Mafia 2 Remaster in the technology test: Test |CUP

Mafia 2 Remaster in the technology test : Test |CUP | Specs |Config

Contents hide

1 This is the Mafia 2 Definitive Edition

3 In addition to post-processing AA, there is pointless MSAA

4 GPU-PhysX has stayed – but now different

Just last week, 2K Games announced a remake of Mafia 1 and a revised version of the successor Mafia 2 called Mafia 2 Definitive Edition. The comprehensive remake of the 1st part will be a bit long in coming, the timid remaster of Mafia 2 is already available.

This is the Mafia 2 Definitive Edition

tl;dr: Mafia 1 will soon get a real remake, while Mafia 2 is “only” a remaster today. ComputerBase took a closer look at the Mafia 2 Definitive Edition and, unsurprisingly, only found a slight visual makeover. The demands on the graphics card are also moderate.

The remake of Mafia 1 will hardly have anything in common with the original, story, gameplay and graphics will be touched. The game looks really good from the first screenshots. The Mafia 2 Definitive Edition, however, is still based on the original. This has the advantage that the development effort is significantly lower, but the progress is also low. Visually, the new edition of Mafia 2 will clearly have to back off against the new edition of Mafia 1. But there is the advantage that if you own the original Mafia 2, you don’t have to buy the nicer Definitive Edition. Because every owner of Mafia 2 gets the remaster for free.

As usual for a simple remake, 2K Games swapped the game’s assets, but made no major changes to the actual technology. This means that the graphics of Mafia 2 Definitive Edition only look a little better in the end than that of the almost 10-year-old Mafia 2.

High quality detailed face

Read This Now: AMD Software Adrenalin drivers mess with the CPU without telling you

picture 1 Of 3

It starts with the menu. Obviously, this is not optimized for high resolutions: The font remains blurred and frayed even in Ultra HD, which should not be the case with a simple remaster either. You can see the age of the game immediately, even the improvements do not change that.

The faces have made some of the greatest advances, although they only look good on the main characters. The textures have also become generally prettier, and the same applies to shadows and object details. Finally, the conversion of the engine from DirectX 9 to DirectX 11 and adjustments to the anti-aliasing are worth mentioning.

Mafia 2 Definitive Edition’s graphics menu is similar to that of the original. The FPS limiter, which can be set to 30, 50, 60 and 120 FPS, is new; alternatively, a stepless configuration between 30 and 300 FPS is also possible. There are no other comfort functions.

The graphics menu of Mafia 2 Definitive Edition

Some presets with minor differences

With “Low”, “Medium” and “High”, the game offers three different presets, the latter representing the maximum quality level. There is no difference between high and medium on screenshots, but it is visible in motion because the anti-aliasing is (still) less effective than with the highest settings. In addition, the physics effects in battles are much easier – more on this below.

But there is a serious graphical difference only with Low. Because the preset further reduces the anti-aliasing, in addition, some shadows are no longer displayed and the surrounding obscuration is deactivated. This is a major optical cut. Apart from that, nothing changes. The LOD is very aggressive and disruptive in all settings.

Read This Now: AMD Radeon Adrenalin Software Changes Settings on Ryzen CPUs, Causing Instability

Those who reduce from high to medium get a performance boost of 11 percent on the GeForce RTX 2070 Super, and 24 percent on the Radeon RX 5700 XT. The difference comes from the fact that AMD GPUs do not taste the MSAA used by the game particularly good. And since Mittel only uses 2 × MSAA instead of 4 × MSAA, Radeons cope with the requirements a little better. With the low preset there is always a big boost. The Nvidia graphics card increased by a further 67 percent, the AMD counterpart again by a higher 83 percent. Again, the reason is the multi-sampling AA, which is completely switched off at low.

Presets – 2.560 × 1.440

Low preset
Medium preset
High preset

In addition to post-processing AA, there is pointless MSAA

Mafia 2 Definitive Edition has revised the anti-aliasing significantly. The game offers modern post-processing anti-aliasing with FXAA and SMAA, but it cannot use the techniques effectively. FXAA primarily blurs the image, SMAA smooths some objects only slightly or not at all with only slight blurring – the image therefore continues to flicker.

In addition, there is long-serving multi-sampling AA in the levels 2 ×, 4 × and 8 ×. However, MSAA is also quite useless in Mafia 2 Definitive Edition, because only a few edges are recorded. The visual difference is small, but the performance drops significantly. In addition, MSAA and SMAA are apparently fighting a little duel, with the result that edges that the SMAA alone smooths absolutely perfectly suddenly look worse after switching on MSAA. Therefore, there is no constellation in which MSAA makes sense; the only one with a prospect of improvement is SMAA. The presets that used MSAA as of the setting Medium are consequently poorly configured.

Read This Now: NVIDIA's new Hopper GPU architecture to be announced at GTC 2022

GPU-PhysX has stayed – but now different

Mafia 2 comes in the original with Nvidia’s GPU-PhysX, which can only be accelerated on GeForce graphics cards. GPU-PhysX is primarily responsible for the particle effects in gunfire and enables a massive, albeit not very realistic, display of debris. Mafia 2 Definitive Edition still offers PhysX, but now as a modern APEX version, also from Nvidia. This has the advantage that graphics cards from AMD can also accelerate the effects.

Unlike in the original, the effects cannot be deactivated individually. If you select the middle preset, however, APEX will be deactivated automatically.

On the next page: GPU benchmarks and frame times