XCOM: Chimera Squad PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

XCOM: Chimera Squad PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Introduction 

Turn-based squad combat games have exploded in popularity since the release of XCOM 2, with new franchises like Phoenix Point and Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden finding a lot of success on PC while new titles like Gears Tactics and Empire of Sin plan to give strategy gamers even more options later in 2020. 

Now, the XCOM-like genre to turn-based tactics games have exploded in popularity, and Firaxis is ready to capitalise on this opportunity with an XCOM 2 spin-off called XCOM: Chimera Squad. 

No, this isn’t XCOM 3, and the game’s current PC pricing of £8.49 should make it clear that this is a smaller title than numbered XCOM releases. That said, this doesn’t make Chimera Squad a sub-standard XCOM title. The scale is smaller, and the gameplay has been altered, but these moves have allowed Chimera Squad to become something unique, adding new mechanics and more squad variety. 

XCOM 2’s global conflict has ended, Advent has collapsed, and the Alien Ethereals are gone, leaving humans, aliens and hybrids to live together in the aftermath. XCOM: Chimera Squad will see players work together to stop City 31’s collapse, something which could forever divide the peoples of Earth. 

Unlike XCOM 2, Chimera Squad will see players acting less like a military force, and more like a SWAT team. Rooms will be entered using breaching tactics, non-lethal takedowns are preferred to straight-up kills and efforts outside of combat will help to keep City 31 secure. 

Today, we will be looking at XCOM: Chimera Squad on PC, and analysing how the game performs on today’s PC hardware and how players can get higher framerates out of their PCs. 
 

XCOM: Chimera Squad PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide 

Contents


– PC System Requirements & Graphics Options
– CPU Performance – Do you need a monster processor to run XCOM: Chimera Squad?
– Optimising XCOM: Chimera Squad
– 1080p Performance
– 1440p Performance
– 4K Performance
– Conclusion

GPU drivers

When testing XCOM: Chimera Squad, we opted to use the newest drivers from both the Radeon and Geforce camps. These drivers are AMD’s Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 20.4.2 driver as well as Nvidia’s Geforce 445.78 driver.

Testing Methodology

OC3D is a website that is dedicated to PC hardware, so you better believe that we test every game on a wide range of hardware configurations. This commitment to variety means that we will be using both Intel and AMD based testbeds as well as a range of GPU offerings from both Nvidia and Radeon. 

Our primary test system uses Intel’s X99 platform, containing an Intel Core i7 6850K at a fixed clock speed of 4GHz. This testbed will use 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 memory and will be powered and cooled by an HX1200i PSU and an H110i AIO liquid cooler respectively, with everything sitting inside a Corsair 460X chassis. In this system, we are using an ASUS Strix X99 motherboard.

The system below will be used to conduct the majority of our game testing. This system will be used in this review unless otherwise stated.

 


Game Test Rig

Intel i7 6850K @4.0 GHz
ASUS X99 Strix
Corsair Vengeance LP 4x8GB DDR4 3200MHz
Corsair HX1200i
Corsair H110i GT
Windows 10 x64 “May 2019” Update

 

GPU Selection

No gaming test suite would be complete without a large selection of GPUs. At OC3D out current test suite covers Nvidia’s RTX 20-series and GTX 10-series alongside AMD’s RX Vega and RX 500 series graphics cards.

Starting with Metro Exodus, we began testing new PC games with Nvidia’s latest RTX series of graphics cards. In our testing, we currently use the mid-range RTX 2060 and uber high-end RTX 2080 Ti entering our graphics card lineup. In time we hope to have a Radeon RX 5700 graphics card for RTX 2060 VS RX 5700 comparisons. 

With this performance analysis, OC3D’s main review staff has been able to work together from across the UK to deliver wider levels of performance testing than is common for our gaming content. This has enabled us to add a wider range of GPUs to our test suite for this review. 


Radeon RX 5700 Series – Navi (RDNA)

– Powercolor Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Devil 
– Powercolor Radeon RX 5700 Red Devil

PowerColor Red Devil RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT LE Cooler

Geforce RTX 20-Series & GTX 16-Series


– Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition
– Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition
– Palit GTX 1660 Super StormX

nVidia RTX 2080 and RTX 2080Ti ReviewnVidia RTX 2060 Review


Geforce GTX 10-series

– Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition
– Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition
– ASUS GTX 1060 Strix Gaming OC

 

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AMD RX Vega Series

– AMD RX Vega 56

AMD RX 500 Series

– AMD RX 580 Strix OC Â