Need for Speed 2016 Notebook and Desktop Benchmarks

Highly polished. With "Need for Speed", publisher EA relaunches their successful racing series. The arcade-style racing game might lack substance, but the technology behind it is top notch. Our review takes a look at how different noteboook GPUs cope with the title. Update: we've added additional notebook and desktop benchmarks for the 940MX, Fury Pro, R7 370, ...

Florian Glaser, ✓ Stefanie Voigt (translated by Bernie Pechlaner), Published 03/27/2016 🇩🇪

For the original German article, see here.

Graphics

After Hitman, which we've reviewed just recently, Need for Speed now also follows the current "reboot" trend. Stylistically, the new game bears a striking resemblance to the underground series from 10 years ago, which was released during the hype around the first installment of "The Fast and the Furious".

Graphics have improved by leaps and bounds since then. The new offshoot is based on the Frostbite 3 Engine, which is also used in such games as Star Wars Battlefront, Dragon Age Inquisition and Battlefield 4 / Hardline. As before, the Engine impresses with well-defined textures and nice effects. In addition to particles (sparks etc.), the reflections are pretty impressive, albeit sometimes excessive. Especially when it's raining, the cars and the track seem to sparkle and twinkle more than an amusement park. The lighting effects also doesn't have to fear the competition. Despite - or maybe because - it is the middle of the night most of the time, the lights really stand out. Thanks to physics simulation, there's also a plethora of destroyable level objects.

For a game released in 2016, Need for Speed takes up surprisingly little space: even after the install, the title only occupies up about 13 GB of space. Lots of games require up to 30 GB or more (example: Dirt Rally). One point of criticism: an Internet connection is mandatory. Since the user is normally paired up with strangers, there's no way to log in without being online. At least Need for Speed forgoes the 30 fps limit of console games, which was a limiting factor for the PC version of the game Rivals.

Graphics have been improved as well compared to PS4 and Xbox One. PC users can take advantage of higher resolutions and tweak the settings. Even though there's only a total of 12 options, at least all of them can be applied with out restarting the game. As expected, anti-aliasing is part of the package. FXAA doesn't require a lot of power, but only has a fairly subtle smoothing effect; TAA does a much better job, but the picture isn't quite as sharp (see screenshots below). Ambient Occlusion is available via SSAO and HBAO (the latter has more of an impact on the performance). The rest of the options can either be turned on or off or switched between low, medium, high, and ultra.

With Need for Speed installed on an SSD, the load times are acceptable - except for the first start. Users who have notebooks equipped with HDDs have to be a lot more patient. The developers could also improve the controls, or more specifically the key assignment, which isn't exactly intuitive. "Enter", for example, takes the place of "Esc". "PgUp" and "PgDn" aren't commonly used, either - and neither is the vehicle control with the "W/S" and the arrow keys. Speaking of vehicles: the driving model takes a little time getting used to.

The "real life" video sequences seem very cliché and over-the-top, which makes the story more embarrassing than cool - unless the user adopts a tongue-in-cheek attitude or simply looks upon the game as a satire.

The gaming experience itself is standard fare and reminiscent of the older titles (complete with AI rubberbanding and lifeless streets). The powerful engine sound and extensive tuning options don't quite make up for this shortcoming. From a technical standpoint, Need for Speed appears to be well-engineered. During our tests we never had the game crash, lose connection or encountered longer lag times. We did have some issues with Intel GPUs, which produced massive graphics errors (we suspect the driver here).

Benchmark

Since Need for Speed doesn't come with an integrated benchmark, we've decided on one of the first races (called "In the Driver's Seat"), which we think is representative of the gameplay. Since the performance is fairly constant, this sequence is pretty indicative of the frame rates which can be expected, although the demand on the resources changes a little depending on the weather. Especially during a downpour, the fps number drops a little, since the Engine has to render more particles.

Benchmark results of above 30-35 fps should provide a decent enough margin. As outlined in the video below, we keep recording the frame rate until Checkpoint 10, which on average takes about 70 seconds.

Results

The hardware requirements depend on the graphics quality. Users who want to enjoy Need for Speed with maximum details, HBAO and TAA and 1920 x 1080 pixels, need a high-end GPU like the GeForce GTX 880M. High settingss, SSAO and FXAA are possible with either a GeForce GTX 870M or GTX 960M. The demands on the hardware further decline at medium details, so a midrange GPUs like the GTX 850M are sufficient. Weaker GPUs can't handle Full-HD without stuttering.

In order to reach at least 30 fps, a GeForce GT 750M is only usable at 1280 x 720 pixels and low details. Inexpensive allrounder-GPUs like the GeForce GT 740M and most Intel graphics cards (HD Graphics 4600, ...) are unable to cope with the demands on the hardware. Users who own a 4K display and would like to play the game at high details have to resort to the (prohibitively expensive) GeForce GTX 980 or certain SLI combinations.

