Mass Effect (2008): PC Performance Benchmarks for Graphics Cards and Processors

BASIC INFORMATION ON THE GAME

 

Year of release : May 28, 2008
Year of release in Russia : June 6, 2008
Genre : RPG (Rogue/Action) / 3D / 3rd Person
Developer : BioWare Corporation and Demiurge Studios
Publisher : EA
Publisher in Russia : 1C

The year is 2183. Mankind, having learned the secret of traveling with superluminal speed, has founded colonies in dozens of solar systems and is not going to stop there, intending to further expand the boundaries of its own possessions. However, people turned out to be far from the only highly developed civilization for millions of light years around. Willy-nilly, they have to get along with other races and listen to the opinion of the influential Council of the Citadel.

On the side of the latter are the so-called Spectra - elite special agents endowed with enormous powers. Acting on behalf of the Council, the Specters are free to use any means, and no one has the right to interfere with them. Many considered the Specters to be knights without fear or reproach - until one of them, Saren, unleashed a war in order to seize power over the world. And only one person can stop the villain...

In the role of the brave Captain Shepard, the player will go to plow the expanses of space aboard the prototype ship Normandy, hoping to find the elusive Saren and save civilization from impending disaster. The hero will have to visit many worlds, infiltrate abandoned research stations and learn a lot about the past of our galaxy. On the way to the goal, Shepard is waiting for a lot of enemies, but the allies are always ready to lend a helping hand to the captain!

THE GRAFICAL PART

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

Supported OS and graphics API

Mass Effect is supported by major operating systems, which include WindowsXP/Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Other operating systems are currently not supported by the developers.

 

The priority and primary graphics API for Gray Goo is  DirectX 9 . 

Game engine

Mass Effect is based on the Unreal Engine 3 game engine. The first version of the Unreal Engine 3 was released in 2006. This cross-platform engine was developed with the next generation PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 consoles and personal computers in mind, using modern DirectX 9, OpenGL 2 and OpenGL 3 rendering systems. Support for DirectX 10 version was quickly added with the release of Windows Vista and shader version 4.0. Due to the widespread use of multiprocessor systems, the engine uses two parallel main threads - the main thread, which is mainly responsible for the game process and the rendering thread. In addition to the two main threads, secondary threads can be called, which perform one-time tasks. There is support for multi-threaded dynamic data loading, such as 

 

The updated graphics engine supports most modern technologies, including HDR, per-pixel lighting, dynamic shadows, shaders version 4.0, geometry shaders. The graphics pipeline itself was transferred under the control of shaders. The physical subsystem Karma was abandoned in favor of another called PhysX from AGEIA. Later, AGEIA released a set of additional libraries for the game, allowing you to use all the features of your physical system.

The FaceFX mechanism is responsible for the animation of the faces of the characters. The EAX system has been updated to the fifth version. Added support for SpeedTree for generating trees. The emphasis was on additive geometry, but support for subtractive geometry was not abandoned. The disadvantage of subtractive geometry in the first place is a much longer lighting calculation. A new UnrealEd editor has been introduced, rewritten using wxWidgets. In this version, there was another evolution of the graphic component. So, among other things, the Ambient occlusion post-processing filter was added, which improves shadows and lighting. The number of processed characters in the frame has been increased. The dynamic water surface technology has been redesigned to a new level, soft body physics and destructible environments have also been significantly improved. 

 

In March 2010, an announcement of new features of the engine was published, which were presented at the Game Developers Conference 2010. One of the main innovations is the new Unreal Lightmass lighting system, which uses lossless global illumination features that were implemented in older lighting systems. Improved work with multiprocessor systems - distribution of tasks between multiprocessor systems using Unreal Swarm, as well as faster compilation of C ++ code and processing of Unreal Script due to Unreal Build Tool. 

 

Added its own means of distributing user-generated content - Unreal Content Browser, appeared Unreal Master Control Program - a new master server for updating clients and maintaining global statistics, which is already used in Gears of War 2. In connection with the innovations, Epic Games China planned to demonstrate the use of the engine for massively multiplayer online games.

 

Advanced game settings

 

Mass Effect has a very meager range of graphic settings, which is explained by its console orientation.

   

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. 

Various quality modes

The picture quality between different settings in Mass Effect is almost imperceptible.

Comparison of FullHD and 4K

In 4K, Mass Effect looks much better and better, given that the anti-aliasing mode is not available in the game.

General visual design and game physics

Needless to say, Mass Effect at one time did not demonstrate advanced graphics technologies, but thanks to the work of game designers, the game looked simply gorgeous, striking with its environment and gameplay.

 

  

Next, we will go directly to the 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 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 the performance indicator. Below is a video of the test segment:    

Our video cards were tested at 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 resolutions, with the maximum Mass Effect graphics settings. SLI and AMD CrossFireX have excellent game support.

Testing at 2560x1600 resolution

       

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600

 

With these settings,  video cards of the Radeon R7 260X or GeForce GTX 750 Ti level showed an acceptable FPS. 

Testing at 3840x2160 resolution

       

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2160

 

With these settings,  video cards of the Radeon R7 260X or GeForce GTX 660 level showed an acceptable FPS. 

Testing of the video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the  MSI Afterburner program. The results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA were taken as an indicator at resolutions of  1920x1080 and 2560x1600 with various anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for 1920x1080 resolution will be 320 MB of video memory, for 2560x1600 resolution - 512 MB of video memory and for 3840x2160 resolution about 768 MB of video memory. 

CPU test

     

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 with maximum graphics quality settings. 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080

 

The CPU performance in the game at the moment is just great.

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

 

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

 

Mass Effect is capable of supporting up to 6 processing cores, but only 4 cores can fully exploit its capabilities.

RAM test

The test was carried out on the base configuration Core i 7 5960X @ 4.6 GHz with 16GB DDR4 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. All used RAM was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without running extraneous 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 Mass Effect is at the level of 600 megabytes.

Testing system RAM consumption  

 

On a 6 GB system, Mass Effect consumes about 2.2 GB of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 2.3 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, total memory consumption was almost 2.5 GB. And with 32 gigabytes of RAM, the system consumes 3.5 gigabytes of RAM.