Risen 3 Benchmarked
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Game Engine
It was clear even before the release, that the graphics of Risen 3 would not be on par with that of competitors like The Witcher 2. Although the Piranha Bytes studio has improved the Genome Engine significantly since Gothic 3, they still need to do some work in a few areas: whether it is the texture quality or polygon count. For a game released this year, Risen 3 looks very old.
However, Piranha Bytes has managed to alleviate some issues: unlike the dull Gothic series, the colors in this game are much stronger which helps make the Caribbean Pirate atmosphere seem authentic. Furthermore, the natural landscape and lush wildlife provide an enjoyable immersion. We really liked the realistic transition from day to night and the water looks great.
Sadly, the game is plagued by a lot of flaws which should not be found in a modern game. The stiff (face) animation and clumsy combat system, which is based on luck and not skill or character attributes. The AI and pathing should also be improved. The familiar story comes across as staged and boring. Other games (like Mass Effect) present the world in a more exciting way.
However, Risen 3 deserves a play, especially due to the character system. Each character can be customized in multiple different ways and the RPG offers many different options when interacting with NPCs. Overall, the world of Risen 3 offers a lot to explore and discover.
Top 10 Laptops
Multimedia, Budget Multimedia, Gaming, Budget Gaming, Lightweight Gaming, Business, Budget Office, Workstation, Subnotebooks, Ultrabooks, Chromebooks
under 300 USD/Euros, under 500 USD/Euros, 1,000 USD/Euros, for University Students, Best Displays
Top 10 Smartphones
Smartphones, Phablets, ≤6-inch, Camera Smartphones
We like the graphics menu as, although it offers a mere 10 settings, user to adjust the visuals in-game. We were sad to find out that there was no decent Anti-Aliasing available. The rough borders hint at FXAA which is not very demanding on the hardware.
The four graphics presets (Low, Medium, High, Ultra) allow the user to optimize the graphics and gameplay to suit their system. Medium settings look decent and the user should avoid the Low settings, as at this level, the shadows, textures and visibility are negatively affected. The graphics quality at High are decent as long as you don't get too close to objects. Ultra details do not change the graphics or hardware performance by much but are not available for each setting.
As expected of a Piranha Bytes game, Risen 3 is a little buggy (do not worry, it is nowhere near as buggy as Gothic 3). The following is a summary of the bugs we found in our test:
- Notebooks with a dual-core CPU can have rare performance issues and stutters.
- Powerful graphics cards stay stuck at 50 fps in some areas.
- At medium details, sometimes a grid appears on the screen.
- At times, High-End GPUs run the game more fluidly at max settings than at lower settings. With the GeForce GTX 780 Ti this resulted in a drastic difference (57 fps @ Minimum, 90 fps @ Ultra).
- On the Radeon R9 M290X Risen 3 causes massive errors (Catalyst 14.7 RC1 and RC3 tested). As this is a notebook with switchable graphics, it could be that the Beta driver of the HD Graphics 4600 was responsible for these errors.
Benchmark
For our benchmarks we use the island of Antigua. The test starts at the west coast and moves along the beach to the main city. The benchmark ends at the villa of Admiral Alvarez after 50 seconds of gameplay (see video).
Results
Despite the mediocre game engine, Risen 3 requires significant graphics power. Entry-level models with a HD Graphics 4600 can only run the game at low resolution and settings (~42 fps @ Core i7-4700MQ). For Medium settings at 1,366 x 768 pixels we require a graphics card from the multimedia section. Even a GeForce GT 740M has to fight to get a good frame rate (~29 fps). 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and the High settings require a graphics card on par with the GeForce GTX 765M (~32 fps) or above. Modern high-end laptops, which have at least a GeForce GTX 860M, can run the game at Ultra details.
Risen 3: Titan Lords | |
1920x1080 Ultra/High, On AF:16x 1920x1080 High, On AF:8x 1366x768 Medium, Off 1024x768 Low, Off | |
GeForce GTX 780 Ti, 3770K | |
Radeon R9 290X, 2600K, Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB MZ7PD256HAFV-0Z000 | |
GeForce GTX 760, 3770K | |
Radeon R9 280X, 3770K | |
GeForce GTX 880M, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 780M, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 870M, 4700MQ | |
Radeon R9 M290X, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 750 Ti, 3770K | |
GeForce GTX 770M, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 860M, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 765M, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 850M, 4340M | |
GeForce GT 750M, 4702MQ | |
Iris Pro Graphics 5200, 4750HQ, Intel SSD 525 Series SSDMCEAC180B3 | |
GeForce GT 640M, 2637M, Lite-On LMT-256M3M | |
Radeon R7 512 Cores (Kaveri Desktop), A10-7850K, Samsung SSD 470 Series MZ-5PA256/EU | |
GeForce GT 740M, 4200M | |
Radeon HD 8650G, A10-5750M, Samsung SSD 470 Series MZ-5PA256/EU | |
GeForce GT 630M, 3720QM, Seagate Momentus 7200.5 ST9750420AS | |
GeForce GT 720M, 4200M, WDC Scorpio Blue WD10JPVX-22JC3T0 | |
HD Graphics 4600, 4700MQ | |
HD Graphics 4000, 3720QM | |
HD Graphics 3000, 2637M, Lite-On LMT-256M3M |
Test Systems
Four of our test models came from Schenker Technologies (mysn.de):
- W504 (Core i7-4700MQ, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 860M, GTX 870M, GTX 880M, Radeon R9 M290X)
- W503 (Core i7-4700MQ, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 765M, GTX 770M, GTX 780M)
- M504 (Core i5-4340M, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 850M)
- M503 (Core i7-4702MQ, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GT 750M)
These laptops ran with Windows 7 64 bit on a 480 GB Crucial M500, provided by Micron.
A further model, provided by Nvidia, was used:
- HP Envy 15-j011sg (Core i5-4200M, 12 GB DDR3, GeForce GT 740M)
GPU driver: Nvidia 340.52, AMD 14.7 RC3 Beta, Intel 10.18.10.3652 Beta
We also ran benchmarks on other notebooks which may use different drivers.