Ubisoft if back at it again with The Division 2. This time the Snowdrop powered game comes ready and rocking DX12 to extract the most out of modern hardware. For those who haven't been keeping up with the game it launched March 14 on Uplay and the Epic Games store, joining a list of titles that have forgone a Steam release lately. And for recent Radeon card buyers this was in their game bundle offering up pretty good value, and as we get through the results it appears that, unlike Assassin's Creed Odyssey, this investment on their end was worth it for them.
Testing Methodology
Testing The DIvision 2 was pretty straightforward thanks to a useful built in benchmarking tool. I would typically prefer an in game scenario to run repeatedly but fighting day/night cycles and dynamic weather made that nearly impossible. Due to the results in our Private Beta testing we found that DX12 was by far the superior performing API regardless of GPU vendor so that is what we went with for this one. OCAT was employed to track the performance but it does reflect closely the result that the game gives but allows us to run it through my in house tool to extract the Average, 1%, and .1% for each test. We did go with the highest preset on this one with the Ultra preset but with VSYNC disabled.
Graphics Settings Used In The Division 2
| Setting | Value Selected |
|---|---|
| Graphics Quality | Ultra* |
| Brightness | 10 |
| Contrast | 15 |
| V-Sync | OFF |
| Frame Limit | OFF |
| Custom FPS Limit | - |
| Shadow Quality | High |
| Spot Shadows | High |
| Spot Shadow Resolution | Ultra |
| Contact Shadows | All High |
| Resolution Scaling | 100% |
| Sharpening | 07 |
| Particle Detail | Ultra |
| Volumetric Fog | Ultra |
| Reflection Quality | Medium |
| Local Reflection Quality | Very High |
| Vegetation Quality | High |
| Sub-Surface Scattering | On |
| Anisotropic Filtering | 16x |
| Parallax Mapping | Yes |
| Ambient Occlusion | Very High |
| Depth of Field | On |
| Object Detail | 60 |
| Extra Streaming Distance | 10 |
| Lens Flare | On |
| Vignette Effect | On |
| Water Quality | High |
| Chromatic Aberration | On |
| Projected Texture Resolution | 512 |
| High Resolution Sky Textures | Yes |
| Terrain Quality | High |
Test System
| Components | Z370 |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i9-9900k @ 5GHz |
| Memory | 16GB G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3200 |
| Motherboard | EVGA Z370 Classified K |
| Storage | Crucial P1 1TB NVMe SSD |
| PSU | Cooler Master V1200 Platinum |
Graphics Cards Tested
| GPU | Architecture | Core Count | Clock Speed | Memory Capacity | Memory Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA RTX 2080ti | Turing | 4352 | 1350/1635 | 11GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 2080 FE | Turing | 2944 | 1515/1800 | 8GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 2070 FE | Turing | 2304 | 1410/1710 | 8GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 2060 FE | Turing | 1904 | 1365/168 | 6GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
| ZOTAC Gaming GTX 1660 | Turing | 1408 | 1530/1785 | 6GB GDDR5 | 8Gbps |
| NVIDIA GTX 1080 FE | Pascal | 2560 | 1607/1733 | 8GB GDDR5X | 10Gbps |
| NVIDIA GTX 1070 FE | Pascal | 1920 | 1506/1683 | 8GB GDDR5 | 8Gbps |
| NVIDIA GTX 1060 FE 6GB | Pascal | 1280 | 1506/1708 | 6GB GDDR5 | 8Gbps |
| XLR8 GTX 1060 3GB | Pascal | 1152 | 1506/1708 | 3GB GDDR5 | 8Gbps |
| AMD RX Vega 64 | Vega 10 | 4096 | 1247/1546 | 8GB HBM2 | 945Mbps |
| AMD RX Vega 56 | Vega 10 | 3584 | 1156/1471 | 8GB HBM2 | 800Mbs |
| MSI RX 580 Armor 8GB | Polaris 20 | 2304 | 1366 | 8GB GDDR5 | 8Gbps |
| Sapphire Nitro+ RX 570 4GB | Polaris 20 | 2048 | 1340 | 4GB GDDR5 | 7Gbps |
Drivers Used
| Drivers | |
|---|---|
| Radeon Settings | 19.3.2 |
| GeForce | 419.35 |
Preset Scaling At 4K
Testing preset performance is a good way to see how the game scales by simply adjusting the presets rather than individual settings for a quick idea. While we did all our testing below you can see that this is a title that scales up greatly in performance as you drop the preset setting. High offers a good balance that makes it difficult to spot differences in but giving good performance boost and would be where I recommend most people start.
Intel Core Scaling Performance
While this test won't tell just how many cores and threads the game will and can use it does show how the game performs as you move up in cores and threads available. While 8 cores and no Hyper-Threading offers the best overall performance in terms of spread from averages to .1% lows you will be hard pressed to be concerned with moving beyond a quad core with HT enabled for this game. Dual core need not apply as the game would not move past the initial loading screen with that configuration.
Graphics Card Results
1080p
1080p already shows that this isn't going to be exactly the easiest game to have cranked to Ultra, but the performance does scale well up the stack showing that more powerful hardware does indeed run better in this one. The only card giving a subpar experience at 1080p is the GTX 1060 3GB, you're going to want to change the settings for sure if you're rocking one of them or any other card with less than 4GB of VRAM.
1440p
WQHD starts to put the hurt on for real and if you're on less than an enthusiast level graphics card prepare for a good bit of tweaking settings to be able to reach over that 60FPS target. This game definitely starts squeezing hard on resources at this resolution.
2160p/UHD
Only one graphics card was able to break the 60FPS average at 4K Ultra in this title. If 4K is your target then you're looking at a pretty tough time running this one. But, all is not lost as our preset scaling shows that the game does scale really well. This is the one test that the GTX 1060 3GB simply would not run, but then again not much is running it to a playable level but simply here to show scaling at that resolution.
Conclusion
Ultra is brutal in this one, but fair. Looking at the game running I still feel high is a great balance of visuals and performance in a game that isn't a twitch style shooter but still benefits from higher frame rates. The Radeon team definitely has a win on their hands with this and not just a small one showing why they pushed this game so hard during CES and in marketing. But that's not to say GeForce lays down either, performance is good all around and even Pascal shows better than expected performance with DX12. It's time for me to get back to the grind. If you're joining in the fray with The Division 2 share your results in the comment section below along with system specifications.
