Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands Performance Review

Features
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published

CPU & RAM Resources, and Conclusion

Processor Usage

At Very High quality, Ghost Recon Wildlands likes to tie up processing resources. Perhaps that's attributable to the open world and DirectX 11-based game engine? By activating additional graphics effects, the GPU load increases, relieving the CPU somewhat. Even then, though, utilization remains high.

Processor Usage - Patch 1.1.5

Patch 1.1.5 corrects what we saw from the launch-day version. This drop in CPU utilization, particularly on GeForce cards, helps explain the overall performance gain and smoother frame delivery. Still, Ghost Recon Wildlands remains CPU-intensive at 1920x1080.

System Memory Usage

System Memory Usage - Patch 1.1.5

The minimum and recommended settings suggested by Ubisoft are not overestimated. It it better to have 8GB of system memory, just to be safe.

We note in passing that activating supplementary effects slightly decreases the amount of RAM used. Remember, this is total system memory, meaning you have to subtract whatever the OS and its various processes are using, too.

Video Memory Usage

The AnvilNext 2.0 engine doesn't even come close to using the GDDR5 at its disposal. There are two things we notice, though. First, the game engine is less memory-hungry on the GeForces than the Radeons. Second, the additional effects naturally tie up more graphics memory.

Video Memory Usage - Patch 1.1.5

The 1.1.5 patch clearly changes how Ghost Recon handles graphics memory. This time around, overall utilization appears higher, while activating additional detail settings has far less effect on the GeForce and Radeon cards.

Conclusion

Graphically pleasing thanks to its open world, Ghost Recon Wildlands asks a lot from your gaming PC (even if patch 1.1.5 toned down CPU utilization somewhat). You'll probably want to pick a preset based on the speed of your system and then fine-tune from there using the (thankfully numerous) graphics options.

With a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 480, 1920x1080 at High quality, or even Very High quality, should be attainable. Owners of lower-end GPUs will have to be content with the Low quality preset in order to maintain acceptable frame rates.


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Yannick Guerrini
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13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dorsai
    Decent review...I really appreciate the use of "common" components vs uber high end CPU's and GPU's that 2-3% of the population has. The bar charts for CPU usage are difficult to digest...maybe a simple % used graph would be better. Also a look at CPU scaling would be helpful...clock speed in particular but also core count scaling.
    Reply
  • Bob_8_
    I played the Beta - We got in a jeep, drove off a cliff, crashed then got outa the jeep and started running to where we needed to go.
    Reply
  • bak0n
    I have to agree. I enjoyed seeing the use of an I5 since I'm still using my 3570k @ 4.2Ghz. In fact I have the GTX 1060 to go with it so this becomes even more relevant of a review to me. It's also very close in performance I can expect from my 3 alienware laptops. with GTX 1060's.
    Reply
  • Kridian
    "We got in a jeep, drove off a cliff, crashed then got outa the jeep and started running to where we needed to go."

    lol That's... not good. No penalty for being reckless.
    Reply
  • hardcore8uk
    I'm not going to mention anything about the review, nothing!

    What I am going to talk about is why every time I come on this website my Sony Z1 Compact mobile phone suddenly gets extremely hot and terribly slow and drains battery rapid , this does not happen on any other website I visit, do you really need to display so many adverts all over the page, what else can it be!.

    I will stop coming on your mobile phone killing website, my phone never gets this warm even when playing demanding games.

    Goodbye - www.tomsMobileDrainingHardware.com
    Reply
  • WhyAreYou
    It looks fun though
    Reply
  • loki1944
    I notice hard drops on some of my systems during gameplay, never have this issue in any other game, only this one. On both i7 and i5, AMD and Nvidia systems.
    Reply
  • dfg555
    Good thing CPU Usage was included. Most review sites should do this, it goes to show how quad cores are starting to die out. That i5-6500 has still some little bit of headroom left though. You could probably stick a 980 Ti in it and have some minor bottlenecking at 1080p. Would be more interesting to see how the i7-6700/7700 does. Those should have plenty of headroom left, unless it's 4K then we can with pretty much any CPU that has decent IPC.
    Reply
  • harper691
    This game requires a very good graphics card to play if you want the game to look somewhat decent. I have a GTX 760 TI and i can only run it on low. Since it is open world, there is so much stuff for the gpu to load and render, it eats alot.
    Reply
  • NCONSiDERATE
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pIw_QW3_dc

    THERES A VIDEO WORTH WATCHING ABOUT GHOST RECON: WILDLANDS HAHA.
    Reply