Call Of Duty: Black Ops II Graphics Performance, Benchmarked

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The Call of Duty series is an old favorite of ours, so it's a foregone conclusion that we'd check out Black Ops II's performance on the PC. How well does your graphics card handle it? Does this title have what it takes to stand out in a crowded genre?

Image Quality And Graphics Settings

The characters and uniforms aren't bad, but it's no Crysis 2

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is based on an updated version of the IW 3.0 engine used in the original Call of Duty: Black Ops. That's particularly interesting because the game doesn't employ the IW 4.0 engine used in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It looks good, and very similar to all of the CoD titles since Modern Warfare, but it looks like the developers are going after accessibility over advanced graphics. Games like Battlefield 3, Medal of Honor, and Crysis 2 are arguably (Ed.: I don't think there's much to argue...) superior when it comes to lighting, texture quality, and graphics effects.

It looks nice, but it looks like CoD.

Surprisingly, the game has no global detail presets, forcing us to adjust its image quality controls manually, creating combinations that we consider high, medium, and low for our benchmarking purposes.

In the animated sequence above, most of the detail differences come from texture quality and filtering adjustments most noticeable up close. There are some shadow and lighting differences as well, though. With FXAA enabled, even the low-detail screenshot doesn't suffer from noticeable jagged edges.

Don Woligroski
62 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JOSHSKORN
    I'd like to know how the game performs using the 2550k/3570k chips versus the 3960x since they usually makes Toms' Recommended Buy list for gamers.
    Reply
  • greghome
    I'm surprised you guys even bother benchmarking this game since the requirement for the COD series hasn't really changed for 5 Years.....considering they're still the same engine.....not to mention the same game..
    Reply
  • esrever
    Numbers aren't surprising. Doesn't push hardware at all since the 7750 can play at 1080p on medium. The game is more a console game than a PC game.
    Reply
  • JJ1217
    Jesus Christ Toms! Stop bloody benchmarking the 1GB version, its clearly the bottleneck.
    Reply
  • JJ1217
    by that I mean 1GB 7850
    Reply
  • cats_Paw
    Im quite sure the game has not been optimized at all after its port to the PC :D. Makes it look like its better >D.

    I saw the trailer for this game, and it looks like a DX9 game with decent textures. So, ill pass, just as i did since MW1.
    Reply
  • jurisc
    nothing special I would say. Same crappy graphics!
    Reply
  • cats_Paw
    Maybe im mistaken, but i think the comparison from mid and high details is a bit misleading.
    Going from mid to high level it would be in the best interest of the readers to submit the same ammount of antialiasing. It is very hard to know the impact of the graphics themselves when it comes to image quality, if you add both AA and higher textures.

    I am quite sure the game will be layable with full HD and no AA, then adding Sweet FX AA far better than with MSAA.
    Reply
  • ojas
    There's something wrong with the detail settings picture. I think Medium's been labeled as "Low" and vice-versa.

    Doesn't make sense otherwise.
    Reply
  • ojas
    Also, it's odd, your mini-review (like MoHs) almost completely contradicts the RPS review. But then i guess there's a reason i come to Tom's for hardware related stuff and RPS for all things gaming...

    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/15/black-ops-2-pc-review/
    Reply