Hawken – PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

 

Genre: Action/ MMO
date of release: 2012
developer: Adhesive Games
Publisher: Adhesive Games

 

The world of the future has turned into a mechanized paradise, which becomes a trap for its own creators. Machines have decided to take over humans and they are close to their goal. You will plunge into the world of battles of combat vehicles that were created for one purpose – the destruction of any object marked “enemy”. A futuristic metropolis becomes an arena for robotic death machines to enter. At your disposal is a huge selection of combat robots that have different characteristics.

 Among them are light bots that have sacrificed weapons and protection for the sake of speed. Some robots are equipped with powerful weapons, but their strength lacks maneuverability. Huge metal fortresses walk heavily along the avenues, looking for their next target with advanced scanners. The game “Hawken” is a new word in the fantastic genre of combat robots!

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

Hawken is supported by the major Windows operating systems, which include Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Other operating systems are not currently supported by the developers. 

 

The primary and primary graphics API for the Hawken multiplayer game is DirectX 9. The game runs through its own game launcher.

Game engine

Hawken is being developed on a familiar engine Unreal Engine 3. UE3 was designed with personal computers using modern rendering systems (DirectX 9/10 and OpenGL 2/3) and next-generation consoles (PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) in mind. Due to the widespread use of multiprocessor systems, the engine uses two parallel main threads – the main thread (responsible primarily for gameplay) and the rendering thread. In addition to the two main threads, secondary threads can be called, which perform one-time tasks. There is now support for multi-threaded dynamic data loading (streaming), for example, loading a “location” directly while moving around it in order to save resources.

 

The updated graphics engine supports most modern technologies, including HDR, per-pixel lighting, dynamic shadows, shader model 4, geometry shaders. The graphics pipeline itself was transferred to the control of shaders. The Karma physical subsystem was abandoned in favor of another one called PhysX from NVIDIA. Later, NVIDIA released a set of additional libraries for the game, allowing you to use all the capabilities of the physical system (such as the “liquid” or fabric effect). The FaceFX mechanism is responsible for the animation of the characters’ faces.

 

Updated EAX version to 5th. Added SpeedTree support for tree generation. The emphasis was placed on additive geometry, but support for subtractive geometry was not abandoned. The disadvantage of subtractive geometry is primarily the much longer lighting calculation. A new UnrealEd editor has been introduced, rewritten using wxWidgets.  

Advanced Game Settings

Hawken has a fairly wide range of graphic settings. We can flexibly manipulate various parameters, adjusting them to the performance of our system. Basic settings are available in the main window, and more advanced settings are available in the advanced product settings menu.

 

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. Comparisons of modes with and without physics are also presented.

Low quality settings

Medium quality settings

Maximum quality settings

As we can see, there is a difference between different quality settings, but not as significant as it might seem at first glance. But still, the most attractive is the maximum quality setting.

Comparison PhysX On Off

PhysX significantly improves the gaming experience of the game. And if in static conditions this is not very noticeable, then in movement, that is, dynamics, we have a lot of pleasant gaming emotions.

General visual design and game physics

Hawken is PC exclusive, has a multiplayer component and will be distributed completely free of charge, but what else is needed for happiness? For a gamer’s PC to be happy, graphics are still necessary, and although many argue that beauty does not make happiness, don’t believe it – playing visually technologically advanced and beautiful games is much more enjoyable.

 

The second sub-point of happiness also did not bypass Hawken, and although the game is based on the rather outdated Unreal Engine 3, it is still able to show that in the right hands you can make candy out of nothing. It is worth noting that visually the game looks much nicer than MechWarrior Online, based on CryEngine 3, which we will review a little later.

 

Also, an important role is played by the fact that the game supports PhysX technology, all the delights of which can be felt using a GPU from NVIDIA. Physics works the same way on a CPU, albeit with lower quality effects. Controls in Hawken are fully optimized for PC accessories and do not require additional manipulators.

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 by the program MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average FPS was taken as a performance indicator. Below is a video of the test segment: 

Our video cards were tested at separate screen sizes of 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Hawken. The test was carried out in normal modes with and without physics. Multi-chip configurations from NVIDIA and AMD are not supported by the game. Test with enabled PhysX was carried out on NVIDIA video cards. How AMD video cards feel in this case is looked at in the processor dependence test, because in this case the system performance depends on the CPU.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 PhysX turned off

 

At a resolution of 1920×1080, an acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 5750 level or GeForce GTS 450. The optimal video cards will be Radeon HD 7750 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti and higher.

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600 PhysX turned off

 

At a resolution of 2560×1600, an acceptable minimum FPS was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 5830 level or GeForce GTX 550 Ti. The optimal video cards will be Radeon HD 5850 or GEFORCE GTX 650 Ti and above.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 PhysX included

 

At a resolution of 1920×1080 at maximum settings, with physics, an acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the level  GeForce GTS 450. The optimal video cards will be solutionsGeForce GTX 460 and above. 

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600 PhysX included

 

At a resolution of 2560×1600 at maximum settings, with physics, an acceptable minimum FPS level was shown by video cards GeForce GTX 460. The optimal solution will be  GeForce GTX 470 and above.

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 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings PhysX turned off

 

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings PhysX included

The recommended amount of video memory usage for this game is 1 GB for all basic graphics quality settings. 

CPU test

We tested processor dependence on 12 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 PhysX turned off

With all physics turned off, our tested models coped with the game with almost no problems. In this case, AMD processors noticeably lag behind Intel.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 PhysX included

 

When physics is activated, the gap between AMD and Intel is noticeably reduced. In this case, using two cores in the system is inappropriate.

As we can see, although top processors provide fairly high performance when processing physics, top-end video cards of the GEFORCE GTX class can provide more attractive performance at standard Full HD resolution.

RAM test

Testing of the RAM consumed by the game was carried out by monitoring directly through the Windows task manager. The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 [email protected] GHz with 8GB 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 Hawken is at the level of 1600 megabytes. Thus, for a comfortable game you need to have at least 3 GB of RAM installed in your PC.   

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