The open beta for Anthem got over yesterday after three days of free-to-play access to gamers across the globe. Although the demo lacked many of the features of the full game, it is still a good indication of what to expect from the latter when it finally releases. In this post, we’ll be looking at the PC performance of the Open beta and analyze the graphics options available, along with their impact on the frame-rates.
Anthem PC System Requirements
Minimum:
- OS: 64-bit Windows 10
- CPU: Intel Core i5 3570 or AMD FX-6350
- RAM: 8GB
- GPU: Nvidia GTX 760, AMD Radeon 7970 / R9280X
- GPU RAM: 2GB Video Memory
- Hard drive: At least 50 GB of free space
- DirectX: DirectX 11
Recommended:
- OS: 64-bit Windows 10
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 3.6GHz or AMD Ryzen 3 1300X 3.5 GHz
- RAM: 16GB System Memory
- GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060/ RTX 2060, AMD RX 480
- GPU RAM: 4 GB Video Memory
- Hard drive: At least 50 GB of free space
- DirectX: DirectX 11
Looking at the system requirements, one thing can be said for sure, you won’t need a monster-rig to just run the game. However, if you want a smooth 60 FPS experience at FHD+ resolutions, then you will need decent hardware.
The minimum specs are aimed for 30FPS @ 720p using the low-quality preset, while the recommended specs are supposed to achieve 60FPS @ 1080p with the high-quality preset.
Anthem PC Graphics Options
The PC port of Anthem has all the standard graphics options we are accustomed to seeing these days, from anti-aliasing to texture filtering to lighting and post-processing. However, most of these don’t really have a notable effect on performance.
We tested the game using an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and an RTX 2080, and found that changing only four of the graphics options impacted the game performance to a notable extent.
These four options are anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, lighting
Reducing post-processing down to low has the most significant impact with the frame-rate going up by almost 10 FPS (15-20%). Furthermore, reducing the lighting quality to medium netted another 4-5 FPS (~10%). Lastly, turning off anti-aliasing also has a noteworthy but apparent impact on performance (as well as quality) with an increase of 5FPS (~10%).
Anthem PC Benchmarks
Since this was just the beta and not the final release, we decided to test only two cards, both NVIDIA, one from the previous gen and one from the new Turing lineup. The ultra quality graphics preset was used (at 4K) for the duration of the benchmark.
| GPU | FPS |
| NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti | 42 |
| NVIDIA RTX 2080 | 45 |
The performance greatly varies from scene to scene. The in-hub frame-rates are much higher than the action-packed sequences. I’m talking about differences of up to 20FPS or 40%.
At the ultra preset, our GTX 1080 Ti kept dropping into the late-30s, with an average of roughly 42-43 FPS. The RTX 2080 faired slightly better with an average of 45 FPS. Please note that this benchmark was conducted during some of the most intensive scenes, so it may be a bit lower than the other reviewers’ averages.
Conclusion
As it stands right now, the PC version of Anthem although looks drop-dead gorgeous, it could do with some optimizations, especially for the older-gen Pascal cards. The game has a lot of action, including running, flying, hovering and a combination of the three. As a result, the FPS greatly varies from scene to scene. We do expect better performance from the game when it finally releases later this month, but yeah I could be wrong and the final version might just perform identically to the demo. Here’s to hoping I’m not wrong.
Further reading: