Opened just days ago to those who preordered the game, today we have a beta re-create of Destiny ii on hand for a heap of GPU benchmarking. Although the PC retail release won't be until late October, this seemed like a corking opportunity to see what kind of hardware the game is probable to require.

We recognize that functioning is subject to modify past the time the title launches, but it's worth noting that AMD and Nvidia released commuter updates about a week ago to improve support Destiny 2 ahead of the beta and both Radeon and GeForce graphics cards seem to run fine so far.

Our Core i7-7700K examination system was clocked at 4.9GHz, though as a bit of a spoiler, nosotros establish that Destiny 2 played well with cheaper processors equally well. We also looked at the Ryzen five 1600 and will compare those numbers to the Core i7-7700K afterward.

Editor's note: We tested Destiny ii using the beta version of the game weeks prior to the final October 24 PC release. Since then the game has been improved farther for the PC and Nvidia/AMD graphics drivers have received more optimizations for the title. While this commodity should nevertheless give you a rough idea of what functioning to wait, it's quite likely you should be able to squeeze more out of your hardware today.

For at present we have 30 GPUs to focus on, 17 of which are from the current generation lineup with the other thirteen being from concluding season. All of the cards were tested at 1080p, 1440p and 4K using Destiny 2's 'high' quality preset, which is the second highest quality preset.

The maximum quality preset -- chosen 'highest' -- completely smashes performance because of MSAA being enabled. Seeing as I didn't really notice a difference between MSAA and SMAA, I opted for the second-highest quality preset ('high') which uses the latter anti-aliasing method.

Since you lot can't save your progress during the single-role player tutorial/intro, I only tested the kickoff lx seconds of the game. Later on running information technology more than 90 times I tin safely say that I have information technology memorized, though this approach was a massive hurting because we had to exit the game after every single run to reset everything. I hope when the game is officially released we can find a significantly more efficient testing method.

Besides notation that our plans to benchmark the multiplayer section of Destiny 2's beta were abandoned early on on because it took way too long to get into a game. Anyway, let's get to some numbers...

Criterion Time

First up are the 1080p results. Equally y'all tin can see at that place are many cards capable of delivering betwixt 96 and 105fps on average and plenty more that are good for 60fps or amend.

Ignoring the high-end gear for at present as nosotros're merely at 1080p, we find that to keep things in a higher place 60fps at all times, gamers will require an RX 570 or GTX 1060 3GB and frankly those are some pretty balmy demands. For now Nvidia has a clear reward in this title, at least at lower resolutions and we see this when comparison GPUs such as the RX 580 and GTX 1060.

Looking at the previous generation GPUs nosotros see they have no trouble maintaining well over 60fps at all times, as demonstrated by the Radeon R9 390 and GeForce GTX 970.

Even the R9 380 and GTX 960 exercise well, never dipping below 60fps. It'southward interesting to run across that the Fury series wasn't actually able to pull alee of the R9 390X, not to mention that it trailed the GTX 980 and got completely stomped by the GTX 980 Ti. Fine wine ain't working hither folks.

We see a wider spread of results at 1440p and again in that location are a huge amount of GPUs capable of pushing over 60fps. Those seeking 100fps or greater will either need a high-terminate GPU or will have to dorsum the quality preset downward to medium.

Increasing the resolution to 1440p greatly reduces the margins and at present just three frames stand between the GTX 1060 and RX 580, both of which provided splendid functioning at this reasonably high resolution. For an average of around 100fps you will want to seek out a GTX 1070 or Vega 56 GPU and to accomplish well beyond 100fps the GTX 1080 Ti will be required.

The Fury X serial starts to recover as well, though even hither the Fury X is well down on the GTX 980 Ti. Meanwhile the GTX 970 edged ahead of the R9 390, though it has to be said even here both provided exceptionally smooth frame rates.

Quite shockingly, even the GeForce GTX 950 managed to keep frame rates above 30fps for a console-ish feel, though the graphics and resolution were considerably better.

