Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - Official system requirements. Testing the performance of Nvidia GeForce video cards in the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus on Zotac solutions Wolfenstein 2 the new colossus deferred rendering

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With just a few days left until the release of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Bethesda and Machine Games have revealed the official system requirements and all the settings that players will be able to change.

It is worth noting that now all “system requirements” have changed their meaning slightly. In the case of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, “minimal” means 720p and 60FPS on the lowest graphics settings.

PC players love freedom, and it's not just about liberating America from Nazi invaders. The PC version of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus differs from others in a number of ways, including unlimited frame rate or field of view selection. Each player can customize the game for themselves, based on their taste and computer characteristics. In addition to the minimum and recommended PC configurations, we are publishing a detailed description of the graphics options that will be available on October 27, the day of the world premiere of The New Colossus.

PC CONFIGURATION

Minimum

Processor: Intel Core i7-3770/AMD FX-8350 or better
Video card: NVIDIA GTX 770 4 GB/AMD Radeon R9 290 4 GB or better
RAM: 8 GB
Disk space: 55 GB

Processor: Intel Core i7-4770/AMD FX-9370 or better
Video card: NVIDIA GTX 1060 6 GB/AMD Radeon RX 470 4 GB or better
RAM: 16 GB
Operating system: Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions)
Disk space: 55 GB
Additionally: to activate and install the game you need a Steam account and a high-speed Internet connection
AMD has stopped releasing video driver updates for Windows 8.1

ADDITIONAL SETTINGS AND FEATURES FOR PC VERSION

Unlimited frame rate
Many people at MachineGames love to play on PC, and all games created by id Software are inextricably linked to the PC. Therefore, we paid special attention to the PC version so that it turns out no worse than the console versions. The game is powered by idTech 6 technology, which supports one of our favorite features - unlimited frame rate.

Image format
PC owners love to enjoy games on a variety of screens, so we tried to cover as many image formats as possible. Here are the most popular ones, but this list is far from complete.

16:10
21:9 (ultrawide)

Permission
The game supports 4K resolution

Field of view slider
from 70 to 120 degrees

Additional graphic settings

Lighting
Directional shading
Reflections
Decals
Motion blur
Image transfer
3D image quality
Filtering Decals
Deferred rendering
Chromatic aberration
Depth of field
Resolution scaling

Vulkan API
When we started working on Wolfenstein II, we didn't hesitate to choose the graphics API for the PC version. Vulkan technology worked well in DOOM, and we decided to raise the quality bar even higher.

Vulkan technology allowed us to unlock the potential of AMD VEGA GPUs in new ways and take advantage of all the features and functionality of these graphics cards without compromising the artistic vision. AMD's versatile hardware solutions combined with the Vulkan API gave us complete creative freedom when working on Wolfenstein.

Control

Ability to reassign any functions on the keyboard and mouse
Separate controller and keyboard/mouse sensitivity settings

Full Screen Antialiasing Options
Here are just a few of the different full-screen anti-aliasing options available in our game:

TSSAA

Color Blind Modes
In first-person action games, where it is very important to see the crosshair and indicator of the current target, color blindness modes save many players. We have three such modes:

Protanopia
Deuteranopia
Tritanopia

In the future, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus may support custom modifications, but the developers can't say anything for sure right now.

Release date: October 27, 2017
Genre: Action game with first person view
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: MachineGames

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is the long-awaited sequel to the popular 2014 first-person shooter Wolfenstein: The New Order produced by MachineGames, which received good reviews from the press and players. A new game by the same developer was published by Bethesda Softworks on October 27, 2017 and was released in versions for PC and current generation consoles: Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One. The nominal announcement of The New Colossus was at E3 2016, where only one image was shown, and a full announcement took place at E3 2017. Later, the creative director and producer stated that the second part of the series would not be the last, but part of a trilogy. Note that the game being reviewed today is already the eighth in the Wolfenstein series.

In the second part of Wolfenstein, which also takes place in an alternative history, you will visit the US captured by the Nazis and begin the search for resistance leaders. You will have to fight the enemy in the small city of Roswell, on the flooded streets of New Orleans and in radioactive Manhattan. Even after the destruction of the Nazi General Skull, only a temporary victory was won, the Nazis continued to rule the world, including an old friend, Frau Engel. Resistance fighter BJ Blazkowicz (William “B. J.” Blazkowicz), whose role must be played, is humanity’s last hope for freedom, and only his strength and capabilities are enough to defeat all the Nazis in the USA, leading the second American revolution.

In terms of gameplay, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a typical first-person shooter, in which the story is presented in episodes, and the player gradually progresses through numerous levels. You need to find new allies, fight demons from the past and lead rebel forces to fight the Nazi occupiers. The game features a rich arsenal and new hero abilities needed to defeat legions of Nazi fighters and super soldiers.

The new world has many original characters, friends and associates, as well as new heroes. But the most interesting thing is the cool weapon: “Laserkraftwerk” - a powerful laser that sprays enemies, as well as “Dieselkraftwerk” - a rocket-propelled grenade launcher that helps destroy crowds of opponents. The creators of the game did not forget about pistols, machine guns and even axes. All of these weapons can be upgraded and you can even equip one gun in each hand, making the game even more fun.

