Once upon a time, there was an previous saying in PC gaming spheres: ‘But will it run Crysis?’ Then the apocalypse occurred, and civilisation retreated to the darkish tunnels of its underground tube system, the phrase changing into misplaced and morphed within the intervening years. Now we are saying in hushed, hallowed tones, ‘But will it run Metro?’
The hardest of robust guys on PC as of late, Metro Exodus is an absolute beast of a game that places even in the present day’s best graphics cards below pressure, particularly if you need all that juicy Nvidia RTX ray tracing and DLSS magic making the whole lot look even prettier than it does already. Fortunately, assistance is at hand, as I’ve spent the final week testing virtually each graphics card below solar to let you know precisely the way to get the perfect settings in your PC, and the way to get the most recent instalment within the fairly glorious Metro sequence operating at a clean 60fps.
Metro Exodus PC graphics efficiency: The specs
But first, some PC specs necessities. Given the sheer brute pressure wanted to run Metro Exodus, 4A Games have been very explicit about what kind of PC system you’ll have to get the game operating throughout quite a lot of resolutions and body charges. Their minimal specification, as an illustration, is meant for 1920×1080 play at 30fps, whereas their Extreme spec is for 4K at 60fps. Here’s a reminder of what all of them are:
Minimum specs (1080p 30fps):
OS: Windows 7-10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-4400
RAM: 8GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 670 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 / AMD Radeon HD 7870
Video reminiscence: 2GB
DirectX: 11 / 12
Recommended specs (1080p 60fps):
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770Okay
RAM: 8GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 / Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 / AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
Video reminiscence: 8GB
DirectX: 12
High specs (1440p 60fps):
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-8700Okay
RAM: 16GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti / Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 / AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
Video reminiscence: 8GB
DirectX: 12
Extreme specs (4K 60fps):
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i9-9900Okay
RAM: 16GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
Video reminiscence: 11GB
DirectX: 12
For the document, my PC had an Intel Core i5-8600Okay and 16GB of RAM inside it, plus all the most recent graphics drivers and Windows 10 updates put in. Naturally, this implies I’m probably not outfitted to attempt the game’s Extreme settings, however Nvidia have instructed me this doesn’t truly add any extra graphics results on prime of what you get on Ultra – it simply cranks them as much as 11. Really, although, Extreme is for fanatic PC programs solely, and never for the likes of my mid-range construct. As a end result, the best setting I’ve tried throughout each graphics card on take a look at right here is Ultra.
Click the hyperlinks under to see how every graphics card fared. Apologies upfront for just a few notable omissions this time spherical. Just like my Far Cry New Dawn graphics performance information, I’ve finished my finest to get a full unfold this time spherical, however inventory ranges for Nvidia’s GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti stay extraordinarily low, so I haven’t been capable of get any in for testing. I used to be additionally hoping to not less than get an RTX 2070 in to assist GTX 1080 house owners get a tough thought of what to anticipate, however that too has confirmed difficult. At least these with a GTX 1080 Ti have some solace, although, as that individual card is roughly on par with the RTX 2080, which I’ve managed to cowl under.
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 970
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070Ti
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080Ti
- AMD Radeon R9 270
- AMD Radeon R9 290
- AMD Radeon RX 580
- AMD Radeon RX 590
- AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
- AMD Radeon 7
Metro Exodus PC graphics efficiency: The objective
As talked about above, the goal right here is to get Metro Exodus operating at 60fps at 1920×1080, 2560×1440 and 4K. It’s a fairly robust ask in some circumstances, however so long as you’re ready to make some compromises within the graphics settings division, it’s doable. Plus, the beauty of Metro is that even its Low high quality setting nonetheless seems to be fairly rattling superb, so hopefully you’ll discover one thing to your liking right here it doesn’t matter what form of graphics card you’ve bought.
To take a look at every card, I used the game’s benchmarking device, which very similar to earlier Metro games is a separate software that lives in your Metro Exodus game folder. This sees the digicam take a flip by a slice of the Taiga, one of many game’s early open world environments. First, we get a sliver of the outside and the native wildlife, after which we take a dark tour of a burning wood hut, full with loads of fireplace results and shafts of sunshine peaking by the rotting partitions. And as a result of the world of Metro is a magical place, stated hut additionally turns into an icy winter palace for a break up second to see how the graphics card copes with a few of its different climate results.
Then it’s again outdoors to a fairly demanding stretch of forest (virtually each graphics card took an enormous dip right here) with a deer operating throughout your sight view, earlier than the benchmark ends down on the riverside, day turning to nighttime, and a fairly nasty beasty floating round within the water.
Metro Exodus PC graphics efficiency: How to get the perfect settings
I caught with the benchmark’s preset high quality settings throughout my assessments, nevertheless it’s value declaring that my evaluation construct of the benchmarking device got here with a really particular set of settings that aren’t essentially mirrored in-game once you truly change the general high quality setting. The Shading Rate, for instance, stays at 1.0x no matter what high quality setting you decide, and Motion Blur is at all times set to High, which isn’t reflective of what I used to be utilizing within the benchmark.
As a end result, listed below are the settings I used throughout every of the 4 principal high quality choices to acquire my outcomes, and what I’d suggest you employ in your individual game as properly:
Low high quality:
Texture Filtering: AF 4x
Motion Blur: Low
Tessellation: Off
Advanced PhysX: Off
HairWorks: Off
Ray Tracing: Off
DLSS: Off
Shading Rate: 50%
Medium high quality:
Texture Filtering: AF 4x
Motion Blur: Low
Tessellation: Full
Advanced PhysX: On
HairWorks: Off
Ray Tracing: Off
DLSS: Off
Shading Rate: 100%
High high quality:
Texture Filtering: AF 16x
Motion Blur: Low
Tessellation: Full
Advanced PhysX: On
HairWorks: On
Ray Tracing: Off
DLSS: Off
Shading Rate: 100%
Ultra high quality:
Texture Filtering: AF 16x
Motion Blur: Normal
Tessellation: Full
Advanced PhysX: On
HairWorks: On
Ray Tracing: Off
DLSS: Off
Shading Rate: 100%
There was additionally a particular RTX profile in my benchmarking device, which was basically the identical as Ultra however with ray tracing and DLSS switched on. However, I ought to level out that the DLSS possibility was truly damaged in my construct, so it wasn’t truly utilized to any of the assessments regardless of being set to On. It nonetheless works in-game, however given Metro’s fairly irritating quick-save/auto-save solely choices, this makes it a bit tough to check precisely.
As such, I’m going to depart DLSS testing for a bit till it’s obtainable within the benchmark so I can hold the whole lot good and truthful, and I’ll replace this piece with extra outcomes when it’s been patched in. I’ve nonetheless included the ray tracing outcomes, although, so not less than you’ll be able to see how a lot of a efficiency dip you’ll be able to count on when you don’t need to apply DLSS in any respect.
As for extra common settings recommendation, retaining issues like Advanced PhysX and HairWorks switched off is just about a given with this sort of game, however I additionally discovered that Low’s 50% Shading Rate took an excellent greater load off the GPU. As such, I’d suggest dropping that down a bit when you’re having bother in sure areas – maybe not all the best way right down to 50% (or 0.5x because it’s represented in-game), however perhaps someplace across the 0.7x mark in case your graphics card is having a troublesome time of it.
I’d additionally really helpful retaining Texture Filtering to AF 4x fairly than AF 16x, in addition to switching off Tessellation when you’re nonetheless having bother.
With all that in thoughts, let’s board this apocalypse prepare and try a few of them there graphics playing cards, eh? Just click on the web page numbers under or hop again up the web page to the cardboard of your alternative.