Mafia III PC Performance Review

Conclusion

When looking at Mafia III’s PC performance the first thing that we will say is that the game is a demanding beast to tame, requiring the sheer might of a GTX 1080 in order to deliver a consistent 60+FPS at 1080p High settings. Some may say that for this reason that Mafia III is badly optimised, but at the same time the PC gaming market does require ultra-demanding titles like this in order to push the industry forward.  

As a game Mafia III is very fun to play, having an interesting story, fun gameplay and an excellent soundtrack, which makes the PC version’s performance issues all the more disappointing. If you want to play Mafia III you will need to be willing to play it at low settings, especially if you want to play it at a constant 60FPS.  

Now we get into a very contentious point, framerate. Mafia III is a difficult game to run at 60FPS, requiring a GTX 1060 for 1080p 60FPS at low settings and a GTX 1080 for 1080p high settings, which will be beyond the capabilities of a lot of systems. Thankfully 1080p 30FPS gameplay is very easily achievable, with our GTX 960 and R9 380 easily achieving 40+ FPS framerates at 1080p Low settings. 

Looking at our results we can tell that the game’s minimum system requirements are intended for 1080p 30FPS gameplay at low settings, with the game’s recommended system requirements being intended for 1080p 60FPS at low settings. In Mafia III there is little visual difference when moving from low to high, so the higher settings should only be used by those who have high-end systems.  

When comparing AMD and Nvidia GPUs Mafia III seems to have no preference, with our GTX 1060 and RX 480 offering very similar performance throughout testing. The same can be said when comparing the GTX 980Ti and the R9 Fury X, or when comparing the Pascal GTX 1070 to the Maxwell GTX 980Ti. Hanger 13 have made Mafia III a very level playing field for GPUs, regardless of generation or brand. 

Mafia III’s aesthetic is somewhat ruined by how blurred or muddy the visuals can be, lacking the usual sharpness that a resolution of 1440p or 4K can provide. The game is using heavy Anti-Aliasing techniques like FXAA and TAA that limits aliasing at the expense of visual sharpness. This is a huge problem as the game has no way of turning AA off entirely or switching to a more demanding, less blur-inducing AA variant. This lack of choice will no doubt annoy a lot of PC gamers.      

This game is demanding, but now thanks to the game’s new framerate patch FPS junkies will be able to play the game at a steady 60+FPS if they have powerful enough hardware. PC gamers will need to be willing to turn down a lot of the game’s graphical settings in order to achieve a higher framerate on lower end hardware, but those with higher end parts should be able to achieve 60+FPS framerates if they are running a resolution that is lower than 4K. 

To conclude Mafia III is a demanding title, requiring some beefy hardware in order to run smoothly at 60FPS and some monstrously powerful hardware to max out at 60FPS. Those with lower end PCs will have to accept 30FPS gameplay with Mafia III, which means that some gamers may want to wait until their next upgrade before they try this game out. 

 

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