Call Of Duty: Ghosts Graphics Performance: 17 Cards, Tested

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

It's already a commercial blockbuster. But does Call of Duty: Ghosts improve the first-person shooter genre, or simply rehash it? We look at this series' newest installment and test to see what kind of hardware you'll need for smooth play on the PC.

CPU Benchmarks

The Call of Duty games aren't known to be particularly processor-bound. So, in an effort to identify bottlenecks, we apply the highest possible graphics settings and drop the resolution to 1680x1050.

The $110 FX-4170 manages to maintain minimum frame rates in excess of 35 FPS, and all other CPUs are around the 40 FPS mark or higher except for AMD's Phenom II X4 965. That's a bit of a surprise, since the Phenom II X4 usually passes or matches the FX-4170 in games.

However, there's also quite a bit of scaling going on, with averages from 43.7 FPS up to nearly 80 FPS using the same graphics card. Pay special attention to this; if you overdo it on graphics and shoot too low on host processing, there's a good chance you could artificially limit performance.

There are some spikes in the frame time variance chart. However, based on what we saw after applying Call of Duty's highest-end settings previously, they're most likely related to interplay between one of the game's features and our GeForce GTX Titan.

Don Woligroski
111 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Amdlova
    i think i will use mine 670 for more 5 years...
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    I think it's safe to say that Call of Duty defined, and then refined, the console-based first-person shooter experience

    It is funny to see this as CoD1 and CoD2 were originally PC games. CoD2 was the first to be ported to the 360 but CoD3 was the first multi-console one of the series, with no release on the PC.

    I loved 1 and 2 and 4 was pretty good but now CoD is just the same thing every year. It's just a cash cow currently with no innovation while 1 & 2 were very innovative (CoD1 was the first to have real recorded sounds for every gun used in the game).

    I haven't done a CoD since 2. It's too bad as it could have been a great series if it didn't become console and money centric.

    Also, on page 9 the chart for the FPS says Battlefield 4......
    Reply
  • lunyone
    If you have a PhII x4 965 BE, you can just OC it to get a bit more FPS if you like, so there is that option. Obviously you want more CPU, but not all of us have the $ to do so.
    Reply
  • Cons29
    my last cod was mw2 which i stopped playing due to lack of dedicated server. The last i enjoyed was cod4.

    bf is much better (personal opinion), 64 players on a huge map with vehicles and desctructions, better than cod
    Reply
  • Frank Zigfreed
    Loving these game graphics performance reviews!!! keep them coming tomshardware!!
    B
    Reply
  • animeman59
    Been playing this game on PC ever since it's release, and I gotta say, this is probably one of the worst performing games that I've ever seen. I'm running an FX-8350, a GTX 780, and 32GB of RAM, and this game will still dip below 45fps. I don't care what anyone says, but CoD and IW6 should be running with no issues on a rig like that. It's a little suspicious when I can get 60fps consistent on a game like Battlefield 4 with max settings, but CoD:Ghosts stutters like Porky Pig. Even Metro: Last Light runs better than CoD:Ghosts!

    This game is horribly optimized and buggy. People on Steam forums have been complaining about game-breaking bugs from day one, and there's still issues that haven't been answered for, yet. Like the one in Squad Mode where you can't use any of your squad members in a game, except for the first one. Or the earlier bug where people couldn't even create their first soldier, because they didn't have 3 squad points to unlock it, hence locking them out of multiplayer.

    Skip out on this game. Infinity Ward obviously doesn't care about the PC market, and their horrible release just further solidifies that fact. Spend your money on a MP shooter that doesn't insult it's audience.
    Reply
  • lunyone
    12095017 said:
    Been playing this game on PC ever since it's release, and I gotta say, this is probably one of the worst performing games that I've ever seen. I'm running an FX-8350, a GTX 780, and 32GB of RAM, and this game will still dip below 45fps. I don't care what anyone says, but CoD and IW6 should be running with no issues on a rig like that. It's a little suspicious when I can get 60fps consistent on a game like Battlefield 4 with max settings, but CoD:Ghosts stutters like Porky Pig. Even Metro: Last Light runs better than CoD:Ghosts!

    This game is horribly optimized and buggy. People on Steam forums have been complaining about game-breaking bugs from day one, and there's still issues that haven't been answered for, yet. Like the one in Squad Mode where you can't use any of your squad members in a game, except for the first one. Or the earlier bug where people couldn't even create their first soldier, because they didn't have 3 squad points to unlock it, hence locking them out of multiplayer.

    Skip out on this game. Infinity Ward obviously doesn't care about the PC market, and their horrible release just further solidifies that fact. Spend your money on a MP shooter that doesn't insult it's audience.

    Quake or Unreal Tournament, anyone?
    Reply
  • smeezekitty
    LOL @ NVidia frame variance
    Reply
  • oxiide
    12095151 said:
    LOL @ NVidia frame variance

    I get that you're trying to phrase that as an AMD fanboy taking a shot at Nvidia, but frame variance is all over the place in this review. There's AMD hardware all over those charts too, not just clustered at the low end.

    These frame variance numbers often aren't even logical—the HD 7990, with lower frame variance than a single HD 7950? A GTX 690 doing better than a single 670? I think its clear that the quality of Infinity Ward's PC port is a factor here, and maybe that's more important than pouncing on Nvidia's mistakes.
    Reply
  • bemused_fred
    12095017 said:
    . I'm running an FX-8350, a GTX 780, and 32GB of RAM,

    A mediocre-CPU with a top end GPU and too much RAM? I FOUND YOUR PROBLEM!
    Reply