Need for Speed 2016
3840x2160 High / On AA:FX 1920x1080 Ultra / On AA:T 1920x1080 High / On AA:FX 1920x1080 Medium / Off 1366x768 Medium / Off 1280x720 Low / Off
AMD Radeon R9 Fury, 4790K XFX Radeon R9 Fury Pro	40.3 (34^min) fps ∼43% 68.3 (42^min) fps ∼46% 95 (69^min) fps ∼58%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, 6700K Desktop PC	34 (27^min) fps ∼37% 74.6 (55^min) fps ∼50% 99.6 (83^min) fps ∼61% 111 (93^min) fps ∼88% 133 (100^min) fps ∼68% 136 (105^min) fps ∼83%
AMD Radeon R9 290X, 4790K Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Tri-X OC	32.5 (27^min) fps ∼35% 61 (43^min) fps ∼41%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	26 (20^min) fps ∼28% 51.8 (36^min) fps ∼35% 70.4 (58^min) fps ∼43% 78 (63^min) fps ∼62% 86.1 (67^min) fps ∼44% 93.3 (70^min) fps ∼57%
AMD Radeon R9 280X, 4790K Asus Z97 Deluxe Desktop i7-4790K, R9 280X	26.6 (22^min) fps ∼29% 51 (39^min) fps ∼34%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	20.4 (16^min) fps ∼22% 43.4 (33^min) fps ∼29% 57.6 (49^min) fps ∼35% 62 (51^min) fps ∼49% 82.4 (58^min) fps ∼42% 92 (70^min) fps ∼56%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950, 6700K Desktop PC	11.7 (9^min) fps ∼13% 34.2 (26^min) fps ∼23% 43.5 (30^min) fps ∼27% 52.9 (38^min) fps ∼42% 83 (62^min) fps ∼42% 84.2 (63^min) fps ∼51%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	14.2 (11^min) fps ∼15% 31.7 (24^min) fps ∼21% 42.4 (33^min) fps ∼26% 46.8 (37^min) fps ∼37% 77.2 (63^min) fps ∼39% 82.2 (66^min) fps ∼50%
AMD Radeon R7 370, 4790K MSI Gaming R7 370 2GB	11.3 (9^min) fps ∼12% 37.7 (29^min) fps ∼25% 49.8 (42^min) fps ∼30%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M, 6700HQ MSI GE72 965M Ti	31.1 (24^min) fps ∼21% 52.6 (44^min) fps ∼32% 40.1 (29^min) fps ∼32% 72.3 (58^min) fps ∼37% 82 (69^min) fps ∼50%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	11.8 (9^min) fps ∼13% 28.7 (22^min) fps ∼19% 39.1 (30^min) fps ∼24% 40.4 (32^min) fps ∼32% 70.7 (60^min) fps ∼36% 77.8 (62^min) fps ∼47%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, 4720HQ Schenker XMG A505	11 (8^min) fps ∼12% 27.7 (20^min) fps ∼19% 38.4 (27^min) fps ∼23% 45.2 (34^min) fps ∼36% 70.1 (59^min) fps ∼36% 77.2 (62^min) fps ∼47%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	8.4 (6^min) fps ∼9% 21.2 (16^min) fps ∼14% 26.3 (22^min) fps ∼16% 32 (23^min) fps ∼25% 54.1 (45^min) fps ∼28% 61.3 (51^min) fps ∼37%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M, 6700HQ MSI PE60 2QD	24.1 (17^min) fps ∼16% 33 (27^min) fps ∼20% 61.6 (49^min) fps ∼31% 67 (54^min) fps ∼41%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M, 4340M Schenker M504	18.3 (10^min) fps ∼12% 23.9 (19^min) fps ∼15% 31.9 (25^min) fps ∼25% 43.2 (32^min) fps ∼22% 49.8 (37^min) fps ∼30%
NVIDIA GeForce 940MX, 6700HQ MSI CX72 6QD	15.5 (12^min) fps ∼9% 18 (14^min) fps ∼14% 30 (24^min) fps ∼15% 33.3 (26^min) fps ∼20%
NVIDIA GeForce 940M, 5700HQ MSI GP62 2QD	15.7 (13^min) fps ∼10% 17.7 (14^min) fps ∼14% 29.2 (24^min) fps ∼15% 34.5 (29^min) fps ∼21%
AMD Radeon R9 M280X, FX-7600P Asus N551ZU-CN007H	24.1 (15^min) fps ∼15%
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M, 4702MQ Schenker M503	13.3 (7^min) fps ∼8% 15.5 (12^min) fps ∼12% 26.4 (22^min) fps ∼13% 30.3 (25^min) fps ∼18%
NVIDIA GeForce 920M, 2970M MSI CX61 2QC 2970M MS-16GD	21.3 (11^min) fps ∼13%
NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M, 4200M HP Envy 15-j011sg	11.1 (8^min) fps ∼9% 19.4 (16^min) fps ∼10% 22.3 (18^min) fps ∼14%
NVIDIA GeForce GT 720M, 4200M MSI CX61-i572M	13.9 fps ∼7% 17.1 fps ∼10%
Intel HD Graphics 4600, 4700MQ Schenker W504	16.5 (14^min) fps ∼10%

Need for Speed 2016 - 3840x2160 High / On AA:FX
AMD Radeon R9 Fury, 4790K, XFX Radeon R9 Fury Pro	40.3 (34^min - 48^max) fps ∼43%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, 6700K, Desktop PC	34 (27^min) fps ∼37%
AMD Radeon R9 290X, 4790K, Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Tri-X OC	32.5 (27^min - 40^max) fps ∼35%
AMD Radeon R9 280X, 4790K, Asus Z97 Deluxe Desktop i7-4790K, R9 280X	26.6 (22^min - 32^max) fps ∼29%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M, 4700MQ, Schenker W504	26 (20^min) fps ∼28%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M, 4700MQ, Schenker W504	20.4 (16^min) fps ∼22%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M, 4700MQ, Schenker W504	14.2 (11^min) fps ∼15%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M, 4700MQ, Schenker W504	11.8 (9^min) fps ∼13%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950, 6700K, Desktop PC	11.7 (9^min) fps ∼13%
AMD Radeon R7 370, 4790K, MSI Gaming R7 370 2GB	11.3 (9^min - 15^max) fps ∼12%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, 4720HQ, Schenker XMG A505	11 (8^min) fps ∼12%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M, 4700MQ, Schenker W504	8.4 (6^min) fps ∼9%

Need for Speed 2016 Notebook and Desktop Benchmarks

Graphics

Benchmark

Results

Overview