Can You Change Your Appearance In Mass Effect Andromeda

mass effect andromeda performance guide review 0015

Getting the best operation you lot tin can out of a PC game — even a brand-new i like Mass Effect: Andromeda is easy. Only plow all the graphic and video settings down to the bare minimum, run that cut-border game in 800×600, and even the lowest-end PC can hit upwards of 100 frames per second.

Unfortunately, that means your game is going to wait like a hot mess, all jagged edges and blurry textures. Finding a balance betwixt functioning and aesthetics is always tricky, peculiarly with demanding games like Mass Effect: Andromeda.

So, we've gone alee and tested each individual setting in Mass Effect, to make up one's mind which ones take the biggest impact on your operation, and on how your game looks overall. Whether y'all're a seasoned PC gamer looking to get the nigh out of an one-time PC, or a newcomer looking to decipher all those settings in the graphics menu, nosotros've got you covered.

Testing conditions

To exam Mass Effect: Andromeda we used a PC with a mix of high-end and mid-range components. To make certain that our internal components weren't going to drag performance down, we used an Intel Core i7-6950X CPU, clocked at 3.0GHz, 16GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB of RAM.

That's a pretty powerful machine, and so information technology should be able to get the most out of Mass Issue: Andromeda with all the settings maxed out. For most of our tests, we'll be running the game in 1440p. Our benchmarks were straightforward. Nosotros ran, jumped, and shot our way through a varied outdoor environment, gleefully frolicked in an extraterrestrial swimming, and ran a circuit inside a space ship.

It's important to betoken out that we're non testing this PC's hardware, we're testing how the game performs with different settings. Your numbers are going to vary based on the strength of your hardware, but they should be proportional — for instance, turning downwards your resolution or lighting settings won't yield the exact same frame rates we experienced, but the relative amount they alter should be about the same.

Brace yourselves

Now, you may have heard this already, but Mass Issue: Andromeda isn't without its faults. Chief among them, unfortunately, is that it simply doesn't run very well. On our testing rig, with all the settings maxed out, running in 1440p, we were barely able to manage a consistent framerate between 30 and 40 FPS. That's not bad, but it'south kind of the bare minimum serious PC gamers await, and this test rig isn't exactly underpowered.

Additionally, Andromeda just doesn't look great. That's not the most precise criticism, but even with all the settings pushed all the mode up, this game looks only slightly better than Mass Effect 3 — which came out about 5 years ago. Most of the new detail is in the quality of distant scenery and textures, both of which are greatly improved. The earlier Mass Outcome games always worked inside tight constraints. Fifty-fifty outdoor areas were just small arenas. Here, levels are closer in scale to Dragon Age: Inquisition, though so far they do seem a fleck smaller (that could besides exist due to the Nomad which, existence a tank, gets around rapidly).

On the other mitt, character details seem to accept hardly advanced. Facial detail and animations oasis't come all that far from Mass Issue 3, and thus often expect weird and lifeless. Anybody has a wax-statue-come-to-life vibe, and none of the character models are particularly lifelike. Hair is a large consequence, every bit almost hairdos look embarrassingly bad in any shade brighter than auburn. Many world details, like buildings, also take a apartment appearance. Bioware could've done more than with lighting effects to create temper, particularly in outdoor areas, where objects often suffer drab colors and a lack of texture depth.

It would be easy to blame on the engine, after all big-budget RPGs ofttimes apply heavily customized engines which can degrade performance and graphical quality. But there's a problem — Andromeda is running on EA's Frostbite engine, the same one that powers Battlefield i, a game which has been roundly praised for its lavish visuals and impressive functioning. Neither of which are in evidence in Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Presenting the presets

Let'due south dig into some examples, shall we? One of the offset things you'll want to practice when you fire upward a new PC game is open up the settings card, and navigate to the graphical settings. Hither, y'all'll discover the usual array of preset quality settings — low, medium, loftier, and ultra.

There's one large deviation though, and you might not find it if you're unfamiliar with digging nether the hood and tweaking your graphical settings. Switching from the Ultra preset, to the High preset, in that location's a setting that changes, right in that location in plain view: resolution scaling.

Thumb on the scale

If you're unfamiliar, resolution scaling is a helpful way to improve your game'south settings by scaling down the resolution at which the game'due south engine renders. It ways the game engine renders at a lower resolution, while elements that are outside the 3D engine – the interface, primarily – continue to display at native resolution. That keeps them readable and properly sized.

Since Andromeda uses resolution scaling equally function of its graphical presets, we ran tests at each quality setting (depression, medium, high, ultra) with the resolution scaling intact, and a prepare of tests without it.

The results are stark. Using the built-in quality presets, our game looked good on ultra and loftier settings, but once you take a step into the medium preset — with your resolution scaled down to 900p — things accept a turn.

Similarly, taking one more pace into the abyss, to low settings, Andromeda scales your resolution downwardly to 720p. The world seems to lose all life, detail, and aesthetic entreatment. Objects look blurry, textures take no depth, and reflections seem direct out of an Atari game. At least the downgrades internet a big performance heave.

We averaged 34 FPS on the Ultra preset, 66 FPS on the High preset, and on the Medium preset nosotros saw 91 FPS. What about Depression? Well, on Low nosotros were hit effectually 149 FPS. All of these numbers are from an outdoor section of Eos, the outset "full" planet the player travels to.

The Low preset is certainly effective at boosting framerate, but nosotros're willing to bet virtually gamers won't want to play a game that looks that bad. Even the original Mass Effect looks better.