In terms of graphics, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus uses the id Tech 6 game engine, developed by id Software and known to us from the game Doom. This is the latest version of the engine at the moment, which is positioned as an engine for PC and gaming consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, using the OpenGL and Vulkan graphics APIs. In this case, The New Colossus on PC uses exclusively the Vulkan graphics API from the very beginning of development, including through cooperation with AMD, which promotes its use.

The choice of a graphics API for the PC was simple: OpenGL was already outdated, and Vulkan had already received sufficient support and development by this time, largely thanks to the Doom game on the same id Software engine, which just showed that the new API could be successfully used. The developers claim that the use of Vulkan has made it possible to gain fine-grained control over the capabilities and performance of GPUs, as well as to make the work of game application developers easier. Among the games that also use id Tech 6, we additionally note such projects as Doom VFR and Quake Champions.

The main developers of the engine are John Carmack, John Olick and Thiago Souza, who joined id Software from Crytek back in 2014. The first demonstration of the id Software engine was shown in May 2009, and in early May 2011 development of id Tech 6 began. The sixth version of the game engine uses Sparse Voxel Octree (SVO, sparse voxel octree) - the geometry of the game level with this technology is not polygonal, but voxel structure that is stored in the octree. One of the features of SVO is the ability to load parts of the octree into video memory, when objects close to the camera are rendered in maximum quality, and for distant objects, models and textures of lower quality can be used.

In addition, id Tech 6 uses advanced megatexture technology, known from the latest versions of the id Tech 4 engine, which allows you to fill the world with unique textures without repeating them often. Other features of the engine include fully dynamic lighting, including simulation of volumetric light sources, realistic shadows and reflections, as well as physically correct rendering. The overall picture is complemented by spectacular particle systems, accelerated on the GPU and correctly lit, and high-quality post-effects: simulated depth of field, motion blur, chromatic aberration and HDR bloom, which are also used in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.

Naturally, the PC version of the game has its own differences and additional settings. Since MachineGames and id Software always try to support our favorite gaming platform, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus has left the possibility of a virtually unlimited frame rate. Powerful PCs often output gaming monitors with refresh rates of 144 and even 166 Hz - so why limit yourself to 60 FPS, as console versions do?

Another change for the PC version of the game is support for multiple resolutions with different screen aspect ratios, which is also due to the variety of displays used by PC players. The game correctly supports displaying images on monitors with aspect ratios: 4:3, 16:9, 16:10 and 21:9 (ultra-widescreen resolutions, such as 2560x1080). Accordingly, all kinds of displays with resolutions up to 4K are supported. To correctly display images on wide screens, in the PC version you can also change the field of view (viewing angle, Field of View - FOV) from 70 to 120 degrees.

As usual, the PC version of the game has many advanced graphics settings, including lighting settings, including volumetric, shading, including simulated indirect lighting, reflection settings, texture quality and numerous post-filter settings (motion blur, simulated depth of field, chromatic aberration and etc.).

And in order to smooth out the edges of polygons and reduce noise on surfaces, you can apply one of several full-screen image anti-aliasing methods that use post-processing: TAA, FXAA, SMAA and TSSAA. Some of them also take into account the time component, providing excellent quality of smoothing in dynamics. In this sense, there are no complaints about the engine and the game; all modern technologies are supported.

System requirements

Minimum system requirements:

CPU Intel Core i5-3570/Core i7-3770 or AMD FX-8350/Ryzen 5 1400;
RAM of at least 8 GB;
video card Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 or AMD Radeon R9 290;
video memory capacity 4 GB;
55 GB;
Microsoft Windows 7/8.1/10;

CPU Intel Core i7-4770 or AMD FX-9370/AMD Ryzen 5 1600X;
RAM capacity 16 GB;
video card Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 470;
video memory capacity 4-6 GB;
free storage space 55 GB;
64-bit operating system Microsoft Windows 7/8.1/10;
broadband internet connection.

For the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, any modern version of the Microsoft operating system, starting from Windows 7, is suitable, since the game uses the Vulkan graphics API, and the use of Windows 10 is not at all necessary for it, unlike DirectX 12. But the need to use 64-bit versions of operating systems have long become commonplace for modern gaming projects, as this helps to get away from the limit of 2 GB of RAM used per process.

The hardware requirements for The New Colossus are generally typical for a modern game; the older GeForce GTX 770 and Radeon R9 290 video cards, which are still used in gaming PCs, are listed as the minimum video cards suitable for the game. To run the game you will need 8GB of RAM, which is fairly typical, although 16GB of RAM is still recommended. From the point of view of the central processor, the requirements are as follows: Intel Core i5-3570/i7-3770 (for some reason, two models differing in power are indicated at once) or AMD FX-8350/Ryzen 5 1400 - this is slightly above the average level of minimum system requirements. Even more surprising is that the recommendations even include slightly more powerful Core i7-4770 and AMD FX-9370/Ryzen 5 1600X processors. Is a game using Vulkan really that CPU intensive?

The recommended requirements for video cards are familiar and quite justified, judging by our experience. The developers believe that for comfortable gaming at high graphics settings you will need a gaming system with a Radeon RX 470 or GeForce GTX 1060 video card (only the version with 6 GB of video memory!), and these models are really close to each other in speed, although Nvidia's solution in other games usually faster. We can agree with the choice of these models for high settings, and in general, judging by the minimum and recommended requirements of the game, we conclude that the game makes demands on CPU and GPU power that are slightly above average.