Finally, those wanting to play at 4K with high quality settings and notwithstanding average at least 60fps... your options are fifty-fifty more than limited. The best value choice here is conspicuously the GTX 1080, just damn the Ti version was nice in this title at 4K.

Equally expected, folks with an older GPU volition ideally want a previous generation flagship part such every bit the GTX 980 Ti or Fury 10. The mid-range to high-terminate models such as the GTX 970 and R9 390 did well, but you'll probably want more horsepower for 4K gaming.

Before wrapping this upwards I tossed the GTX 1080 Ti into both the 7700K and Ryzen v 1600 test systems to see how they compare. These results are but from the get-go sixty seconds of the single-histrion portion and I am enlightened larger open sections of the game as well every bit multiplayer modes will be more than CPU demanding, but until the game is officially released I can't test that, and then this will have to do.

As expected, at 4K nosotros run into a massive GPU clogging and performance is much the aforementioned, though the 7700K did notwithstanding maintain better one% low results. Moving to 1440p the Intel CPU offered fifteen% greater performance and this margin was diddled out to 27% at 1080p. Utilization was good on both GPUs and the game did evenly distribute load across the R5 1600's cores, it only didn't give it plenty work to warrant having all those extra cores for this title.

Every bit we said before, you tin expect more in-depth coverage of Destiny 2's performance when the game really launches.

Last Thoughts

Well I take to say that although I oasis't had a chance to cheque out the multiplayer action however, I was pleasantly surprised with what I establish in the beta experience of Destiny 2. The game looks great, plays well and it's already significantly more than polished than most of the triple-A titles I tested concluding twelvemonth, so hats off to the developers over at Bungie.

For single-player, a mid-range GPU volition have you lot more than than covered at 1080p using high quality settings and many cards volition even provide a smooth 60fps at 1440p. AMD's GPUs lag behind quite a bit at 1080p but come live at 1440p and 4K where they were very competitive.

Speaking of 4K, did you run into the GTX 970 going toe to toe with the R9 390 with 37fps on average at this resolution? Wasn't the 970 and its measly 3.5GB frame buffer meant to be obsolete and a heap of rubbish by now? Maybe I have my dates mixed up... anyway, the extremely pop Maxwell based GPU is even so trucking forth only fine and so too is the R9 390.

Farther down the food chain, the R9 380 had its way with the GTX 960 while the GTX 950 easily dispatched the R7 370. At the complete contrary end of the spectrum, the GTX 980 Ti once again proved to be far too powerful for the Fury X.

Every bit for current generation GPUs, if you're lucky plenty to own a GTX 1060 or RX 580 and so you should be able to take advantage of what Destiny 2 has to offer. For the unmarried thespian portion of the game, as long every bit you have a CPU that'south ameliorate than say an FX-series or an one-time Core i3 and so you'll be fine. All of the Ryzen CPUs held their own and as did the newer Intel dual-cadre chips with Hyper-Threading.

The latest Core i3s volition run into utilization hit around fourscore% and this was also truthful for the Pentium G4560 while the Ryzen iii 1200 was around sixty-lxx% and the Ryzen 5 1400 only saw around 50% load.

When it came to memory, nosotros were only seeing around 2.3GB/s of VRAM allocated at 1440p and this explains why the 3GB GTX 1060 does and so well, along with the GTX 970. Even at 4K nosotros are but starting to go to the limits of the 3GB buffer merely of course these GPUs run out of processing power before the memory buffer capacity becomes an effect. Equally for system memory or RAM, information technology looks similar 8GB will take you lot covered as the game occupies around 5-6GB.

Shopping shortcuts:

  • Destiny ii on Amazon, Best Buy, Blizzard

Overall, Destiny two is shaping upward to be great looking game that appears well optimized for the PC. Now we only accept to wait for the retail version to get in in a couple of months for a more detailed look at its multiplayer performance on enthusiast hardware.