Medal Of Honor Warfighter Performance, Benchmarked

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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.

Benchmark Results: Ultra Quality Preset

The Ultra preset adds 4x MSAA anti-aliasing and the highest detail levels available.

Of course, nobody is going to play this game on one of these cards at 1280x1024. For the same of comparison, though, we're able to see how much more demanding the Ultra preset is than Medium. The Radeon HD 7770 and GeForce GTX 650 Ti manage to stay above 30 FPS, but they don't have a lot left in them to handle higher resolutions.

At 1680x1050, AMD's Radeon HD 7770 and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 650 Ti dip below 30 FPS a couple of times. We'd still consider them viable options, though. More attractive, perhaps, are the Radeon HD 7850 1 GB and GeForce GTX 660, which sustain performance in excess of 40 FPS at all times.

AMD's Radeon HD 7850 1 GB suffers most pointedly from its single gigabyte of memory, which hurts its performance with high levels of anti-aliasing and Shadow Quality applied. We'd now consider the Radeon HD 7770 and GeForce GTX 650 Ti unplayable.

We also add the Radeon HD 7850 1 GB in CrossFire and a pair of GeForce GTX 660s in SLI, along with a GeForce GTX 680. Nvidia's fastest single-GPU board keeps up with AMD's Radeon HD 7970, while the Radeon HD 7850 1 GB cards in CrossFire achieve a slightly higher average frame rate than the single-GPU boards, but again are hampered by significant frame rate drops. The GeForce GTX 660s in SLI easily deliver the most attractive performance in our test.

At high resolutions, graphics memory capacity is needed most. That's why the Radeon HD 7850 1 GB setup in CrossFire is hammered to the point of being unplayable (succumbing even to a single GeForce GTX 660). Again, you've have to cut anti-aliasing and shadow detail to get this setup back in the realm of acceptable performance.

Just because the 2 GB GeForce GTX 660 beats a paid of Radeon HD 7850s doesn't make it playable, though. Really, you need a GeForce GTX 670, 680, or Radeon HD 7970 to average more than 40 FPS and maintain a sub-30 FPS minimum.

Two GeForce GTX 660s in SLI give you a good average frame rate, but we did notice instances where performance would drop precariously during our time gaming on them. Unfortunately, we've found multi-card configurations to be inconsistent at times, and this is no exception.

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