Company of Heroes 2 Performance, Benchmarked

It's hard to believe about seven years accept passed since Relic Amusement and THQ released Visitor of Heroes, a World State of war Ii-themed real-time strategy title that impressed the heck out of me and many other RTS buffs at the time. I fifty-fifty invested in the two expansions that followed -- Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor -- and in addition to logging many hours of playtime, I have featured the game across enough of CPU and GPU reviews as information technology's an first-class benchmark for gauging the performance of both components.

The built-in benchmark made life piece of cake by testing a reasonable portion of the game, which became fifty-fifty more than relevant to hardware testers like myself when Relic added a DirectX 10 rendering fashion a year later on Company of Heroes initially shipped, patching in enhanced terrain, additional globe objects as well as improved shadows and lighting. This update fabricated Company of Heroes the first commercial video game to support DirectX x.

CoH was built on the "Essence Engine" which was coded from scratch by Relic to use special graphical effects including high dynamic range lighting, dynamic lighting & shadows, avant-garde shader effects and normal mapping. Information technology also utilized the Havok physics engine for more realistic physics than previous RTS games. For example, high-powered weapons could accident apart buildings while tanks could drive through walls. Things similar debris could likewise be influenced past explosions, as barrels would oftentimes go flying.

For its time, CoH was very impressive looking -- particularly for an RTS -- and so when Relic and Sega released the game's sequel on June 25 nosotros eagerly installed a copy and started benchmarking.

Like the original, Company of Heroes two is too set in World War Two just focuses on the Eastern Front. It's built on Relic's proprietary Essence 3.0 engine, which volition supposedly allow the developer to bring "new technological advancements" to the game. CoH 2 takes reward of DirectX eleven but as well supports DirectX ix and its engine has a mess load of new features such as ColdTech, a dynamic system that provides furnishings such every bit snow accumulating confronting buildings and vehicles, restricting movement depending on the depth of the snow, and snowfall tracks left by units.

This farthermost level of particular should be taxing all around with heavy loads on both the CPU and GPU, so we hope CoH 2 will serve equally a fine PC benchmark in our reviews for years to come. In the meantime, let's meet how information technology manages to tackle today'south hardware.

Testing Methodology

We tested almost 30 DirectX 11 graphics card configurations from AMD and Nvidia covering all cost ranges. The latest drivers were used and every bill of fare was paired with an Intel Core i7-3960X to remove CPU bottlenecks that could influence high-end GPU scores (at to the lowest degree this is what nosotros thought, refer to the CPU testing to come across what we hateful).

Although nosotros unremarkably rely on Fraps to record upwards to 90 seconds of gameplay for our benchmark data, Relic has provided usa with some other selection that happens to be both easier and more authentic. CoH 2 features a built-in benchmark that helps gamers fine tune their systems for maximum operation.

The integrated benchmark let the states employ several graphics quality settings so nosotros tested on both medium and maximum. Nosotros ran CoH 2 at 3 mutual desktop display resolutions -- 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 -- using DX11.