Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst PC Performance Review

Introduction

 

Mirror’s Edge is a game about free running, going fast, climbing high and never staying in a single area long enough for your foes to corner you. In this game, a high framerate is key, not just for keeping your motions fast and fluid but to allow you to react quickly to the ever-changing situation.

The original Mirror’s Edge as very easy to run, offering a minimalistic visual style and a highly stylised white and red aesthetic, making the game easily recognisable but not exactly the prettiest game on the market. Now that EA has thrown a lot more time and money into the game’s sequel the visuals and scale have seen improvements, leaving many PC gamers to wonder if their hardware is up for the task of keeping up with Faith, the series protagonist.

Now that EA has thrown a lot more time and money into the sequel the visual fidelity and the scale of the environments have seen improvements in Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, leaving many PC gamers to wonder if their hardware is up for the task of keeping up with Faith, the series protagonist.

Here we will look primarily at the PC performance of Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst and take a look at the visual changes and differences between the lowest and highest graphical settings. Now without further ado, let’s begin.   

 

 

 

Drivers 

When testing Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst we will be using the newest GPU drivers that are currently available, which is Nvidia’s Game Ready Geforce 368.39 driver and AMD’s 16.6.1 driver. Both of these drivers feature game specific optimizations for Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, 

Both of these drivers feature game specific optimizations for Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, so we would advise players to upgrade their drivers for the best gameplay experience. 

 

Test Setup  

We will be testing this game on our dedicated GPU test rig using some of the most recent GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia.

 

AMD R9 Fury X & Nvidia GTX 980Ti
Intel Core i7 6700K @ 4.7GHz
ASUS Maximus VIII Hero
G.Skill Ripjaws 4x4GB DDR4 3200MHz
Corsair HX1200i
Corsair H110i GT
Windows 10 x64 

         

Nvidia GTX 980Ti (Left), AMD R9 Fury X (Right)

 

To represent AMD and Nvidia’s Mid-range GPU offerings we have decided to use the AMD R9 380 and the Nvidia GTX 960. Both of these GPUs will be the ASUS Strix models

Both of these GPUs offer very similar performance in most scenarios and come in at very similar price points, so it will be very interesting to see which GPU will come out on top. 

 

            

Nvidia GTX 960(Left), AMD R9 380(Right)