Call of Duty: Warzone in the benchmark

– With Warzone, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare also gets a battle royale mode, which is offered free of charge thanks to the Free 2 Play model. BitcoinMinersHashrate took a look at the technology of the new game mode and created numerous graphics card benchmarks. The requirements come close to those of the main game.

The PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Test) was really fun in the technology test in October 2019. With the new engine, the game let the optical muscles play, especially in the campaign, without the need for a high-end computer. And with ray tracing from day one, there was also a visually successful highlight for the owners of a GeForce RTX graphics card.

Call of Duty’s new Battle Royale is F2P

Now the game opens up significantly and offers a Battle Royale mode. Instead of classic for the full price of 60 euros, this part is available with a free-2-play model, i.e. free of charge – but with microtransactions. The campaign and multiplayer mode remain reserved for buyers of the full version. Warzone is to compete with Fortnite (benchmarks), Apex Legends (benchmarks) or the paid PUBG.

This article will not focus on the playful aspects of CoD: Warzone, but will focus solely on the technology of the PC version including extensive graphics card benchmarks.

The graphics don't match the main game

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare campaign looks very good to absolutely impressive. The multiplayer mode, on the other hand, drops off significantly and Warzone takes another optical step back. The reason – a higher performance and thus potentially more (satisfied) players – is obvious.

Blackout, the battle royale mode of CoD: Black Ops 4, ran significantly slower than the rest of the game. Things are different at Warzone: Despite the high number of players of 150 participants per game, the title performs well.

Because the level in the main game is very high, the new Battle Royale card is by no means ugly even several levels below. In some areas, the new engine is still flexing its muscles. On average, the graphic is at most average. The biggest weakness is the Level of Detail (details in the distance, LOD), which works incredibly aggressively in Warzone. From an estimated 10 meters away there is practically no vegetation at all, but there is a lot right in front of the player. And this then pops up in front of him in a clearly visible manner when running. This is noticeable when playing and bothers.

The remaining cuts compared to the campaign are significantly less significant. The vegetation is not only affected by the LOD, there are also simply fewer. The textures are much less clear, in places they don't seem to be loaded at all, as long as you don't stand in front of the object. This did not always happen during the test, but every now and then – it is possible that this is still an error. The shadow cast in CoD: Warzone is also much easier. In combination with the great lighting, it is one of the highlights of the campaign, even without ray tracing. Speaking of ray tracing: it is an option in Warzone, but is not considered further due to the high performance costs.

No changes beyond the graphics

Apart from the graphics quality, there have been no technical changes in Call of Duty: Warzone. The Battle Royale mode also runs exclusively with DirectX 12. Nevertheless, the game not only works under Windows 10, but also under Windows 7, as Infinity Ward implemented the low-level API for the old operating system separately. Nothing has changed about the good graphics options either: there are the same options, options and help texts. But that also means that there are still no graphic presets, so each graphic option has to be adjusted individually.

Test system, test sequence and settings

The following graphics card benchmarks were performed on an Intel Core i9-9900K, which is operated with the standard settings and can access a total of 32 gigabytes of RAM with a speed of DDR4-3200 (14-14-14-32). "Windows 10 November 2019 Update" (1909) including all currently available patches is installed. The adrenaline 20.2.2 and the GeForce 442.59 were used as drivers. The Nvidia driver is officially optimized for Warzone, there is no corresponding counterpart from AMD.

The 25-second test sequence shows a run over the Battle Royale map near the “Hills” section of the map. The scene takes place in the outside landscape and has a high degree of foresight and vegetation, numerous buildings and generally many objects. It's a challenging sequence, but not a worst-case scenario. Comparable frame rates are achieved in several other areas on the map.

The maximum graphics details are used in 1,920 × 1,080 and 2,560 × 1,440, only ray tracing is deactivated. The graphic details are reduced for 3,840 × 2,160. Since there are no presets, each option is set individually, only the textures and the caching options are then still at their maximum. If available, the detail level "Normal" is selected. If this does not exist, the option is reduced by one level. The anti-aliasing is set to SMAA 1X.

