Last August 24, 2016, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was released and we made an initial performance testing of the game. GeForce GTX 970, the most popular gaming GPU according to the Steam Hardware Survey of August 2016, failed to deliver a playable gaming experience at 1080p when every image quality setting is set to maximum.
Initially, we have thought of using the game’s built-in benchmark tool for this review because it will make the review process easier and many well-known review sites like Tech Spot, Tech Power Up, and Guru3D also used it. However, we found that it does not tax the VRAM that much. Using it will give misleading results to our readers. We don’t want that. After playing the entire game, we decided to use the area near the TF29 headquarters in Prague City as our benchmark area. Based on what we have seen, Prague City puts more load on the CPU, RAM, and VRAM.
We would like to thank following:
1. ASUS Philippines for lending us the ASUS Strix GTX 950 2GB OC
2. AMD for lending us the MSI RX 460 2GB OC and MSI RX 470 4GB Gaming X
3. NVIDIA for lending us the GTX 1080 Founder’s Edition
How We Tested
The PC we used for this article is shown below:
CPU | Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.0 GHz |
Graphics Card | ASUS Strix GTX 950 2GB OC
Gigabyte GTX 970 4GB ITX NVIDIA GTX 1080 Founder’s Edition MSI RX 460 2GB OC MSI RX 470 4GB Gaming X |
Motherboard | Gigabyte Z97-D3H |
Memory | G. Skill 4GBx4 DDR3 1,600 MHz |
Case | Antec 300 |
Driver | Crimson 16.9.1
GeForce 372.70 |
Operating System | Windows 10 64-bit |
Frame rates and frame times of a 60-second game play were recorded using FRAPS v3.5.99. The test results are the average of 3 benchmark runs.
Version 1.4 build 545.4 of the game was used for this review.
What You Need to Play
We know some gamers would just want to know what they need to be able to play this game so we area going to lead with that information. The table below shows the minimum hardware we recommend.
Decent Image Quality at 1080p | Balanced Image Quality at 1080p | Maximum Image Quality at 1080p | |
CPU | AMD FX-6300 | AMD FX-8320E | Intel Core i7 6700 |
GPU | Radeon RX 460
GeForce GTX 950 |
Radeon RX 470
GeForce GTX 1060 |
GeForce GTX 1070 |
RAM | 8 GB | 8 GB if VRAM > 4 GB
16 GB if VRAM = 4 GB |
8 GB |
GPU Performance Test
This game is really demanding that the GeForce GTX 1080 is only good for 1080p if you use maximum settings. Some would say Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is just poorly optimized because the GTX 1080 is a gaming GPU for 1440p based on its performance in other games. But we think that many gamers have just forgotten or are not aware of Crysis which was released in November 2007. The top-end GPU at that time cannot reach 30 FPS at 1920 x 1200 when every image quality setting is set to maximum. Perhaps we are seeing that kind of scenario again in 2016.
The game still looks impressive even when using the tweaked settings for Radeon RX 470 4GB and GeForce GTX 970 4GB. For those with less powerful GPU’s, you can still play the game at 1080p but there would be a noticeable reduction in image quality because you need to further reduce some of the image quality settings. The screenshots below are just for comparing the image quality differences among the tweaked settings shown in the table above. The game looks much more beautiful when you are playing.
Set 1
Set 2
Set 3
Set 4
VRAM and RAM Test
Before, we would recommend to get a graphics card with at least 4GB of VRAM. With this game, we recommend to aim for 8GB of VRAM if the graphics card you will be buying has a 4GB variant and an 8GB variant. The Texture Quality is the main image quality setting that greatly affects VRAM usage. Some may argue that 8GB is overkill and you can just use a lower setting for Texture Quality. That is a valid point but Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is one of the games where not using the highest or second to the highest setting for Texture Quality has a noticeable reduction in image quality. The game will give a warning that more than 4GB of VRAM is required if you select Very High or Ultra for the Texture Quality.
You might be wondering what would happen if you try to use Very High or Ultra for Texture Quality on a graphics card with 4GB of VRAM. We tested that on the GeForce GTX 970 4GB and found that the RAM is used more when the VRAM is insufficient. It is not shown in the charts but the RAM usage when using High for Texture Quality is around 6GB only. The RAM usage climbed to around 7.5GB when the Texture Quality setting was increased to Very High. The problem with RAM is it is slower than the VRAM. We experienced stuttering on the GTX 970 when using Ultra but it was solved by reducing the Texture Quality setting to Very High.
The VRAM and RAM usage behavior with the GeForce GTX 970 4GB is the main reason why we chose Prague City instead of the Dubai level for our benchmarks. When we first tested the game, our Intel Haswell test platform was only equipped with 8GB of RAM. The GeForce GTX 970 4GB had no problem in the game’s built-in benchmark tool and in the Dubai level when using Very High for Texture Quality. However, the game crashed after the loading screen for Prague City. We initially thought it is a bug but it repeatedly happened. The OSD (on-screen display) of MSI Afterburner showed the RAM usage slowly climbs to 8GB as the loading for Prague City nears completion. The solution was to either use High for Texture Quality or add more RAM. In our opinion, it’s better to add more RAM because there is a noticeable difference between High Texture Quality and Very High Texture Quality.
CPU Performance Test
In the What You Need to Play section of this article, we have different CPU recommendations for depending on the GPU to be used. If you are buying a new PC, aim for at least a Core i5 6500 if you plan to use a GeForce GTX 1060, Radeon RX 470 or faster GPU. We only recommend Core i3 6100 if the GPU is a GeForce GTX 950, Radeon RX 460 or slower GPU.
Notice how the Maximum Settings and the Tweaked High – Very High Settings have almost the same performance on the GeForce GTX 1080 when using a simulated Core i3 Haswell @ 4.0 GHz (Core i7 4790K with 2 CPU cores disabled). That is a perfect example of CPU bottleneck.
What About DX12 ?
The DX12 mode for this game was enabled in version 1.4 build 545.4 but is still in beta stage. There is stuttering on AMD GPU’s so we decided not to use it. Even Tech Report, the pioneer in frame time benchmarking, also experienced stuttering on AMD GPU’s when running the game in DX12. We will revisit this game once the DX12 mode gets fixed. It is interesting to see how DX12 will affect performance of AMD GPU’s and NVIDIA GPU’s.
All information in this article is for education purpose only. For actual graphics card performance analysis, please refer to our full graphics card review analysis for details in the future. Kindly refer to the table above to see our recommended system specs to play this game.
In summary, Deus Ex Mankind Divided poses a new challenge