Gamecheck

Wooden effect. About five years after the last part of the Mass Effect trilogy, EA risks restarting its jam-packed narrative and extremely successful role-playing game series. As beautiful as the largest part of the graphics may be, the game unfortunately fails in one of the most important atmosphere-giving elements, namely body and face animations. Our benchmark-check primarily focuses on the performance with laptop and desktop GPUs.

GTA meets Far Cry. Ubisoft launches the next action highlight right after For Honor. A group of special forces is fighting against a Bolivian drug cartel in Ghost Recon Wildlands. We test how different notebook GPUs can handle the open world title.

MOBA Heavyweight. With up to one million players online at any given time, Dota 2 is far and away the most popular game on Valve's Steam platform. This highly competitive game and eSport has come a long way since its origins as a mod for Blizzard's Warcraft III, and now runs as a stand-alone, free-to-play game on Valve's Source 2 Engine. The Source 2 Engine is well-optimized and very scalable, but has a reputation for being more CPU than GPU dependent. Do the resolutions and graphics options have a large impact on performance? What CPU and GPU you need for your notebook to keep framerates steady during even the most hectic late-game battles is the subject of this article.

Trinity. After Rainbow Six Siege and The Division, Ubisoft releases their next Triple-A title, which focuses primarily on riveting multiplayer battlers. Knights, Samurai and Vikings - For Honor actually pits three different factions against each other. Our review focuses primarily on how different GPUs handle the various swinging swords, katanas and axes.

Crackling tension. It is once again time for heart attacks: The latest title from the Resident Evil series focuses on the strengths from the first games and convinces with a thrilling single-player mode. PC gamers will be mainly shocked by the VRAM requirements.

Better late than never. At the end of 2016, we got caught up in the excitement of Pascal, Kaby Lake and co. and entirely forgot about Civilization VI. To rectify our mistake, we are putting the latest addition to the Civilization family in the spotlight with multiple notebook and desktop PC tests.

Impressive performance. Despite the fact that Watch Dogs 2 is quite demanding on the hardware, its engine appears to be well-engineered and stable. Which graphics card and what settings are best suited to allow the user to ascend to the hacker-throne is the subject of our review. Update: we've now tested 16+ graphics cards.

The Performance Enigma. Gaming qualities aside: the stealth-action game, Dishonored 2, is not running as smoothly as one would expect. The PC version is suffering from performance drops. In the following review, we will check how the game runs on notebooks.

Let's get cracking! A word to the wise at the big gaming companies, where they routinely spend millions and put casts of thousands to work developing high-end games. Alongside all those big boys -- like Battlefield, FIFA, and Assassin's Creed -- Germans also delight in playing on a farming simulator. Here's a look at what's up with the latest version, as shown in this benchmark report.

War mechs on Speed. Every Fall, we have new versions of single and multiplayer shooter games to evaluate. Alongside the reigning leaders “Battlefield 1” and “Call of Duty Infinite Warfare”, “Titanfall 2” is also seeking to carve out its piece of the gaming pie for 2016. Here, we test its performance on a variety of (Notebook) GPUs.

In the shadow of Battlefield 1. Activision launches the latest part of the extremely successful Call of Duty series almost immediately after the launch of EA's excellent World War I shooter. In this benchmark test, we will check whether the graphics can keep up with the main rival or if we are dealing with another frame rate fiasco similar to the predecessor Black Ops 3.

Great visuals. Battlefield once again shows how nice a video game can look nowadays. We will find out what that means for the system requirements for notebooks as well as desktop systems.

Interesting scenario with technical issues. One thing right away: You will be disappointed if you expect triple-A graphics from “Mafia 3”. The visual quality of the open-world game is average at best. Our benchmark test will show whether this is at least good news for users of low-end and mainstream PCs.

Engine Switch. Every year, football fans get to choose between the two giants, Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA. The latter has just been released in its 17th iteration with gleaming graphics. We ran FIFA 17 on multiple notebook and desktop GPUs to check how well the game runs.

Risky gamble. Infinite worlds, endless boredom - critics could easily sum up No Man's Sky with this sentence. We checked this game by British indie developer, Hello Games, on laptops and desktop PCs to see how it performs.

Cyberpunk meets hardware hunger. “Mankind Divided” has exciting game and story elements, but it needs powerful hardware to run well. Our benchmark test course will determine just how demanding the game is on different notebook and desktop GPUs. Update: now with 27 graphics cards!

DirectX 12 warfare. Ashes of the Singularity is a resource-intensive DirectX 12 strategy game with large-scale battle sequences, which jumps on the same bandwagon as Supreme Commander. What type of notebook and desktop hardware is necessary to allow stutter-free gameplay?

Tightrope walking. It took 7.5 years for EA and DICE to announce the successor to the Parkour-title Mirror's Edge. While the technology has improved drastically, content-wise, Catalyst hasn't made any progress. We vaulted around roof tops with the main character Faith to get an idea how the title performs on notebooks. Update: we've now tested more than 24 GPUs.

Topsy-turvy house. Overwatch might look like a chaotic action spectacle on speed at first, but Blizzard's multiplayer shooter turns out to be very beginner-friendly in practice. Is this also the case for the system requirements? We tested it with our notebook benchmarks.

Devil Worship. Even though - or maybe precisely because - Doom has an old-school vibe, fans of Shooter-games get downright spoiled with an onslaught of action effects. Does the title only push gamers to their limits - or notebooks as well? Our benchmark check has the answer.

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, ...

Debut of DirectX 12. Windows 10 launched with full DX12 support and Hitman - as one of the first titles released for the PC platform - supports it. Instead of improving the gaming experience, the new interface seems to be the source of frustration on quite a few systems. Here's our report, complete with the benchmark results.

Trendsetter? "The Division" combines both action and role-playing elements into a thrilling online / multiplayer experience. Does the game's technology make the competition look old as well?

Stone Age with modern technology. While the fourth iteration was placed in an imaginary region somewhere close to the Himalayas, “Far Cry Primal” jumps back more than 10000 years. We checked the hardware requirements for surviving in the wilderness.