Benchmarks in Full HD, WQHD and Ultra HD

Call of Duty: Warzone behaves like the skin game Modern Warfare in performance and thus shows some special features. The generally very good frame rate has remained the same. Even the GeForce GTX 1060 achieves an average of 60 FPS, GeForce RTX 2080 Super and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti achieve 144 frames per second with maximum graphics details. 60 FPS in the frame times are given from GeForce GTX 1070 and GeForce GTX 1660 Super. At AMD, the Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 5500 XT already achieve this.

Of course, higher resolutions require faster graphics cards, but the Battle Royale mode also remains frugal. Although 144 FPS no longer manages GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, 60 FPS are available from GeForce GTX 1080, GeForce RTX 2060, Radeon RX Vega 56 or Radeon RX 5600 XT. Several graphics cards also reach this target in Ultra HD. From GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, GeForce RTX 2070 Super, Radeon RX Vega 64 and Radeon RX 5700, Warzone runs pretty smoothly. However, the level of detail had to be reduced.

Radeons and especially GCN like the Battle Royale

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has already worked better with graphics cards from AMD than with those from Nvidia, and the new Warzone mode does not change that either. The Radeon RX 5700 XT with the RDNA architecture in 2,560 × 1,440 is only 3 percent behind the GeForce RTX 2070 Super and in 3,840 × 2,160 there is even a tie. In contrast, in the AAA game average, Nvidia's Turing model is 11 percent faster.

The real winner is the old GCN generation. The Radeon RX Vega 64 is only 2 percent slower than the Radeon RX 5700, but the gap is usually 9 percent. This makes the old Radeon as fast as the GeForce RTX 2060 Super, which, on the other hand, is clearly faster with an increase of 13 percent. Only the flagship Radeon VII does not come out of the trenches in Warzone: the model is hardly faster than the Radeon RX Vega 64 and the Radeon RX 5700 XT, despite the massively higher raw power.

Already Turing falls behind RDNA and GCN, but it hits Nvidia's previous generation Pascal really hard. The Radeon RX 580 is usually only a little 5 percent faster than the GeForce GTX 1060. In CoD: Warzone, however, it is a whopping 33 percent. The Radeon RX Vega 64 is otherwise rather as performant as the GeForce GTX 1080, in the Free 2 Play part of Call of Duty, however, by 17 percent superior to the FPS, in the frame times it is even 27 percent.

Turing increases significantly in frame times compared to Pascal

The frame times show that Turing works better than Pascal in Warzone. The GeForce RTX 2070 delivers “only” 39 percent more images per second than the GeForce GTX 1080, but the plus in frame times is a high 59 percent.

A GPU generation shows weaknesses in frame times

In general, Call of Duty: Warzone shows very good frame times. Above all, the GeForce RTX 2070 Super knows how to convince in this discipline, because the Turing accelerator has only very slight fluctuations in image output. The Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX Vega 64 also do well in this regard, but there is a bigger difference for both graphics cards. It is not tragic because you cannot feel it while playing, but it is reproducible. While Turing achieved the best result, the predecessor Pascal got the worst. The GeForce GTX 1080 has several medium-sized outliers that run through the entire Pascal portfolio. With high frame rates of more than 60 FPS, this is not a problem. If the FPS is lower, you can feel the small hooks.

Conclusion

Infinity Ward has actually managed to get Call of Duty’s free-to-play Warzone battle royale mode to achieve the same frame rates as the modern warfare classic multiplayer mode, despite the massive larger map and significantly higher number of players. However, the developers did not enchant. Instead, the graphics quality had to be visibly reduced. The presentation is still ok and has retained some highlights, but it doesn't match the classic multiplayer mode and certainly not the game's very pretty campaign.

Due to the high frame rate, CoD: Warzone does not need a high-end graphics card in Full HD or WQHD, and even in Ultra HD it does not have to be a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti with reduced graphics details.

The editors' benchmarks show an almost consistently good performance of AMD's old GCN generation. No matter whether Radeon RX 580 or Radeon RX Vega 64, the old Radeons are clearly superior to Nvidia's Pascal generation. But the old guard also performs very well compared to the newer Turing and RDNA products. The F2P part of Call of Duty: Warzone behaves just like the paid main game Modern Warfare.

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