![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , May 10, 2016
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Share:
Tom Clancy's The Division Gameplay Performance Review
We take Tom Clancy's triple A title, The Division, and find out how AMD's and NVIDIA's high end video cards' performances stack up and what image quality settings it takes to truly be immersed. We will see what level of GPU is needed at what resolution to enjoy this game with high graphics settings and image quality.
Introduction
Tom Clancy's The Division is a new game released on March 8th of 2016 to the PC. This is technically a third-person shooter game but it is also an online-only open world third person-shooter game. This game can be played solo, but you can also team up with other players to play missions in a mulitplayer style in teams. The Division was developed by Massive Entertainment, and published by Ubisoft.
The Division is set in a dystopian New York City in the aftermath of a pandemic. Your task is to help rebuild the Division's operations in Manhattan while investigating and taking care of criminal activity. This game has many elements similar to role playing games as well and even has PvP making it a hybrid genre assuredly.
The Division was not without some initial controversy. Originally The Division was only going to be developed as an eighth generation console exclusive. Ubisoft asked PC gamers to show interest by signing petitions, out of the interest shown was only then a PC version of the game developed. Right off the bat, that is concerning from a PC gamer's enthusiast perspective because this game is actually pretty darn fun and has had a very positive reception. To think it may never have come to the PC in the first place is disheartening.
Game Engine and Features
NVIDIA has a Graphics and Performance Guide up with a ton of information on each graphics setting in this game.
Game Engine
The Division uses an engine called the Snowdrop Engine. This video is next generation for current consoles and PC. However, there is no DX12 support as of right now. The engine focuses on dynamic global illumination, stunning procedural destruction and a great amount of detail and visual effects. You can read about the creation of the Snowdrop Engine at this link. In the above documentation note that time of day and weather conditions impact your gaming experience in this game.
NVIDIA HFTS Shadows
Ubisoft has embraced NVIDIA's GameWorks of features for this game. Note that all of these features, minus HFTS shadows are capable of running on AMD GPUs as well. HFTS shadows is unique to NVIDIA Maxwell GPUs only.
NVIDIA HFTS (Hybrid Frustum Traced Shadows) is a new technique we haven't seen in games before. This feature solely affects shadows in the game, not ambient occlusion, keep in mind shadows and ambient occlusion like HBAO+ are two very separate things. HFTS shadows require Maxwell GPUs because they exploit hardware only the latest generation of GPUs support from NVIDIA.
HFTS interpolates between geometrically correct hard shadows and PCSS shadows. It combines frustum tracing, screen-space anti-aliasing and variable penumbra soft shadow filters. What's the result of this? Basically great looking soft shadows that don't alias at different angles and don't break apart or stretch and reduce things like moiré patterns in shadows. It solves a lot of problems shadows can suffer from using lesser forms of shadowing or low shadow resolutions. However, it is very GPU intensive.
It is also very important to note that HFTS only works during the daytime in this game. When the game switches to nighttime mode as you play the shadows switch to PCSS shadows to cater for the more diffuse type of lighting condition. Therefore, to test the performance of HFTS shadows you must do your testing in the daytime part of the game. Our run-through is in the daytime part of the game.
If you want to read more about HFTS shadows please go here and here.
NVIDIA PCSS Shadows
NVIDIA PCSS (percentage-closer shadows) is also support. NVIDIA PCSS shadows also work on AMD GPUs. This quality mode will be better than the game's base shadow method. PCSS shadows allow soft shadows based on distance. The closer the object, the less soft, the farther the shadow is from the object more softness.
NVIDIA HBAO+
Separate to shadows is Ambient Occlusion. NVIDIA's HBAO+ is used to provide better looking Ambient Occlusion compared to the game's Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. HBAO+ stands for Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion. It has more realistic shading around objects and surfaces that occlude light with a higher precision than SSAO. The performance hit is also very small. HBAO+ works with both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.
Recommended GPU
Finally, NVIDIA recommends that a GeForce GTX 970 is the best suited card for The Division at 1080p. NVIDIA suggests that it is able to do PCSS shadows and HBAO+ at 1080p with high game settings on a GTX 970 at 1080p.