Warframe‘s new Fortuna expansion is finally here, providing the perfect excuse for players old and new to dust off their Tenno armour and head out into the never-before-seen frozen wastes of Venus’ Orb Vallis area. It’s the second open world map that’s been added to the game since final 12 months’s Plains of Eidolon replace, however given the variety of efficiency points folks encountered the primary time they ventured into out onto these titular plains, there’s been a lot consternation over whether or not Fortuna will even be an excessive amount of for some PCs to deal with.
Fortunately (sorry), I’m right here to assist, as I’ve been chucking a bunch of as we speak’s best graphics cards at it, in addition to a handful of older ones I’ve obtained knocking round, to see the way it fares. Below, you’ll discover all the pieces you could know on the best way to get the most effective settings for Warframe’s Fortuna replace, in addition to what you could do as a way to squeeze each final drop of efficiency out of your trusty graphics card.
Warframe graphics efficiency: The specs
For essentially the most half, Warframe is an absolute doozy to get working on PC. Indeed, each graphics playing cards listed by Digital Extremes of their minimal spec necessities for the game (see under) are virtually ten years previous at time of writing, that means even aged PCs and laptops ought to have the ability to obtain a steady framerate with out you having to spend numerous cash on costly new {hardware}.
Minimum specs:
OS: Windows XP
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo e6400 / AMD Athlon x64 4000+
RAM: 2GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT / ATI Radeon HD 3600
DirectX: 9.0c
Now, I’ve solely obtained a restricted collection of ‘mature’ graphics playing cards at my disposal for this specific efficiency check – the oldest I’ve is simply 5 years previous versus ten – so the recommendation you’ll discover right here will naturally skew in the direction of the more moderen crop of playing cards you should purchase proper now.
However, whereas most of as we speak’s graphics playing cards can run Warframe simply high-quality, there are nonetheless loads of events when framerates can start to tank – and that’s in a PC with an Intel Core i5-8600Ok, 16GB of RAM and all the newest Windows 10 and DirectX updates put in, too. Case in level: the floor of Venus in Warframe’s new Fortuna growth. Here, framerates had been virtually reduce in half in comparison with the speeds I used to be getting on common missions, so hopefully there ought to nonetheless be loads of helpful data right here no matter how previous your graphics card is.
With that in thoughts, listed below are all of the graphics playing cards I’ve examined to date. Apologies prematurely but once more for the shortage of AMD playing cards on this checklist. I’ve been doing my greatest to get extra of those in to stability out all of the Nvidia ones, however man alive are they arduous to return by nowadays. I’ve additionally determined to not embody Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 or RTX 2080Ti playing cards on this specific check, as a result of they’re simply too rattling quick to even fear about. As all the time, I’ll replace this text with extra graphics playing cards as and once I’m in a position to get them in, however for now, right here’s what we’re coping with:
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 970
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti (4GB)
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB)
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070Ti
- AMD Radeon R9 270
- AMD Radeon R9 290
- AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
Warframe graphics efficiency: The objective
As all the time, the principle intention of those graphics efficiency checks is to attain a steady 60fps utilizing the best doable graphics settings, which in Warframe’s case is its High preset. This time, nevertheless, I’m making the positively monstrous assumption that the majority of you most likely aren’t taking part in Warframe at 4K resolutions, so I’ve restricted my checks to only 1920×1080 and 2560×1440 (when you would like 4K outcomes, do say so within the feedback and I’ll add them in).
Since Warframe doesn’t have the benefit of a built-in benchmarking instrument, I examined every card by finishing a normal mission, the place I famous the minimal and most framerate I noticed in every playthrough, working round Fortuna’s hub world for a bit (additionally jotting down the minimal and most framerates on provide), after which taking part in by way of Fortuna’s very first Vox Solaris mission out on the huge, open-world expanse of Vallis (or at the least so far as I might get by way of it as a result of I’m garbage at Warframe, once more recording these min and max frames). This ought to hopefully provide you with a reasonably first rate concept of what sort of common pace to count on in every of the game’s three important play states, in addition to how low any potential pace dips would possibly go when issues get a bit heated.
Warframe graphics efficiency: How to get the most effective settings
As talked about above, a lot of the graphics playing cards on check right here had completely no downside by any means working Warframe on its High graphics preset, no matter whether or not I used to be taking part in at 1920×1080 or 2560×1440. However, there have been nonetheless a few older playing cards that had been clearly struggling to maintain tempo as soon as I used to be out within the wilds of Vallis, so listed below are a few issues to keep in mind when you discover your efficiency is beginning to lag.
One of the largest issues that may assist enhance efficiency in Warframe is to allow the game’s Dynamic Resolution function. This is disabled by default, however switching it on will mechanically downscale the decision on the fly to assist keep a gentle framerate. It’s a typical function employed by quite a lot of demanding games nowadays, and may be useful whenever you hit a very tough patch however don’t need to spend ages tinkering round with the settings manually – particularly when Warframe doesn’t truly pause the motion whenever you open up the settings menu.
I’d go for Auto in order for you the least quantity of fuss, however you too can set your individual decision scale by choosing the User possibility (though how a lot profit you get with this over merely selecting a decrease decision is debatable). For reference, 100% is your monitor’s native decision (or no matter decision you presently have chosen in the principle show settings), and the bottom User setting on provide, 50%, will probably be half of no matter that decision that’s.
I additionally discovered that switching off Ambient Occlusion, Trilinear Filtering and Runtime Tessellation additionally helped to stabilize efficiency in Warframe’s common missions, as these are a few of the extra GPU-heavy settings within the show choices.
Over on the floor of Venus, nevertheless, simply turning off these three wasn’t fairly sufficient to supply a noticeable enchancment within the game’s general efficiency. Instead, I additionally needed to flip off Local Reflections and Dynamic Lighting earlier than I noticed a good soar in pace.
In most instances, although, I used to be in a position to get every graphics card working with out a lot tinkering in any respect. To see how all of them obtained on, simply click on the web page numbers under or hop again up the web page to the cardboard of your selection. Also, when you’re in want of correct, Fortuna gameplay help, make sure you try Dave’s in depth assortment of Warframe guides, too.