Test configuration and testing methodology

The game is part of AMD's marketing and technical program and takes advantage of some of the specific capabilities of modern AMD GPUs, such as half-precision calculations (FP16 or Rapid Packed Math), which run twice as fast as traditional FP32-precision calculations (however, reduce the accuracy calculations without a negative impact on picture quality are not possible in all cases). Also, in beta patches, support for asynchronous execution of shaders for AMD and Nvidia video cards was turned on and off. It’s not entirely clear how it all ended in the end (we tested exclusively the release), but Radeon video cards have some advantage in this game.

Since we are not conducting our tests immediately after the game is released this time, we simply use the latest available driver, which includes optimization for all autumn releases, including the game we are considering today. We used the driver version 388.31 WHQL from 11/15/2017, intended for such gaming projects as Star Wars Battlefront II, Injustice 2 and Destiny 2. But, starting with version 388.13 WHQL, Nvidia has optimized its drivers for the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, fixing several annoying bugs of previous drivers.

Alas, the game lacks both a built-in performance test and the ability to record and play back gameplay, which always helps to select the appropriate settings for ordinary users and greatly makes the life of testers easier. Therefore, we followed the usual path, simply finding a suitable place in the game and measuring the frame rate while passing through a short section of it. Due to the game's use of the Vulkan graphics API, we did not use the now outdated Fraps utility, but the ability to capture FPS and calculate the average and minimum values in the excellent MSI Afterburner program.

For our test, we chose a scene with a minimum frame rate from the first episodes of the game. One of the most demanding scenes of the initial levels is taken, which includes both open spaces and buildings, with a number of enemies and special effects. The player spends the first time in the game constantly in buildings and confined spaces, and the first open spaces still need to be reached - and this is where productivity noticeably decreases. So, we reached the destroyed New York and it was in Manhattan that we saw the lowest frame rates - this is not surprising, because open spaces with complex geometry and numerous effects have always been a rather difficult test for id Tech engines.

The frame rate we obtained in the test roughly corresponds to what would be observed in a typical game and allows us to evaluate performance. We ran our segment displaying statistics on the use of CPU and GPU resources using the MSI Afterburner utility. The CPU load during testing at medium and maximum settings averaged about 25%-30%, but sometimes reached 35%. This is a lot for a powerful eight-core processor, but it does not interfere with the game, because all CPU cores are evenly loaded with work, and the performance of even powerful video cards like the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is not limited by the speed of the CPU.

Thanks to the use of the modern Vulkan graphics API, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is able to effectively use the capabilities of multi-threaded CPUs, while the frame rate is quite high and there is no emphasis on the processor. The game, together with video drivers and the operating system, is capable of almost uniformly using at least 16 computational threads, as can be seen from the following graph, although in our experience, fairly fast quad-core processors are enough for the game to run normally:

The GPU in our test was constantly loaded with 96%-99% workload when running on a system with a top-end video card and at maximum and medium settings, which indicates a complete lack of emphasis on CPU capabilities in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Most likely, even a less powerful processor with fewer cores would still be fast enough for the game in question.

In our tests, we measure not only the average, but also the minimum frame rate, since both the stability of the video sequence and the overall comfort for the player depend on it. Based on the average and minimum frame rates from our test, it is quite possible to draw conclusions about the overall smoothness and comfort. You can play a first-person shooter with a minimum frame rate of 30 FPS and an average frame rate of at least 40-45 FPS, but a frame rate of about 60 FPS and higher will be much more comfortable - for more demanding players, this bar is an indicator of absolute smoothness.

If we talk about the level of video memory usage by the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, then the conclusions very much depend on the graphics settings. If you just set high resolution settings for textures, then the game will need 4 GB of memory (and the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB will suffer, as you can see in our tests), and when setting the maximum quality, you need a video memory of 6 GB, or even better - 8 GB. The required amount of VRAM also depends on the rendering resolution; if in Full HD 4 GB is enough, then in 4K resolution you need from 6 GB.

In general, if you install a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video card with 11 GB of memory, the game easily fills 6-7 GB of them, so it is not surprising that video cards with 3-4 GB have problems. The game becomes especially jerky when the Mein leben! profile is installed, and for this mode we recommend using a video card with 6 GB of memory or more. If you add 4K resolution to the maximum quality settings, you may need 8 GB of video memory. The RAM consumption of the entire system when playing is acceptable and is about 6-7 GB, less often up to 8 GB.

Impact of settings on performance and quality

Graphics settings in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus are changed in the in-game menu, which can also be called up during the game. Changing most graphic settings takes effect immediately and does not require a complete restart of the game, but not all of them, unfortunately - changing the quality of shadows and particles, as well as texture resolution, requires a complete restart of the game, which is very inconvenient when adjusting the rendering quality and does not allow you to quickly evaluate the changes made changes.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus has a huge number of graphical settings in its menu. By changing them, you can easily obtain the required picture quality with appropriate performance. It’s convenient that in the game you can separately configure all important parameters, including texture quality, the degree of filtering for several types of textures separately, select the full-screen anti-aliasing method, as well as adjust the detail of geometry and effects, and much more.

The game has a main menu, the settings in which affect the graphics - Video. There is a choice of a preset graphics quality profile, rendering resolution and screen aspect ratio, full-screen or windowed output mode, adjusting screen brightness, the ability to turn vertical sync on or off, setting motion blur (for some reason it was placed here), as well as choosing a full-screen method smoothing. In addition to adjusting screen resolution, Wolfenstein II has rendering resolution scaling Resolution Scale, which allows the rendering resolution to be lower than the output resolution. But you can’t increase the rendering resolution by getting additional supersampling in the game.

