After what happened with Batman: Arkham Knight, a lot of PC gamers worried about the “technical” state of Mad Max. Despite the fact that Avalanche was clear enough in our Interview, stating that “the Windows version has been continuously developed as one of our main platforms and is being given just as much attention“, PC gamers were still not convinced about it. Well, we are happy to report today that Mad Max is one of the most optimized PC games of 2015.
Warner Bros was kind enough to provide us with a Review code for Mad Max. As always, we used an Intel i7 4930K (turbo boosted at 4.2Ghz) with 8GB RAM, NVIDIA’s GTX690, Windows 8.1 64-bit and the latest WHQL version of the GeForce drivers. NVIDIA has included an SLI profile for the game (that comes with incredible scaling) so you won’t have to mess with third-party programs in order to enable it.
Mad Max is powered by the Avalanche Engine and scales incredibly well on multiple CPU cores. The fact that the game scales well on six CPU cores (showcased by our graph) does not mean that the game is CPU bound. On the contrary, Mad Max was fully playable with a simulated tri-core CPU and a simulated dual-core CPU (with Hyper Threading enabled of course). What’s really amazing here is that even on our simulated tri-core system, there was minimal to none stuttering while driving across the desert.
Regarding its GPU requirements, Mad Max can be almost maxed out by a single GTX680. Our GTX690 was able to run this game with constant 90-100fps at 1080p with all its bells and whistles enabled. Not only that, but we were GPU-limited (our GTX690 was used at 98%) even on our simulated tri-core system, suggesting that those with a weak CPU and a really powerful GPU will be able to crank up all graphics settings without encountering any performance issues at all.
Graphics wise, Mad Max is not that impressive. While characters are on par with other triple-A open-world games, it’s post apocalyptic desert environments feel a bit empty. Of course this has nothing to do with what the engine is capable of or with the work of Avalanche’s artists; it’s just that this environment’s theme is by default… empty. There are also a lot of low-resolution textures and gamers will definitely notice various pop-ins here and there.
As Avalanche’s Alvar Jansson told us:
“With the large open world, we have a LOD system that goes from tens of kilometers down to centimeters. To avoid popping in the landscape mesh, we use spatial geo-morphing. The high-res terrain LOD also contains the lower LOD’s positions so that it can blend itself out seamlessly. For long-range environment meshes we use object-space normal maps, since they give a more consistent lighting result when the topology changes. We stream the mesh LODs and texture mip levels asynchronously, ideally just what you see will be read from disk.”
What really impressed us with Mad Max was the fact that almost all light sources cast shadows. And yes, even your flashlight cast shadows on all environmental objects. Furthermore, there is a nice – yet limited – damage/destruction system that although it’s not as “wow-ish” as the one in Just Cause 2 or 3, it’s still better than nothing.
Avalanche has included a nice amount of graphics options to tweak. Players can adjust the Geometric Detail, the resolution of the in-game shadows, the number of the light sources that cast shadows, Texture detail, the amount of decals and landscape debris, the quality of FOG and Particles, as well as the quality of Volumetric Lighting and Depth of Field. In addition, players can enable or disable Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Point Light Specular, Anti-Aliasing, Soft Particles, SSAO, Heat Haze and Bloom.
All in all, Mad Max is a welcome surprise. Yes, Mad Max is not the best looking open-world game out there (especially when it comes to its textures quality), however it’s far from being described as average or ugly. Mad Max looks good and runs exceptionally amazing on the PC platform. Avalanche has offered a PC game that scales well on multiple PC configurations and does not suffer from stuttering issues. Oh, and as you may have guessed, there are proper on-screen keyboard indicators, we did not experience any mouse acceleration side effects, and all keys can be remapped.
Those interested can purchase Mad Max via the following button.
Well done Avalanche. Well done!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Very nice, at least now we know that RockSteady was mostly to blame for the POS Batman fiasco, as all WB Games releases aren’t that bad on PC. It’s mostly the devs who are responsable for the PC version that screw up, just like NetherRealm Studio screwed up MKX by giving it to the scrub port studio High Voltage and now RockSteady with Iron Galaxy. WB Games certainly had a hand in the Batman/MKX failure, but the dev studio behind the game carries most of the blame.
don’t forget MK9 was a fail as well…. online is still garbage to this day…. Yet SFIV/Ultra SF IV are almost as smooth as playing next to somebody at a arcade. If you still go to those…
dont forget that MK is the biggest selling game of 2015 (so far). So whos really to blame, the dev/publisher for releasing broken games or us for buying them?
people buying them… people knew a head of time HV messed up MK9 so they should not have cried when MK X came out.
Isn’t it the publisher that assigns and bankrolls outsourcing duties?
