Quake Champions Early Access Performance Review

Conclusion

Quake Champions is a game that offers very little to complain about, it offers the same fast paced arena-shooter gameplay that fans love and provides great performance on a wide range of PC hardware. 

The biggest complaint that many will have is with the game’s “Champions” system it’s semi-free-to-play structure. Right now, the game is available to Steam Early Access, where fans can purchase the game on Steam at a reduced price of $29.99 (£19.99 in the UK), with the final release of the game being free to play with a $39.99 “Champions Editions”, which unlocks all the game’s heroes/Champions from the start. 

Early Access Players are purchasing the “Champions Edition” of the game at a reduced price, though the obvious downside is that the game is not in its final state, which means that it is subject to change and has a fairly small playerbase at the time of writing. This will change in time when the final version releases, especially when free-to-play players gain access, though for now expect to wait for a minute or so to find a multi-player game. Many series fans are understandably waiting for the game to become free-to-play, so they can at least try the game (in a more complete state) before they put any money down.  

Despite the fact that this game is on Steam Early Access, Quake Champions does feature a lot of polish, featuring support for a wide range of aspect ratios, highly adjustable FOV options and a dedicated resolution scale option. All of these options can be important when fine tuning game, either for gameplay or performance benefits.   

In terms of PC performance, there is very little to complain about here. Yes, the game’s lack Battlefield-like destructible environments and many features of “modern shooters” but we must remember that this is Quake, a game about fast paced gameplay and expertly designed arena’s, not about unnecessary flash and next-gen visuals. 

Quake Champions is a game where a 60+ FPS framerate is a must, with the game’s movement speed and fast-paced gameplay requiring high framerates to feel responsive and to allow players to quickly react to threats. Thankfully every GPU we tested was able to run at a steady 60FPS, with only 4K resolutions posing a challenge to our test hardware when using Quake Champions’ Ultra (maximum) in-game quality preset. 

Using our GTX 1060 Strix and RX 480 Strix GPUs, we found that at 1440p we were even able to achieve average framerates of over 200FPS at low settings, making this a game where modern 240Hz gaming displays would conceivably be used to its maximum potential. Quake Champions is a game that can run well on every GPU that we threw at it, making it ideal for its future competitive/free-to-play status. 

When comparing AMD and Nvidia hardware we can see that Nvidia hardware does offer a performance advantage, though neither GPU brand can be said to run badly in this game. On the CPU side, we can see Intel having a minor advantage in out tests over AMD Ryzen, but not enough to say that owning hardware to either brand is particularly advantageous. Even when using our Intel CPU in a dual-core, quad-thread configuration we were easily able to achieve steady 120+ FPS framerates in online matches, which isn’t exactly bad. 

With Quake Champions being an Early Access game there is always the promise of future improvements.  Bethesda has previously promised that the game would support the Vulkan API at some point during the game’s development. At this time there is no ETA for this change, though its performance impact will certainly be interesting to look at. 

From a performance standpoint, Quake Champions offers very little to criticise, allowing players to easily maintain high framerates while providing pleasing visuals. Quake Champions is almost too easy to run at high refresh rates, making it a perfect entry into the modern Arena Shooter genre. 

 

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