What is especially convenient for inexperienced users, with so many graphic settings available, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus has convenient preset quality profiles, so you don’t have to manually select the required settings. The game has six quality profiles, starting with the typical Low and Medium, continuing with the usual High and Ultra, but the maximum of them have unusual names: Uber and Mein Leben! The difference between the extreme profiles is visible in the shadows and textures, but not too much. And between Uber and Ultra it is not so great and is most visible through different simulations of global shading. Even High looks good, but Medium immediately noticeably drops the picture quality, which can be seen from missing shadows and less accurate lighting, not to mention lower settings.

Performance differences between Ultra and Mein Leben! on video cards like the GeForce GTX 1080 they are 20%-25% in terms of frame rate, and if you go down to High, you can get about another 15%. If possible, we recommend using the maximum quality, but if the speed is insufficient, you can easily drop to just high settings - the difference in dynamics will be small. In our further work on the tests, we used the Medium (medium settings), High (high settings) and Ultra (ultra settings) profiles built into the game, without any changes. The full screen anti-aliasing method has always been set to TSSAA (8TX), since it is not too resource-intensive.

The most interesting thing for us is the submenu for advanced image quality settings Advanced Video, in which you can find almost 30 detailed parameters!

The smartest thing to do is to adjust the rendering quality and final performance to your personal requirements, based on your own feelings. The influence of some parameters on the resulting picture quality in the game is not always noticeable, especially in screenshots. Based on the videos, it is somewhat easier to note the different rendering quality corresponding to different levels of graphic settings, but it is also not so easy.

We traditionally categorically do not recommend low settings in games - the rendering range, level of detail, and the quality of effects and textures are greatly reduced. Such settings are only suitable for owners of very weak video cards, and real gaming PCs deserve better. Switching to medium and high settings noticeably adds geometric and textural detail to the scene, and improves various effects.

Medium settings:

Maximum (Mein leben!) settings:

Let's look at the rendering quality settings available in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. We will not touch upon adjusting the FOV viewing angle or limiting the maximum frame rate, but we will consider the most interesting parameters in detail. We conducted their research on a test system with a top-end GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video card, at a resolution of 1920x1080 with the highest possible quality, most suitable for this graphics processor. We adjusted the settings down to determine how much of a performance boost this would increase—this approach allows us to quickly find the settings that have the biggest impact on average frame rates.

Settings Image Streaming is responsible for the use of video memory, changes the quality of textures and their dynamic loading into memory. If the value is high on a video card with insufficient VRAM, this setting will try to cram more resources into the video memory than can fit there. The maximum value will fill up all available video memory, and on video cards such as the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB and GTX 970 with its problematic memory divided into two sections (3.5 GB fast and 0.5 GB slow), it will cause big problems in the form of a sharp drop frame rate.

We advise you to change this parameter very carefully; if the local video memory is overloaded, it would be better to lower the setting by 1-2 points, then the VRAM load will drop, and resources will be loaded into it more often. This will not affect the picture quality that much. But if the video card has a lot of video memory, then this setting has a slight effect on FPS. In the case of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, choosing the minimum value brought a speed increase of up to 5%-7%, nothing more.

Degree anisotropic filtering in the game you can change separately for four types of textures: materials, decals, lightmaps and others. These settings have the word in their name Filter(ing), and allow you to select the quality of texture filtering up to a level of 16× (except for lighting maps - lightmaps, for which the level is limited to 4×). Modern graphics processors almost do not lose performance when turning on any level of texture filtering, so we got a maximum increase in rendering speed of 2%-3% for all four settings at once, which may generally be a measurement error.

In menu item Anti Aliasing Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus offers very high-quality anti-aliasing methods. The list of methods includes six different techniques, and four of them include a time component (TX with a number in brackets in the name) - we recommend using one of these four methods, since ignoring the time component leads to unpleasant flickering of pixels. Perhaps the best method in the game is TSSAA (8TX), but SMAA (1TX) is not so far from it. True, TSSAA slightly blurs the image, but with it there is much less flickering.

However, you are free to disagree with us and form your own opinion. The main thing is that all anti-aliasing methods use post-processing only, and they are usually not too demanding on the system. True, this is not entirely true in The New Colossus; enabling the best TSSAA (8TX) method can cost you up to 5%-10%, and SMAA (1TX) even a little more, although not in all conditions. We still think that anti-aliasing is a must in this game, but the choice of which method to use is up to you.

Among the settings that significantly affect the speed, we can highlight the adjustment of the quality of shadows Shadows, which changes the resolution of shadow maps and their filtering. When changing the setting from High to Low, the average frame rate on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in our tests increased by more than 20% - this is perhaps one of the most important parameters in the game, after screen resolution, and we recommend changing it if there is a lack of performance. But you shouldn’t get too carried away either, because shadows are one of the most important details in a picture.

Another “influential” setting is the realistic reflections setting Reflections- they are now often used in games. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus also has such reflections, on puddles and other similar surfaces, and they look really nice, but are demanding on GPU processing power. If we turn off these reflections completely, then on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti we will get 10% higher speed, which is an extra 5-10 FPS. So feel free to turn off reflections if you don't have enough smoothness.

Significantly affects performance and lighting quality settings Lights, responsible for the quality of lighting calculations and the number of light sources taken into account. In the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, the difference in speed between the extreme values of this setting on a top-end video card is up to 7%-8%, which is quite significant. But we recommend that you first try lowering slightly less important parameters for rendering quality, such as reflections.

Simulating indirect lighting/shading has about the same effect on FPS. Directional Occlusion(analogous to Ambient Occlusion in other games), which adds realistic shadows where they are not rendered by traditional shadow methods. There is no choice of technology or algorithm, but there is a quality setting. By completely disabling the calculation of indirect shading in the game, the frame rate on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti increases to 7%-10% - another candidate for a priority change in case of stuttering.

Most other parameters in the game cause a change in rendering speed of 5% or less, including disabling all post-filters (almost no increase), changing the quality of water surface rendering (affects, but only in some locations), adjusting the quality of decals Decals, changing the quality of particle rendering Particles(the same 5%), deterioration in the quality of volumetric lighting Volumetric Quality and so on - although they all have some impact on FPS, but not too much.

There are also some unusual options in the settings menu, which are not changed by preset quality profiles and are independently controlled, such as Deferred Rendering And GPU Culling. The second of them is responsible for discarding invisible geometric primitives on the GPU, which does not always provide an advantage in rendering speed. Thus, the developers advise enabling the option on AMD video cards and disabling it on Nvidia, although in our tests it worked differently, sometimes giving an advantage on GeForce, but sometimes reducing it. So it would be better to either follow the recommendations of the developers, or try the settings on your system yourself.

The Deferred Rendering setting in the game is disabled by default, and its presence is quite interesting in principle, since in theory it is responsible for the possibility of using deferred rendering. But the id Tech 6 engine uses forward rendering, not deferred, although it can use some deferred rendering capabilities. Perhaps they are the ones that are enabled by this setting, and when it is disabled, the engine works as forward. Or the hybrid mode (forward+deferred) changes to purely deferred.

What’s more interesting is that enabling deferred rendering has a positive impact on performance when there are a large number of light sources. In addition, even the picture changes slightly when deferred rendering is enabled, and the lighting in the shadows becomes slightly different (it’s hard to say for better or worse), but some artifacts may appear. This may be why the option is disabled by default. In terms of performance, there is a slight impact on FPS. Some GPUs lose 1%-3% in some scenes, while others gain up to 5% in other conditions, like the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in our test. In general, try it yourself.

In some versions of the game and on different GPUs there may be an option to enable asynchronous computing Async Compute, and the game seems to use this feature by default, but on Nvidia video cards of the Pascal family it could be turned off, on Maxwell it was always turned off, and on all Radeons it was on. They probably decided not to make it available to users (yet?), but on some GPUs it can provide a few percent advantage.

As we already wrote, changing many settings in the game has an almost imperceptible effect on rendering speed. Most of the changes in our test resulted in an increase in the average frame rate of only a few FPS, and in order to get a noticeable increase in speed, you will have to change several parameters at once. The general advice on settings for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is this: if you have a powerful video card from GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB), set high settings, and for more powerful models with 8 GB of memory you can select Ultra. After this, you need to check how smoothly the video is rendered in the game. If smoothness is not enough, first of all we recommend turning off realistic reflections and lowering the settings for texture resolution (Image Streaming), shadow quality (Shadows) and indirect lighting (Directional Occlusion). You can also try playing with Deferred Rendering and GPU Culling - but what if?

Performance testing

We tested the performance of six video cards from Zotac, based on Nvidia GPUs, belonging to different price ranges and even generations of GPUs from this company. When testing, we used the two most common screen resolutions: 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, as well as three built-in settings profiles: Medium, High and Mein leben! (Maximum).

We do not consider settings below the average level, since even the weakest video card in comparison, the GeForce GTX 960, copes well with them, albeit only in Full HD resolution. Traditionally, for the materials on our site, we always check the maximum rendering quality mode, as the most popular settings option among gaming enthusiasts. Let's first consider the most popular Full HD resolution at medium quality settings.

Resolution 1920x1080 (Full HD)

The junior model of the previous generation GeForce GTX 960, with medium graphics settings and Full HD resolution, showed an acceptable rendering speed - 50 FPS on average and without frame rate drops below 30 FPS. Surprisingly, the GeForce GTX 1060 version with 3 GB of video memory was not far behind (we double-checked the result) - it seems that the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is extremely demanding on the amount of video memory. More powerful video cards, in the simplest conditions, were able to provide the most comfortable frame rate in the game; on all of them, the minimum FPS value never dropped below 60 FPS, which is suitable for even the most demanding users.

The older model will give the most comfortable gaming even to owners of fast 144 Hz gaming monitors. Moreover, even in the simplest conditions, the game engine does not rely on the performance of the central processor, since it is perfectly optimized and uses the modern Vulkan API, with the help of which the CPU cores are loaded with work evenly. This is clearly seen in the results of the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 Ti, which differ very much from each other in terms of power.

It is clearly visible that the difference between the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and GTX 1070 when moving from Medium to High remained approximately the same. The three most powerful Zotac video cards we have showed the most comfortable performance, exceeding the required 60 FPS for the minimum frame rate. Surprisingly, the difference between the two versions of the GeForce GTX 1060 is exactly twofold - it seems that the lack of video memory in the three-gigabyte version, which showed speeds even slightly below the minimum limit, is really to blame for this. Therefore, it will be better to lower some of the settings to medium.

