How Well Will Mass Effect 3 Run On Your PC?
On March 6th, BioWare will launch Mass Effect 3, the final chapter in Shepherd's epic journey. We take the game's demo for a spin in anticipation of how this highly-anticipated title will behave on a broad range of graphics cards and processors.
Maximum Detail (Dynamic Shadows Enabled, FXAA)
Enabling the two available graphics options doesn't seem like much in the way of control to enthusiastic PC gamers, but it's enough to make an appreciable impact on visual quality.
Even the Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 and GeForce GT 4540 DDR3 manage greater than a 30 FPS minimum at 1280x1024, though not by much. For the rest of our field, this resolution and detail level are ridiculously easy to handle.
AMD's Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 dips under 30 FPS off and on at 1680x1050. Nvidia's GeForce GT 440 DDR3 is slightly slower. However, as we mentioned earlier, the GDDR5 version should sell for roughly the same price as the competition from AMD and perform a little better than the DDR3 model in our lab.
You can see the Radeon HD 6770 and GeForce GTX 550 Ti dip just below 60 FPS at one of the more demanding parts of our benchmark run.
At 1080p, the Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 and GeForce GT 440 are forced below 30 FPS for a significant span of the benchmark run, failing to provide an acceptable gaming experience.
In contrast, the Radeon HD 6770 and GeForce GTX 550 Ti manage much more attractive results. The rest of the field performs well enough to make the differences a little more superfluous.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Current page: Maximum Detail (Dynamic Shadows Enabled, FXAA)
Prev Page Minimum Detail (No Dynamic Shadows, No AA) Next Page Maximum Detail With 4x MSAA-
bak0n I'd be really shocked if there are many people out there running Intel 2500k's with geforce 220's or radeon 6450's.Reply -
mildsend I have phenom x4 9550 with 9800gt can i run this game at moderat setting at 1366x768 resolutions ?Reply -
rmpumper I really hope that the highest setting in ME3 demo are like med-high in the full game.Reply -
shin0bi272 So wait this console based game thats running on the unreal 3 engine plays well on a pc with a quad core and even a moderately good graphics card? Im shocked!Reply
Dont get me wrong though Im still excited to play it... just not expecting it to be graphically demanding. -
spp85 I have phenom x4 9550 with 9800gt can i run this game at moderat setting at 1366x768 resolutions ?
You can play medium to high settings on that resolution -
Sud099 why the hell they don't initially develop games for PC and then port to consoles like Battlefield 3Reply