De-scaling

So how does the game look and perform without resolution scaling? Much better, and much worse, respectively. To go a meliorate idea of how well the game runs at unlike quality settings, we went through and ran the same tests on the aforementioned preset quality settings simply disabled resolution scaling.

The results speak for themselves. Just look at those textures! They're so much happier now that the game isn't crushing the life out of them.

But with big graphical gains, come big performance hits, and overall we saw FPS drop past at least xxx percent across the board — sometimes a chip more.

Our test rig managed to average 42 FPS on High, 63 FPS on Medium, and 76 FPS on Low. Ultra remained the same, because resolution scaling is off by default on that preset quality level.

Remember, our rig is quite powerful. The GTX 1060 meets the recommend specifications, and is near as quick every bit a GTX 970, the well-nigh common video card co-ordinate to Steam'due south hardware survey. However even so, the game just averaged in a higher place 60 FPS on medium detail at 1440p resolution.

We'd be okay with that if the game looked outstanding. Nosotros've tested some trying, but also extremely attractive, games every bit of tardily – like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Forza Horizon iii. The problem is that as mentioned, Mass Effect: Andromeda just doesn't expect that smashing. It's great, merely it doesn't push button the limits, and we think it'southward arguable that much older games like The Witcher iii and Grand Theft Machine V boast superior overall presentation.

The takeaway

And so, resolution scaling is bad for visuals, dandy for performance, and kind of sneaky to include as part of the default quality presets. If y'all're having trouble running Andromeda or if you're worried that your rig won't be upwards to the task, simply have another look at the screenshots for the low quality preset without resolution scaling.

Information technology doesn't expect that bad compared to the medium and high quality settings. Information technology's playable, and keep in mind the game automatically upscales your textures during conversations and cutscenes, then if yous're just in it for the story, you can admittedly become by running the game on depression — just make sure yous disable scaling, the performance gains but aren't worth the cost.

Getting granular

If you're comfortable ditching the presets and digging into the private graphics settings, yous're in luck, Andromeda has a few settings which can seriously spike your functioning if they're turned upwardly too high. To find those settings, nosotros went through and tested each individual graphics option, ran a few simple benchmarks, and compared side-past-side screenshots.

Like many PC games, nigh of the private graphical settings in Andromeda have a negligible effect on functioning and overall quality. Information technology'south when they're turned upwardly or down together that you lot can start to see cumulative effects on your performance and graphical fidelity — with two notable exceptions.

Go ahead and approximate, we'll wait. Nope, non texture quality. Not model quality either. The 2 settings that have the biggest bear upon on your performance are ambient occlusion and lighting quality.

Both of those settings impact the way the game world looks, simply let'southward kickoff with the weird ane: Ambient Occlusion. Also called AO, ambience occlusion refers to the quality and number of shadows that objects and people cast on themselves.

See here, our Sara Ryder's confront is notably dissimilar at each level of ambience occlusion. With information technology turned off entirely, her confront loses almost all definition — she loses the shadows in her heart sockets, on her eyes, and even in her olfactory organ. Pace it up but a flake, and she regains some definition.

Andromeda features four levels of quality for ambient occlusion: off, SSAO, HBAO, and HBAO Full. SSAO stands for screen-space ambient occlusion, and HBAO stands for horizon-based ambient occlusion.

There are a host of differences between the 2 different methods of providing ambient occlusion, but the one that really matters for our purposes is functioning bear on. SSAO gives you a basic approximation of ambient occlusion — it puts those shadows dorsum in Sara's face, but they're not as rich and detailed as they are under HBAO or HBAO Total. It's easier on your system, and doesn't hit your FPS quite every bit difficult equally total-on HBAO does.

Looking at the numbers, we managed 42 FPS with AO off, versus 34 FPS with it on (that's with everything else at the Ultra preset). That'due south a sizable difference, and it doesn't hurt your overall quality very much — Sara'southward nostrils look a fleck weird, but it's non also bad. With SSAO nosotros managed most 37 FPS, so you lot still accept a hit if you desire to put those shadows back, but you do get a solid performance boost but by stepping downwardly from HBAO to SSAO.

Pass up the lights

The 2nd nearly effective way to heave your FPS without killing your graphical quality is some other calorie-free-and-shadow based setting: lighting quality.

Mass Event games are notorious for their over-use of lens flares and brilliant, shiny, sci-fi lights, and Andromeda is no exception. Turning down the quality of those lights can net y'all a small just consistent boost to your overall FPS. Showtime though, let's look at what y'all're sacrificing for those gains

Not much, right? Stepping your lighting downward to low or medium, you still have accurate shadows and the environment still looks good. There's a barely noticeable change to the quality of the lighting, mostly that light sources are a chip harsher and less natural. But permit's exist honest, the lighting in Mass Effect: Andromeda isn't exactly superb to begin with, then toning information technology down for an 8 per centum boost to FPS is worthwhile.

With lighting set on depression, we managed 37 FPS on average, compared to 34 FPS on the default Ultra preset. It's non a large gain, but it'due south amid the biggest boosts you can get from any unmarried graphical setting in Mass Outcome: Andromeda.

An underwhelming performer

Every bit always, your mileage volition vary. According to our tests, Andromeda isn't the most efficient performer to begin with, and so y'all might have some problem running it at the quality settings you lot're used to running about games on, merely get in there in tinker.

Don't be afraid of digging into your graphical settings and doing your ain experiments, there's nothing in there you can't fix by just clicking over to one of the existing presets. And make sure yous plow off resolution scaling unless you're hard upwards for a performance boost.