Interestingly, the difference in speed between the previous generation models in the form of the GeForce GTX 960 and GTX 970 is very small this time, in contrast to the average settings. It looks like the older model is also suffering from low VRAM, as part of its 0.5GB VRAM runs at very low speeds, while the GTX 960 is fine. Both legacy models were able to provide acceptable performance at high settings in our test at 45-52 FPS on average with a minimum of 38-42 FPS. Let's see what happens when we set the highest possible quality settings:

At maximum settings, the difference between video cards that differ in power is even more visible, and the rendering speed is most affected by the lack of video memory in half of the tested video cards that have less than 6 GB of local video memory. All solutions in the lower half of the diagram showed uncomfortable frame rates and were unable to reach the required level of 40 FPS on average with a minimum of 30 FPS. Therefore, in the case of the three weakest video cards, we recommend reducing the settings to High or lower.

These include the younger model of the previous generation GeForce GTX 960, and the older GTX 970 with its 3.5+0.5 GB of video memory, and even the GTX 1060 (3 GB) - here even 4 GB of memory is not enough. But the more powerful model of the current generation in the form of the GeForce GTX 1060 with 6 GB of memory copes with the conditions of maximum quality settings perfectly, showing more than 60 FPS on average, although FPS occasionally dropped a little lower. Well, for the older GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 everything is quite good - these video cards are enough for full comfort without frame rate drops below 60 FPS.

Resolution 2560x1440 (WQHD)

When setting a higher rendering resolution of 2560x1440, the load on the GPU increased significantly, as did the requirements for video memory. The frame rate on most video cards has decreased noticeably, since high fill rates are important at high resolutions. And the outdated GeForce GTX 960 model could not cope with the task of providing even minimal comfort, although it was close to this - it will probably be enough to lower some of the settings on it, and you can play.

Other Zotac solutions from different generations of GPUs provide sufficient comfort under such conditions. True, the youngest of the pair, GeForce GTX 1060, also barely coped with the task, it was too much constrained by 3 GB of video memory, which is clearly not enough for the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 1060 (6GB) look noticeably better, showing 57-61 frames per second on average, but with drops to 46-51 FPS. There is nothing to say about the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 Ti; they provided excellent comfort even with a minimum frame rate much higher than 60 FPS.

The drop in speed when switching to high settings has led to the fact that the performance of the entire lower half of video cards in such conditions is not enough, the frame rate level is below acceptable, especially for the GeForce GTX 960 and GTX 1060 (3 GB), these GPUs cannot cope with the work. But the GTX 970 lacks just a little - its 38 FPS on average is close to the required 40-45 FPS, and there were no drops below 30 FPS at all. But this is not enough for comfortable gameplay, and we still recommend lowering some of the graphics settings to medium in this case.

The GeForce GTX 1060 version with 6 GB of video memory performed very well; even at high settings in high resolution, this Zotac video card model provides good playability. The power of the two fastest graphics processors installed on high-end video cards (GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 Ti) is enough to maintain frame rates at the maximum comfortable level. Both of these video cards never dropped below 60 FPS, while the top model from Zotac showed more than 100 FPS on average, which can give ideal smoothness on monitors with a refresh rate of 75-100 Hz.

When setting the maximum quality settings in WQHD resolution, only the older version of the GeForce GTX 1060 video card, which has 6 GB of memory on board, again coped with the task of providing minimal comfort - it’s not for nothing that the developers recommend it. All less powerful video cards with 3-4 GB of memory have capitulated to today's most difficult task. Playing at their speed in this mode will be problematic; the lag between pressing the control keys and the actual action on the screen is too large, so you will have to lower the rendering quality settings.

The most powerful models GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 Ti performed excellently once again. The first of them guarantees more than sufficient comfort for the average player with 67 FPS on average with drops of at least 56 FPS (almost 60 FPS!), and the fastest GPU in our comparison even showed an average frame rate of 95 FPS, with a minimum level of 80 FPS. That is, when playing on a monitor with a refresh rate of 75 Hz, frame changes will be as smooth as possible.

Conclusion

From a visual point of view, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus looks quite good, and the lighting in the game is good and there are numerous effects, and the models and textures themselves are quite high quality. True, there are some shortcomings typical of games based on the id Tech engine - some textures are still not of the best quality, despite all the megatexture technologies, and the facial animation does not look ideal.

The quality of textures in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is generally inconsistent: some textures look very detailed, but others look like 256x256 pixel textures from ancient games, although we haven't seen many of them. At the same time, with maximum texture detail, it is highly desirable to have at least 6 GB of local video memory, and numerous 3-4 GB video card options will suffer from reduced performance and FPS drops in such conditions, even in Full HD resolution. To understand how important this is for the game in question, just compare the performance of the two GeForce GTX 1060 modifications in our diagrams.

On the other hand, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus does not require expensive top-end video cards in order to get a very high-quality picture. Even though video cards with 3-4 GB seriously suffer from a lack of video memory, especially at a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, the frame rate remains playable in many cases even for the same middle-aged GeForce GTX 970, and this is taking into account its slow 0.5 GB of memory.

