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?

High-Detail Benchmark Results

Our high-detail preset enables 8x multi-sampling anti-aliasing, with every other image quality setting at its most demanding level. Moreover, we're starting at 1920x1080, which is a resolution that shouldn't be a problem for mid-range and high-end graphics hardware.

Unfortunately, AMD's Radeon HD 7770 is rendered unplayable, while the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is marginal, dipping down to a 27 FPS minimum. The rest of the cards easily chew through the highest detail settings this game offers.

Although the 1 GB Radeon HD 7850 makes it through 1920x1080, it really suffers at 2560x1600. The 2 GB Radeon HD 7870 and GeForce GTX 660 fare much better, but still can't achieve at least 30 FPS through the test run. It takes a GeForce GTX 660 Ti or Radeon HD 7950 Boost to get those numbers where we want them, while the Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 670 give us even more headroom.

When it comes to multi-card setups, two Radeon HD 7950s in CrossFire scale a bit better than a pair of GeForce GTX 660 Tis in SLI. This is somewhat surprising when you consider that this game tends to favor Nvidia's single-GPU cards over AMD's. Also, SLI doesn't work with the Call of Duty: Black Ops II-optimized 310.54 beta driver until you grab the 11/15/2012 SLI profile update. 

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