Medal Of Honor Warfighter Performance, Benchmarked

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

We take Medal of Honor Warfighter for a spin on 12 different graphics cards to figure out how much hardware you need to get this modern-day account of our Tier 1 operators' work running smoothly. Not surprisingly, the single-player campaign is GPU-heavy.

Single-Player: GPU-Dependent, Just Like Battlefield 3

Built on the same Frostbite 2 engine that debuted alongside Battlefield 3, Medal of Honor Warfighter's single-player campaign is likewise highly dependent on graphics performance. At the lowest available detail settings, you need at least a GeForce GT 630 GDDR5 or Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 for playable performance. And that's at a meager 1280x1024. Crank the knob up to medium details and use a more enthusiast-oriented 1920x1080 resolution; suddenly, you're looking at a Radeon HD 7750 or GeForce GT 650 just to get by. And at the highest detail levels (the Ultra preset) with 4x MSAA, plan on buying a card with at least 2 GB of memory and either AMD's Radeon HD 7850 or Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660 graphics processor. Stepping up to 2560x1600 or a triple-display configuration necessitates a Radeon HD 7970 or GeForce GTX 670, at least.

A little paratrooping to mix it up.

As we saw in Battlefield 3, CPU performance matters little to the single-player campaign. A 3 GHz Pentium G860 manages to achieve the same average frame rate as a Core i7-3960X overclocked to 4.2 GHz (even if the Pentium's minimum frame rate dips a bit lower). Even an old Athlon II X2 240 at 2.8 GHz is able to serve up a smooth experience. It simply holds back our Radeon HD 7970 a bit. Pairing that inexpensive CPU to a more mainstream graphics card would likely yield a better-balanced combination.

Farooq Al Rashid is about to have a really bad day.

As for the game itself, I consider it another well-produced first-person shooter set in modern times, which perhaps makes it more relatable to a 30- or 40-something year-old gamer than tale from World War II or Vietnam. I applaud the game's developers for putting in the effort to convey the human element behind our Tier 1 operators, whose work largely goes unrecognized...necessarily.

On the other hand, I find the whole presentation somewhat disjointed. The missions are fun and interesting, but they seem unrelated at times, leaving the impression that someone wrote a story around them, after they were designed. Still, if you love Battlefield 3 and Call Of Duty: Black Ops, then you'll probably enjoy Medal of Honor Warfighter, too.

True Bromance
Don Woligroski
54 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mayankleoboy1
    Nice review! :)
    In CPU benchmark, it would have been better to see the continuous FPS graph , rather than just the single values of 'Average' and 'minimum' .

    Also, CPU frequency scaling is needed
    Reply
  • rmpumper
    No one is playing this crap. Why waist your time testing it?
    Reply
  • esrever
    Interesting that the 1gb on the 7850 starts showing signs of weakness at higher settings even at 1080p. The minimals went lower than the 7770 :o

    I think nvidia's gpu boost is causing the nvidia cards to have higher average and lower minimals since it can render higher fps when less things are going on but they can only have so much performance when the rendering gets tough. I think GPU boost is a pointless feature because of that since why would anyone want high maximal fps and low minimal fps?
    Reply
  • greghome
    No 7850 2GB to see if it's a memory bottleneck ? :/

    and you're missing the 7870 and 7950 in them. just sayin'
    Reply
  • JJ1217
    You put a 7850 1 GB, so now no one is going to buy a 7850 to play this game, as they'll get the wrong results due to memory bandwidth constraints. People who know about video ram will have no issue with this, but what about those looking for a good cheap video card to run games well? You pretty much just destroyed any chance of someone getting a 7850 for this game, due to the terrible gathering of results.

    Expected more from T.H to be honest.
    Reply
  • JJ1217
    Woops didn't mean memory bandwidth, meant amount of memory ^.^
    Reply
  • EzioAs
    10446769 said:
    No 7850 2GB to see if it's a memory bottleneck ? :/

    and you're missing the 7870 and 7950 in them. just sayin'

    I'm curious as well, though in my opinion it's most probably a memory bottleneck at 1080p wilth ultra settings. BF3 already uses more than 1GB with max image settings with 4xAA as well so if Warfighter uses an updated Frosbite2 engine, it's highly plausible.

    On the other hand, I'm not fully satisfied that they didn't test the game with the 7870. And how about 560ti and 6870(the 2 very popular card from last-gen), I think at least a couple mid-range card from last gen should be tested
    Reply
  • greghome
    EzioAshow about 560ti and 6870(the 2 very popular card from last-gen), I think at least a couple mid-range card from last gen should be tested
    i miss my 6950 on benchmarks.......
    Story of my hardware life.

    First Year, Wow Top of the line
    2nd Year, Still in benchmarks
    3rd Year, Still performing good enough
    4th Year......I need an uphrade
    Reply
  • the3dsgeek
    Can you please do a performance benchmark comparison of NFS most wanted? its running like shit on my GTX670
    Reply
  • ojas
    Liked the way you ran benchmarks, covered all major resolutions with all major detail levels across a wide spectrum of cards.

    Anyway, didn't really read your game review, but Rock, Paper, Shotgun was extremely critical of the game, and i understand their sentiment, because BF3 is similar in some respects.
    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/29/wot-i-think-medal-of-honor-warfighter/

    P.S. Why you no benchmark Sleeping Dogs? It brings my GTX 560 down to 40 fps minimums at 1024x768 at the highest settings...It may be a CPU bottleneck though, have to look into that fully.
    Reply