Destiny 2 Beta PC Performance Review
Conclusion
Even before the game’s official launch, PC has been heralded as the best platform to play Destiny 2, acting as the only platform that can play the game at high 60 FPS (or higher) framerates and with the high levels of precision control that can only be provided with a keyboard and mouse setup.
As a MMO-like FPS, Destiny has always seemed perfect for the PC platform, the home of the MMO, and the game’s performance on consoles only works to solidify the PC version as the most appealing, with higher framerates making movements feel more responsive and visuals appear smoother.
The big question coming into this game is was how easy will it be to run Destiny 2 at 60FPS, especially given the game’s 30FPS lock on “enhanced” consoles like the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. The answer to this question is simple, YES. It is fairly easy to run this game at a steady 60FPS, especially on modern hardware.
It looks like Bungie has decided to develop the PC version of their Destiny in a way that will maximise its player base, offering low VRAM requirements for users of legacy GPUs and a large number of graphical quality settings that will help adapt the game to varying hardware setups.
Even at a 4K resolution and the game’s highest settings we did not see over 4GB of VRAM usage on any of our GPU. This means that users of GPUs with over 4GB of VRAM can easily play the game with maximum texture detail without any issues unless Bungie decides to bring higher resolution textures to the PC version before launch.
Destiny 2 also features a resolution scale option, which will allow PC gamers to lower the game’s internal resolution and “stretch” it to their display’s native resolution. This allows PC users to perform the console-like trick of utilising lower resolutions to achieve higher framerates, similar to how Xbox One sometimes uses resolutions like 900p on a 1080p display.
It is clear from our testing that a lot of work needs to be done before Destiny 2 is ready for PC, though that does not mean that the Destiny 2’s current Beta version is bad. It is only when using the game’s highest graphical preset where we came across performance issues, especially when using AMD Radeon GPUs. Hopefully, Bungie will be able to fix these issues before the game officially releases on PC, as we certainly will be looking out for them in the game’s final version. More detail on this can be found on previous pages.
These performance issues were not present using the game’s High Preset, where Nvidia does have a performance advantage over AMD but not to an insane degree like with the game’s Highest preset (without using MSAA). Even so at 1080p all of our test hardware was able to run the game at 1080p with average framerates of over 60FPS, with our GTX 960 and R9 380 Strix models only requiring a few lower settings to achieve a solid 60+FPS framerate.
Even at 1440p Destiny 2 was easy to run with average framerates of over 60FPS when using our GTX 1060 Strix or RX 480 Strix and above on the game’s high settings, allowing higher-end GPUs like the GTX 1080 Founders Edition to enjoy framerates that average over 120FPS at these settings. Not bad for a game that is designed to run at 30FPS on consoles.
On the CPU side, Destiny 2 performs fairly well, with out benchmark run playing at over 60FPS in all test cases, even when we were using our CPU in a dual-core, quad-thread (Intel i3-like) configuration. We can see that the game does like to utilise 4 or more CPU cores, though moving beyond 4-core yields fairly minimal performance benefits. We also came across issues when Hyperthreading/SMT is used, though this could easily be fixed before the game officially launches.
The only big negative point for Destiny 2 is its lack of support for overlays, with the game preventing applications like MSI Afterburner and FRAPs from functioning correctly. Thankfully the game does support AMD Radeon ReLive and Nvidia’s GeForce Experience, with the game also coming with its own built in FPS overlay in the game’s graphical options menu. Bungie says this is to help prevent cheating in Destiny 2, though this can be difficult to swallow for some given the fact that most eSports games haven’t cracked down on visual overlays.
Looking at Destiny 2’s Beta version we walk away pretty impressed with its performance on PC hardware, hopeful that the issues with the game’s Highest graphical settings and SMT performance oddities can be fixed before launch. It is almost two months until Destiny 2 officially launches on PC, with the game releasing on consoles on September 6th and on October 24th on PC.
You can join the discussion on the PC performance of Destiny 2’s Beta on the OC3D Forums.
