Prey Performance Review
CPU & RAM Resources, And Conclusion
Processor Usage
Whether you're using a GeForce or Radeon, a Core i5-6500 CPU lands between 81 and 95% utilization. It's not idle by any means, but there's still some headroom available. Interestingly, AMD's Radeon-based platform registers slightly lower CPU usage.
System Memory Usage
Memory utilization is similar, regardless of whether you have a GeForce or Radeon installed.
With these values, it is of course necessary to subtract the amount of RAM used by the OS and its services (around 1.9GB). We can therefore deduce that Prey is quite efficient when it comes to memory usage.
Video Memory Usage
To the contrary, this game gobbles up graphics memory, likely a result of the Very High quality preset we're using to test. This is more true on the Radeon than the GeForce, though it's important to note that AMD's card has an additional 2GB of GDDR5. Even so, the capacity used remains far from the total amount of memory available on these boards.
Conclusion
What a fantastic surprise: Prey is both graphically detailed and relatively accessible across a range of hardware configurations.
Of course, entry-level cards like the Radeon RX 460 and GeForce GTX 1050 have a hard time maintaining playable frame rates under the Very High quality preset, and you can forget resolutions above 1920x1080 with them. But High quality at 1080p is completely within the realm of possibility. Not bad for a couple of affordable little graphics cards.
If your graphics hardware is even more powerful, don't hesitate to dial in the Very High preset on a 4GB card. Otherwise, you can relax the texture quality setting, even at 1440p, and realize enjoyable performance.
We have to commend the developers at Arkane Studios for making excellent use of CryEngine technology. Prey offers great graphics without requiring a three-way SLI array of GPUs for playable frame rates.
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I suspect they are going for cards in the mainstream. I'm sure there are plenty of 480s in use out there. Not too many 580s yet since it is new.
Well there's a lot of hardware missing I'd have liked to have seen as well like a GTX 1080. However in all fairness, they said they chose their hardware on what people *currently* have (according to Steam user hardware surveys), not what they may get in the future. Not many have Ryzen builds and GTX 1080s yet.
In any event, as a 1440p GTX 970 SLI owner, I'd have liked to have seen the VRAM consumption at that resolution since there are benchmarks for it here. For me it's a little concerning that even at 1080p it uses 3.1GB. I'm trying to squeeze another year out of my GPUs holding out for Volta. But Pascal is due for a refresh later this summer/early fall (2xxx series).
I see the argument but how big of a percentage will not buy the game thinking the Ryzen was left out because of very poor optimization? Its a bad move for a game developer to risk limiting its potental customers. I was wanting the game but I'll wait till I see Ryzen benchmarks.
You can get an idea of that right now with other games and what to expect: http://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-performance-of-ryzen-7-vs-core-i7-with-geforce-gtx-1080-ti/
My guess is based on that, it will be fine for above 1080p resolutions as the GPU is used more no matter how powerful the CPU is.
Your links are to far cry primal not prey. Here is the only one I have found but its on a questionable site.
I meant those links for another topic, lol. Look again at the PC Gamer link (it has a Bethesda title Fallout 4 in benchmarking).
Regarding the charts, am I the only one who finds the CPU utilisation chart confusing. Even knowing the AMD card uses a little less I can't figure out how the coloured bars tell me that? Wouldn't a min, max, and average bar be simpler?
If your benchmark graph is to be believed, the AMD system appears to perform better than the Intel system, which doesn't exactly help the narrative that Ryzen should be skipped for pure gaming systems.
The review is incomplete.
While it's true to say that Ryzen isn't in a lot of systems yet, as it's too new, Ryzen is something a lot of people are looking at purchasing. Reviews shouldn't just be for what people currently have, but also should include what people are shopping for. People look at reviews to help with product choices. Leaving Ryzen out of the review here seems to promote a level of disservice to consumers.
While I would agree its the slowest 6 core broadwell-e vs the fastest 8 core Ryzen. Actually looks like the core support isn't upto par. Could be the game only supports 4 cores.
I believe the RX-580 is close to 10% faster than the RX-480. However, the GTX1060 may have slightly more OC left so it's probably at least 5%.
Careful with PRICING though because the RX-480 (4GB and 8GB) and GTX1060 6GB prices vary between $200 and $400USD.
It's hard to justify spending more than $260USD for the Asus Strix GTX1060 6GB though because if you go much higher you're getting close to a GTX1070 which starts at $335.
Also keep in mind that Nvidia is going to come out with a Pascal refresh later this summer or early fall with a 2000 series to extend a little more life before releasing consumer grade Voltas in 2018. The last time they did this was with Kepler going from the 6-series to the 7-series to extend Kepler's life until Maxwell (which gained about 10% in performance, like the 680->770).
I don't like how the article states "there is still more headroom" because a CPU can rarely use 100% in a game. A game can easily be bottlenecked due to the performance of a SINGLE CORE (running the main thread of game code).
Heck, I've got games that are bottlenecked when my system reports 30% CPU usage (i.e. using only two threads in eight-thread i7 CPU).