In Full HD resolution, models like the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 1060 can easily handle high quality, and with 6 GB of memory, the second one can easily handle even the maximum picture quality. But the maximum quality profile is not suitable for video cards with 3-4 GB - the game with this setting tries to fill up the video memory too aggressively and if there is not enough local VRAM, there are slowdowns and FPS drops. So owners of video cards with 4 GB of memory should simply select high quality textures, lowering the corresponding Image Streaming parameter, especially for high resolutions.

In general, the game scales well and offers a variety of graphic settings that allow for a comfortable game on both mid-level and top-end video cards. The junior video card in comparison, the GeForce GTX 960, provides quite acceptable frame rates in the game at medium and high settings in Full HD resolution, and the GeForce GTX 970 almost copes with this task at a resolution of 2560x1440. There is no point in mentioning more powerful solutions; the GeForce GTX 1070 provides almost perfect smoothness at maximum settings, and the GTX 1080 Ti easily does this under any conditions.

And from the point of view of using CPU resources, the game can be praised - the use of the Vulkan graphics API made it possible to achieve almost ideal distribution of work between the available threads - look at the CPU load graph in the middle of the article. All processor cores are loaded evenly when playing, unlike other games that use outdated APIs such as OpenGL or DirectX 11. Accordingly, the requirements for the CPU are as follows: the game will need either a modern quad-core processor or a not so fast CPU, but with a large number of cores.

We would like to thank the companies that provided software and hardware for testing:
and personally Robert Wislowski
and personally Ivan Mazneva

Since October 2017, gamers around the world have had the opportunity to plunge into the world of an alternative reality, where the Nazis won victory in World War II. We are talking about the second part of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. Judging by player reviews on the Steam service, gamers were really looking forward to the continuation of Blaskowitz’s story.

Unfortunately, many fans noticed how the game they were looking forward to was very glitchy and constantly freezing. Many problems arise: the screen turns black, you cannot use full-screen mode, the shooter periodically freezes, crashes, low FPS, and so on. We will tell you what to do if problems appear in Wolfenstein 2.

The first step is to make sure that your PC fully meets the requirements of the toy.

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus:systemic requirements

To run the shooter, the following minimum system requirements are required:

The processor must be Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD FX-8350;
RAM must be at least eight GB;
Video card - GeForce GTX 770 (4 GB) or Radeon R9 290 (4 GB);

Operating system - 64-bit Windows 7/8.1/10;
Processor - required Intel Core i7-4770 (3.3 GHz) or AMD FX-9370;
RAM must be at least sixteen GB;
Video card - GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) or Radeon RX 470 (4 GB);
You must have at least 55 GB of hard drive space.

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus won't launch - what to do

The first problem that many users encounter is the inability to start the game. In this case, after installation, its shortcut on the desktop does not respond to clicks. The first thing you can do is check that the installation is correct. After all, this is one of the main causes of problems. You also need to make sure that all game files were installed successfully. If all of the above is OK, it's worth taking a look at your antivirus. Some of them block or completely delete files that they consider suspicious. So for a normal installation, you should turn off your antivirus before installation.

But this is not the only problem that leads to the game not even wanting to turn on. Sometimes the shooter will not launch due to cache violations in Steam. If everything is fine there, try running the shooter as an administrator.

If the game keeps crashing during startup or Wolfenstein 2 won't start, then your PC is not able to fully process all the game files. You should free up RAM by closing all programs that you are not using while playing. Also lower graphics settings.

If Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus cannot be installed, you need to check your Internet connection. Also, from time to time problems arise in Steam, so it’s worth restarting the service. Keep in mind that the game weighs 50 GB, so you need to leave enough memory for it to load normally. Otherwise, the installation will be impossible. It is best to leave a few more gigabytes so that the game functions properly.

If Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is having trouble with a black screen appearing during startup, there are a few options you might want to try. First, see if you have turned off the overlay in the settings menu. To do this, you need to go to the service in Steam and check the necessary settings. The second option is to download and install new drivers for the video card. After all, a black screen most often indicates that it is worth upgrading your video card.

Another common problem in the game was the inability to use full-screen mode. It may freeze during the opening process or not respond at all to attempts to install it. In order to fix the problem, you need to go to the graphics settings and turn off the menu item called Async Compute. This should save you from further difficulties.

If Wolfenstein 2 crashes after you change the resolution settings, you need to check what video card you are using. If it is Nvidia, then you should download and install a new driver. It will have a version number of 388.00 or 388.10. Users who have tried this advice are already saying that their problems have gone away.

In the case where Wolfenstein 2 constantly freezes during loading or during the game, when the characters slow down and their movements completely stop responding to your controls, you should disable the Async Compute option. Also, if the toy freezes, you can try restarting Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus.

If you are worried about low performance or FPS, although your computer meets all the requirements and can easily provide you with sufficient performance, you need to use one of the tips. First: update graphics drivers. Second: make sure the PC is not in power saving mode. If that doesn't help, try restarting the shooter on a discrete video card.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus has problems due to high computer hardware requirements. To improve performance, you can try lowering all graphics settings, removing effects that you consider unnecessary, turning off all processes that you will not use in the near future: browser, downloads and other programs. If you have Windows 10 installed on your PC, you should activate the game mode - it optimizes the system just for the running shooter. To do this, you need to enter the game and press the Win + G combination and select the desired mode in the pop-up menu.

Control problems in Wolfenstein 2 are also nothing new. Especially if you connected both a keyboard and a gamepad to play the game. To make the control work again, you should disconnect one of the devices. Also keep in mind that the shooter does not support all gamepads. It's best if the controller has the same layout as the XBox. And you need to configure it in a shooter.