Funny thing though, Iron Galaxy also did the Arkham Origins Port, which turned out fine, “Standard Day 1 Issues” aside.
Granted, Warner Bros. carries blame for definitely refusing to delay the PC Release even after it was near-undoubtedly recommended to do so internally, but yeah I think this is more of a Rocksteady/Iron Galaxy problem than anything.
Good job Avalanche.
While i agree with all of this, the game isn’t stressing a lot of ressources so in a way, it is normal that it doesn’t stutter and is easy to run. Batman had LOADS of details but played like crap so i’ll take mad max over it any day
The consoles must be really effing weak because both of them run Mad Max at 1080p/30fps while even a potato PC can run this at 1080p/60fps.
I write it here too.
An epic review i found on steam
There was a man named Max he lived in a wastland and was stripped of his wheels with not even a penny to his name
but oddly his game ran like silk and 60fps and his game was complete.
There was a man named Bruce he was a billionaire with a tank and a jet he lived in modern times
but oddly his game was a giant turd with a 34.99 season pass and was capped at 30fps.
Go figure.
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So what about the Metal Gear Performance
Analysis?
+1
Incoming 😉
Glad to hear this is a proper PC port, good for WB.
I have core 2 quad q9300 2.5gz ,ati radeon hd 7750 1gb gddr5 card and 4gb ddr 2 ram I was able to run metal gear solid v ground zeroes on medium settings , will I be able to run this game (and also phantom pain) with medium settings 720p ???
thanks
Mad Max has the highest FPS of all three so you should be able to run it. TPP runs worse than Ground Zeroes but not by a lot, you should be fine there too if you lower a couple settings.
thanks , does that mean I wont be able to run TPP at all??? (hope not )
Yea, you should be able to. On medium(tweaked) you should get around 30fps and more. You can tweak a lot of stuff so go ahead and optimize it your liking. And as shown by the screenshot comparison, the difference b/w low and ultra is not day and night.
As for phantom pain, it runs as well as ground zeroes. That should answer your question.
Its great that a boring, dull, watered down, lowest common denominator game guns fantasticly
Though what you say is true, Tims point is still valid. A game that isn’t demanding and runs flawlessly should be the bare minimum for any game.
i will give it a try if they gift it for free for batman owners other than that it’s not worth more than 4$ (it’s already 18$ here but no thanks). not a good game, not a good publisher and a bad DRM which made by devs who hates DRMs – hypocrites.
“even your flashlight cast shadows”
what is it ? early 2000 ?
Disagree with the “bad game” statement.
It isn’t great but it isn’t bad either.
Also I’m pretty sure the DRM is a WB doing not Avalanche.
well it’s an empty world and even main quests are some sorts of repetitive fetch quests and hand to hand combat is just worst than any other games with this type of combat. yeah i should’ve said mediocre but i didn’t said bad game, it’s just not good.
“just not good”
That’s what I am saying, this statement is way too much subjective.
Tried on a friend PS4 (ugh) and I’ve found it to be just a rough game (I blame the team working on two games at once). Yes it is barren, it is repetitive (as for empty well, that’s kinda the point isn’t it? It’s the Wasteland after all, lol) and definitely nothing new, but that’s just it, it is what it is, and it (sadly actually) didn’t try to be more than that.
well, not good doesn’t mean bad, mediocre is a better word then 😀 maybe a turd ? lol.
hmmm, design flaws is not something subjective but to me it feels like madmax was just a warm up for avalanche’s JC3, one of the bad part in the series was driving and in madmax looks like they figured it out.
I was about to get MGS V…but its price on brazil is ridiculous expensive. So far 9hours at MadMAx and im loving to only destroy cars! lmao!
STEAM FtW
While I’m happy that the game actually puts CPUs with more than 4 cores to use I would be happier if it did that and looked like one of the best games out at the time. The lighting and shadows look great but more could have been done. Hopefully the game is open to modders and they can get more out of it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry at Avalanche. I am happy they made a well optimized game but optimizing is easier when your game doesn’t have groundbreaking visuals and therefore doesn’t stress hardware as much.
This game is just awesome, I played for a while now and I’m really satisfied…only thing I wish someone will make a sweetfx patch that will boost a bit colors and give the look of the movie with high saturation, high contrast and a sepia filter!
OMG that looks awesome, thanks bud!
Glad to see a game published by WB that works at launch.
Actually, a Gtx 960 with 2gb Vram and a lowly i5 will get you a 70 fps in 1080p. 57-61 in 2240 X 1400.
Tried to go all the way to 4k. But…sub 30 fps. I figure a 970 or 980 would rock 4k, with little issue.
7 FPS + Stuttering ,.. i can even play MGSVTPP with max settings