How Well Will Mass Effect 3 Run On Your PC?

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.