ArcheAge – PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

  

Year of releasea: 2014
Genre: MMORPG
developer: XLGAMES
Publishing house: Mail.ru 

 

ArcheAge is a client-side fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for PC, developed by the Korean company XLGames. The game takes place in the universe of ArcheAge – a fantasy world with elements of the Middle Ages, magic and steampunk. The game is being developed in the “sandbox” genre, in which players themselves decide what to do and how to live, without pre-established rules. Controlling the game character, the player can explore the world around him, collect resources, build buildings and ships, interact with various computer characters (NPCs), complete quests, fight monsters (PvE) and other players (PvP) on land or at sea, in the open world or in instances. The game allows players to cooperate in associations of various sizes: in groups of five characters, in guilds, in expeditionary forces (armies), as well as create large associations of hundreds and thousands of players – factions. The game developers plan to make the players’ impact on the world significant; Each server will be unique, as players themselves will shape the history of the world, change and explore it in their own way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0btZdRdg9c

A total of eight races have been announced in the game: Nuian, Elf, Dwarf, Ferre, Hariharan, Fairy, Warborn, Returned. All races are divided into two opposing factions, Western and Eastern continents, by default hostile to each other. The game does not strictly divide characters into classic MMORPG classes (tank, healer, mage, warrior, etc.). Instead, there are ten specializations, of which any character can learn three. This system allows you to create any of 120 unique types of characters (for example, magician-tank-archer) or choose four varieties previously proposed by the developers: warrior, priest, mage, ranger. 

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

ArcheAge only runs on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Other operating systems are not currently supported and are unlikely to receive support.

 

The preferred and main graphics API for the multiplayer game ArcheAge is DirectX 11, but the game also supports DirectX 9 The game works through the Mail.ru gaming service.

Game engine

ArcheAge is based on CryEngine 3 – a game engine developed by the German company Crytek and is the successor to the CryEngine 2 engine. CryEngine 3 is initially a cross-platform engine – it is initially aimed at IBM PC-compatible computers and game consoles Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, and also on their subsequent versions. In addition, the engine is focused on the development of massively multiplayer online games. The CryEngine 3 engine is completely commercial, and the main focus of its development is licensing it to other companies.

 

CryEngine 3 was officially announced on March 11, 2009, and the official release of the engine took place on October 14, 2009. The first game for which the use of CryEngine 3 was announced is the first-person shooter Crysis 2 from Crytek. At the end of March 2010, in an interview with GameReactor magazine, Cevat Yerli said that developers from Crytek had to face a number of problems when developing CryEngine 3 for consoles: “The most difficult thing was the process of scaling CryEngine 3 for consoles while maintaining picture quality and the proper level of performance. Of course, there were challenges, but we are very proud that our team was able to overcome them.”

 

Shaders in CryEngine 3 are written once in a high-level programming language, and then automatically compiled for each platform. Shader output is optimized through artist settings and for the XNUMXD environment in which the shader will be used. Thanks to this, it becomes possible to create effects such as the “invisibility effect”, wet, dirty and frozen surfaces, which can be “layered” on top of each other and combined with other shaders that simulate effects such as metal, glass and others. 

CryEngine 3 supports real-time per-pixel lighting, reflections, refractions, volumetric heat effects and animated textures to simulate windows, bullet holes, surfaces with sun glare and many other effects. CryEngine 3 shaders use a unified shader architecture that has been available since Direct3D 10.

 

“Ubershader” is a single shader program with many features: from one to four lights, light types, specular cubemaps, fog, detailed textures, normal maps, specular textures, etc. Millions of Ubershader combinations can be generated. Ubershader uses dynamic branching, splitting into multiple passes, reducing combinations, and accepting options with less functionality and lower performance requirements. Uses asynchronous shader compilation and a distributed task system to compile the shader cache. 

Advanced Game Settings

ArcheAge has a very wide range of graphic settings, supports various anti-aliasing and resolutions. We have both basic and advanced graphic settings at our disposal.

   

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

Very high settings

As we can see, even at minimum settings CryEngine 3 looks very decent. Although, as you all already understood, at maximum settings the ArcheAge game looks most impressive.

General visual design and game physics

ArcheAge is currently one of the most beautiful and technologically advanced MMO projects, which is not surprising, because the game not only supports the advanced capabilities of DirectX 11, but is also based on one of the most technologically advanced engines of the latest generation, CryEngine 3.

 

CryEngine 3 made it possible not only to reproduce the unsurpassed beauty and landscapes of fabulous places, but also brought to the gameplay the most beautiful visual effects of fire, explosions, ice and smoke, which fully enliven the entire gameplay. Therefore, it is not surprising that with the beginning of the PTA, it is practically impossible to get onto the game servers… 

 

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

TEST PART

GPU test

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average and minimum FPS were taken as performance indicators. Due to the fact that it is impossible to get into the game in the evening, we will post test segments later. 

Our video cards were tested at different screen sizes of 1920×1080, 2560×1600 and 3840×2160 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by ArcheAge. Tests were conducted with the same graphics settings in both games. Multi-chip configurations from AMD and NVIDIA showed an excellent increase in performance, which indicates sufficient optimization of the game for release. 

Testing at 1920×1080 resolution

   

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080

 

With these settings an acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 560 level. The optimal video cards would be Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 560 and above. 

Testing at 2560×1600 resolution

  

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600

 

With these settings an acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon R9 270 or GeForce GTX 580 level. The optimal video cards would be Radeon HD 7950 or GeForce GTX 660 Ti and above.

Testing at 3840×2160 resolution

  

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840×2560 

 

With these settings acceptable FPS showed level video cards Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX TITAN. The optimal video cards will be solutions Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX 780 Ti.  

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 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings 

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920×1080 will be 1280 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560×1600 – 1536 MB of video memory and for a resolution of 3840×2160 a little more than 2048 MB of video memory.  

Micro-Stuttering Test

Introducing our testing of FPS output latency on a Micro-Stuttering monitor. The indicator was based on the results on video cards from AMD ARES II and NVIDIA GTX 780 at a resolution of 1920×1080 with maximum image quality settings.

Testing at maximum quality settings Micro-Stuttering GPU

 

Micro-Stuttering latency performance is at a very acceptable level in various modes. 

CPU test

   

We tested processor dependence on 20 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920×1080 with maximum graphics quality settings. 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 

 

 ArcheAge seemed to show good CPU optimization. Although many may blame us for the weak test segment for the processor load, it is very difficult to find equally heavy test scenes, and the availability of the game servers at the moment leaves much to be desired.

Loading of processor coresat maximum quality settings 1920×1080 Intel% 

 

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 AMD%

 

The game in this case uses about 6 computing cores on the AMD and Intel platforms.

RAM test

The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 [email protected] GHz with 16GB DDR3 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 ArcheAge is at the level of 1600 megabytes.  

Testing system RAM consumption 

If you have a system with 4 gigabytes  ArcheAge consumes about 3.1 gigabytes of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 3.8 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, system memory consumption was almost 4.5 gigabytes.

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