Overwatch Open Beta PC Performance Review

Conclusion

When it comes to the PC version of Overwatch there is not much that we can really complain about, on modern hardware the game runs very well, allowing us to play the game at 60+ FPS with ease, which is something that is becoming a rarer feat these days without top of the line hardware. 

While the game is not the best looking game that we have ever seen graphically, it is clear that the game’s huge cast of characters and a large selection of maps are all well designed and come together to give an aesthetic that looks like it came directly out of a Pixar movie.   

Those of us with high refresh rate displays can shout for joy as we hit high framerates with ease and those of us who enjoy creating custom mapped controls enjoy mapping separate controls for each of the games 21 characters. Blizzard has thought of everything that gamers could possibly want with Overwatch, going so far as to add the ability to view your framerate and ping in-game and allow you to take screenshots of the game at a resolution that is higher than your own monitor.

It is clear that Overwatch is designed to make the most out of your hardware, whether you want to make use off all 8 threads on our i7 CPU or push out GPU much harder by using the games resolution scaling options. With our R9 380 and GTX 960, we were even able to run at over 130FPS consistently at 1080p low settings, which means that even those with much weaker systems can still enjoy Overwatch and have a steady framerate. 

When playing a multiplayer focused game framerate is very important, with even the smallest of stutters having the potential to end a killstreak of change what should have been a victory into a defeat. Overwatch is very easy to configure, allowing you to quickly and easily set up your game so that should never have a sub 60FPS experience with the right settings and reasonably good hardware. 

When looking at the games graphical options there is not much to complain about, the game has an FOV slider, full SMAA options, and even colour blind options which are things that I really hope catches on moving forward. Right now Blizzard has even discussed adding an FOV slider to the console versions of the game, though this is yet to be confirmed. 

With this only being the Beta version of the game I was expecting to find some issues with the PC version, but I am glad to report that even when testing a large number of GPUs over a large number of matches that I have found absolutely nothing to complain about, which is very surprising for such a popular online game. Even without a game specific GPU driver from AMD this game is able to not just perform well, but stay very competitive with Nvidia on both the high and low ends of the market, so much so that I would not base any GPUs purchasing decisions on this game alone. 

Even without a game specific GPU driver from AMD this game is able to not just perform well, but stay very competitive with Nvidia on both the high and low ends of the market, so much so that I would not base any GPUs purchasing decisions on this game alone. 

All-in-all the PC version of Overwatch is a masterpiece, even in its beta form it gives us nothing to really complain about. The game works well with both AMD and Nvidia GPUs, it can easily run at 60FPS or higher with even modest hardware and if report online are to be believed the game also sports some great SLI scaling too. 

Blizzard has raised the bar for what to expect from a modern AAA release, even before launch providing an experience that is totally stable and runs well on even low-end hardware. Hopefully, other developers will learn from Blizzards shining example after Overwatch releases on May 24th. 

 

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