Some players are complaining that Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus does not have Russian language. In order for it to be there, it is necessary: firstly, to purchase the Russified version. You can also change the language in the settings menu. If still nothing works, you should check the cache - not all files may be in place. Also keep in mind that the shooter is completely translated officially, so you shouldn’t download incomprehensible files from the network.

Wolfenstein 2 may also have problems with sound. In order to solve them, you need to check your speakers or headphones - sometimes they are the problem. If they are ok, then update the driver for the sound card or for the video card if the sound card is integrated there.

Sometimes Wolfenstein 2 won't launch due to a problem in the DLL. In order to solve it, you just need to download and install DLL-fixer.

Wolfenstein 2 - New Orleans mission problem

This mission contains a bug, which is quite widely known. During the process, all tasks may disappear from your journal. To return them, you must enter the game again.

We hope that our tips will help you deal with problems in the shooter.

Introduction

This review will conduct a summary test of video cards and processors in the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. You can read the review on it by following this link.

System requirements

Minimum system requirements:

Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400.
RAM: 8 GB.
Video card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 4096 MB or AMD Radeon R9 290 4096 MB.

Operating system: Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 (x64 version).
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X.
RAM: 16 GB.
Free space on HDD: 55 GB.
Video card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6144 MB or AMD Radeon RX 570 4096 MB.

Summary testing of video cards

Test configuration

Tests were carried out on the following stand:

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K (Kaby Lake-S, L3 8 MB), 4200 @ 4800 MHz (HT-on);
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z270X-Ultra Gaming, LGA 1151;
CPU cooling system: Corsair Hydro Series H105 (~1300 rpm);
RAM: 2 x 8 GB DDR4 Kingston HyperX Savage (Spec: 3000 MHz / 15-17-17-32-1t / 1.35 V), X.M.P. - on;
Disk subsystem No. 1: 64 GB, SSD ADATA SX900;
Disk subsystem No. 2: 1 TB, HDD Western Digital Caviar Green (WD10EZRX);
Power unit: Corsair HX850 850 Watt (standard fan: 140 mm inlet);
Frame: open test stand;
Monitor: 27" ASUS PB278Q BK (Wide LCD, 2560x1440 / 60 Hz);
TV: 40" LG 40UF670V (Wide LCD, 3840x2160 / 60 Hz).

Video cards:

Radeon RX 580 8192 MB - 1346/8000 @ 1450/9000 MHz (Gigabyte);
Radeon RX 570 4096 MB - 1244/7000 @ 1440/8000 MHz (MSI);
Radeon RX 560 2048 MB - 1275/7000 @ 1430/8000 MHz (ASUS);

Radeon R9 Fury X 4096 MB - 1050/500 @ 1150/500 MHz (Sapphire);
Radeon R9 Fury 4096 MB - 1000/500 @ 1100/500 MHz (Sapphire);

GeForce GTX 1080 8192 MB - 1734/10000 @ 2000/11500 MHz (Gigabyte);
GeForce GTX 1070 8192 MB - 1683/8008 @ 1964/9500 MHz (MSI);
GeForce GTX 1060 6144 MB - 1708/8008 @ 1940/9400 MHz (ASUS);
GeForce GTX 1060 3072 MB - 1708/8008 @ 1920/9300 MHz (MSI);
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4096 MB - 1390/7012 @ 1750/8000 MHz (Palit);
GeForce GTX 1050 2048 MB - 1455/7012 @ 1770/8000 MHz (Palit).

Software:

Operating system: Windows 10 x64;
Video card drivers: Nvidia GeForce 388.13 WHQL and AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.10.3.
Utilities: Fraps 3.5.9 Build 15586, AutoHotkey v1.0.48.05, MSI Afterburner 4.3.0.

Testing tools and methodology

For a more visual comparison of video cards and processors, the game used as a test application was launched in resolutions of 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 and 3840 x 2160.

The utilities Fraps 3.5.99 Build 15618 and AutoHotkey v1.0.48.05 were used as performance measurement tools. Measured in game minimum And average FPS values. VSync was disabled during testing.

Test segment video:

Monitoring RAM and video memory usage

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The components were tested with the following graphics settings:

Version 1.0 Update 1.
Vulkan API.

Anti-aliasing - FXAA.
Field of view - 90.
The quality of lighting is extremely high.
The quality of the shadows is uber high.
The quality of the particles is extremely high.
The quality of directional shading is high.
The quality of reflections is extremely high.
The quality of the decals is extremely high.
The quality of motion blur is extremely high.
The image quality is extremely high.
The water quality is extremely high.
The quality of the three-dimensional image is high.
Anisotropic texture filtering - 16x.
Anisotropic filtering of decals - 16x.
Anisotropic filtering of the light map - 4x.
Anisotropic filtering of residual image types - 16x.
Deferred rendering is disabled.
Polygon removal is disabled.
Asynchronous calculation - enabled.
Chromatic aberration - enabled.
Depth of field - enabled.
Depth of field smoothing - enabled.
HDR glow - enabled.
Sharpness - 2.0.
Image graininess is 1.0.
Resolution scaling is disabled.

Before we begin testing video cards and processors, we will monitor the use of RAM and video memory in this game.

Video memory and RAM usage

Video memory

RAM

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MB

Test results: performance comparison

Now let's move on directly to testing graphics accelerators.