monitoring directly through the task manager Windows. The test was conducted on the base configuration of Core i 7 3970X@4.9 GHz with 16GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed memory.

Testing at various quality settings

 

As we can see, with various basic quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in Company of Heroes 2 BETA is at the level of 1400 megabytes. Thus, for a comfortable game you need to have minimum 3 GB of RAM installed in your PC. 

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