The Secret World Beta – PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

 

Year of construction: 2012
Genre: MMORPG
developer: Funcom
Publishing house: Funcom, Electronic Arts

The Secret World is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by the Norwegian studio Funcom. The game takes place in our time, in a world similar to ours, but in which magic and mythical monsters coexist along with ordinary things and ordinary people. The developers have been thinking about its creation since 1997, but active development began only in 2002. Fueling public interest with mysterious messages and puzzles, Funcom officially announced the game on May 11, 2007.

The world of TSW, on the one hand, reflects our modern world with the daily bustle, urban landscapes of cities, cars, etc. But it also has another side – a secret world – the world of magic, the world of ancient myths, the world of global conspiracies and powerful groups fighting for the world a dominance in which even modern cities hide secrets.

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

This game is supported by the current major Windows operating systems, which include Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Other operating systems are not currently supported by The Secret World and are unlikely to receive support in the future. 

 

The Secret World Beta supports DirectX 9 and  DirectX 11. The required API is selected in the launcher when starting the game. The Secret World has a very large appetite for a hard drive, so you need to have at least 30 free gigabytes.

Game engine

The game engine is a product of Funcom’s own development and is called DreamWorld Engine. An earlier version of the engine was used in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. This version has removed support DirectX 10 and added the most current at the moment DirectX 11.

In terms of technology, The Secret World is the most advanced massively multiplayer online role-playing game to date, boasting DirectX 11 effects, tessellation, Ambient Occlusion technology, FXAA anti-aliasing and a whole host of other features.

At launch and sometime after, The Secret World will also support 2D Surround, 3D Vision, 3D Vision Surround and the brand new TXAA anti-aliasing technology that was introduced with the GeForce GTX 680.

Advanced Graphics Settings

В The Secret World Beta There are both basic and advanced settings for the quality of the graphic component. Users can flexibly manipulate graphics settings to achieve smoother playability on their system configurations.  

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between minimum, medium, high and maximum graphics quality settings. Tessellation was not activated in this case.

Low quality settings

Medium quality settings

High quality settings

Very high settings

As we can see, the difference in the picture is most visible when moving from medium to high level. The graphics settings also include the main technology feature DirectX 11, namely tessellation. Tessellation settings have several quality levels. Below we have provided screenshots at maximum quality settings with tessellation disabled and its highest level. 

Tessellation quality

Tessellation is most clearly visible in wall bricks, but to be honest, this option does not look very attractive. So developers should pay attention to polishing this visual component.

General visual design and game physics

The Secret World is currently one of the most beautiful and technologically advanced representatives of the MMO genre. We have probably never seen such graphic content in any online project. The game is a PC exclusive, so this outcome was quite obvious, especially since the game has NVIDIA support.

 

The surrounding game world is very nice and the game locations are quite interesting to explore. The character models are very attractive and have movement physics close to reality. Dynamic changes in the time of day allow you to evaluate the quality of locations from different angles.

 

Well, then 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 minimum and average FPS were taken as performance indicators. 

Our video cards were tested at different screen sizes of 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 with maximum graphics quality settings allowed by the game in DirectX 9 mode and DirectX 11. SLI and Cross Fire games are not supported and do not provide an increase in performance. Performance in mode DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 is almost the same unless you enable the tessellation options, soeats in mode DirectX 11 was run with maximum tessellation settings. 

Testing at high quality settings 1680×1050 DX9

 

At a resolution of 1680×1050 at maximum settings, in DirectX 9 mode, all our video cards showed the minimum level of performance, and for comfortable gaming, cards of the Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce GTS 450 level will be sufficient.

Testing at high quality settings 1920×1080 DX9

At a resolution of 1920×1080 at maximum In the settings, the minimum level of performance was again shown by cards of the level of Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti. The optimal solutions will be adeon HD 7750 or GeForce GTX 460 SE.

Testing at high quality settings 2560×1600 DX9

 

At a resolution of 2560×1600 at maximum Settings  the minimum level of acceptable performance was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 5850 or GeForce GTX 560 level. The optimal solution for these settings in DirectX 9 mode would be video cards of the level  Radeon HD 5870 or GeForce GTX 480.

 

Testing at high quality settings 1680×1050 DX11  

 

When tessellation is activated, AMD video cards literally fall to their knees. At a resolution of 1680×1050 at maximum settings, in DirectX 11 mode, the minimum comfortable level was shown by cards of the Radeon HD 7970 or GeForce GTX 460 level. The optimal solution for these settings would be GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

Testing at high quality settings 1920×1080 DX11

  

At a resolution of 1920×1080 at maximum quality settings, the GeForce GTX 560 showed the minimum level of performance. The optimal solution for these settings would be GeForce GTX 480.

Testing at high quality settings 2560×1600 DX11

 

At a resolution of 2560×1600 at maximum settings, video cards with a video memory capacity of less than 1 gigabyte fail because the game refuses to apply graphics settings to them. The minimum level of acceptable performance will be shown by the GeForce GTX 570. The optimal solution for these settings will be. The optimal solution for these settings would be the GEFORCE GTX 680.

Based on the above test, it is clear that AMD video cards compete quite well with NVIDIA in DirectX 9 mode, but when tessellation is activated in DirectX 11, they cannot compete with the competitor. As a result, the top-end flagship Radeon HD 7970 showed the level of the average solution of the previous generation GeForce GTX 460.

In our opinion, this trend is associated with AMD’s poor preparation for this game in terms of driver optimization and closer cooperation between developers and NVIDIA in the process of creating the game. Special attention should be paid to the GEFORCE GTX 680, which showed simply phenomenal performance and is currently the most optimal solution for The Secret World.

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 high quality settings memory GPU DX 9

Testing at high quality settings memory GPU DX 11

The optimal amount of video memory usage at maximum settings for The Secret World Beta is about 1024 MB for NVIDIA and AMD in DirectX 9 mode and DirectX 11 . For the highest resolutions in mode DirectX 11 will need its volume to be at least 1200 megabytes.

CPU test

We tested processor dependence on 15 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 1024×768. All additional graphics options such as anti-aliasing, blooming and tessellation have been disabled.

Testing at high quality settings 1024×768 DX 11

As we can see, the game is quite loyal to CPU resources, and for more or less comfortable playability, a dual-core model of the latest generation will be enough. However, the test was carried out at the very beginning of the game, in the video above, so in more populated areas the FPS may be significantly lower…

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 DX 9 quality settings

Testing at various DX 11 quality settings

At any quality settings, The Secret World Beta consumes around 1200 megabytes of RAM, so the most optimal solution is to have 2 to 3 gigabytes of RAM in the system.