Sniper Elite 3 has just been released and Rebellion was kind enough to provide us with a review code, so it’s time to see how this new shooter performs on the PC platform. Sniper Elite 3 is powered by the next iteration of Rebellion’s in-house engine, the Asura engine. Asura engine was also used in Sniper Elite V2; a game that performed amazingly well even on older PC systems. And as you’d expect, Sniper Elite 3 is even more optimized than its predecessor.
For this Performance Analysis, we used an i7 4930K with 8GB RAM, Nvidia’s GTX690, Windows 8.1 64Bit and the latest version of the GeForce drivers. Back in the Sniper Elite V2 days, Nvidia had a lot of trouble with the game’s SLI performance. SLI owners were forced – at least for the first couple of days – to disable SLI as it brought negative SLI scaling. Thankfully, it appears that Nvidia has learned its lesson. The green team has already included an official SLI profile that offers amazing scaling, so kudos to both them and Rebellion.
As we’ve already said, Sniper Elite 3 is better optimized than its predecessor. Sniper Elite 3 is – like Sniper Elite V2 – a GPU-bound title. As we can see below, even a dual-core CPU is more than enough for an ‘120fps’ gaming experience (provided you are not GPU limited). In order to avoid any possible GPU limitation, we lowered our resolution and completely disabled AA. Still, we kept all settings on Ultra as some of them may bring further burden on the CPU. Contrary to Sniper Elite V2, this time around there are performance differences between dualcores, tricores and quadcores. Hell, the game even benefits from pentacores, something that really surprised us. Do note that Sniper Elite 3 will also take advantage of AMD’s Mantle, though there is no day-one support for it (it will come via a future update). In short, Sniper Elite 3 scales incredibly well on multi-core CPUs and will run with no trouble even on dated systems.
Rebellion has included a variety of graphics options to adjust, and there is also an option to reduce mouse acceleration and smoothing. As you’d expect, there are proper keyboard indicators on-screen and the game plays wonderfully with the keyboard+mouse combo. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Shadows, Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering. For high-end GPUs, Rebellion has also included a Supersampling option (that is obviously demanding on max values). Moreover, players can enable/disable Motion Blur, Ambient Occlusion, V-Sync, Tessellation and Obscurance Fields.
Graphics wise, Sniper Elite 3 looks great. Rebellion has used a lot of high-resolution textures but what really amazed us was the fact that every light source cast shadows. In such stealthy games, shadows are of a high priority and thankfully Rebellion has implemented a fully dynamic lighting system. There will be occasions when your character will cast two different shadows (due to the nearby light sources), something that you’ll have to keep in mind while approaching your enemies. Moreover, there are some amazing God-rays, soft-particles have been implemented, ambient occlusion does a great job, and the X-Ray slow-motion moments are gorgeous.
Unfortunately, though, Sniper Elite 3 suffers from major pop-in issues, something that is easily noticeable when using your binoculars or your sniper’s scope. Not only that, but the shadows from the trees feel kind of ‘low-res’ and ‘messy’, and there are also some shadow flickers on distant objects. Oh, and contrary to the Splinter Cell series, in Sniper Elite 3 you cannot destroy lamps in order to create new hideouts.
Regarding its GPU requirements, PC gamers will need a high-end GPU in order to enjoy Sniper Elite 3 on max settings, even if they have paired it with an older CPU. Our GTX690 was being pushed to its limits (while still maintaining a constant 60fps experience) at 1080p with max settings and 2.25X Supersampling. There were occasions when the framerate dropped to 61fps, though our average framerate was around 80-90fps. A single GTX680 is simply not enough to handle Supersampling, meaning that owners of weaker GPUs will have to reduce or disable some graphical options.
All in all, Sniper Elite 3 performs amazingly well on the PC. Rebellion did an excellent work and Nvidia has not dropped the SLI ball on this one. While the game does require a high-end GPU to shine, it comes with a fully dynamic lighting system that will be appreciated by all those who got bored with all the pre-baked shadows that have plagued most triple-A games lately. Not only that, but the game’s CPU requirements are as low as they can get, meaning that a lot of gamers will be able to enjoy this latest Sniper Elite title.
Enjoy!
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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great job john, and kudos to rebellion. for me it’s constant 60fps without supersampling. graphics are great,nice tessellation too. gameplay wise it’s much better than SE II, big azz maps,nice stealth missions with tons to do. buy it people, it worth it
so the maps are nonlinear this time around? They said so, but then again you never know.
The last game was gears of war with a sniper is this nonlinear this time?
Also i just noticed something, watchdogs in a trailer showed that piece can raise his hands and surrender to the cops only to go slow mo and shoot them in the legs, i guess neither of those features made it into the game, nor the weapon recoil animations.
So much for ubisoft saying “watchdogs is lead on pc and the delay allowed us to finish the game and add the things we wanted to add in it”
PFF bullocks.
they are big,some objectives are nonlinear, the map design is good,it depends how you play, if you take a stealth root then it’s fun and rewarding (finished the second map in 1hour) but i guess if you choose action root it still gears of war(ish).
nice one, i was totally forgot about surrendering to cops in watchdogs trailers but they weren’t in the game. damn ubisoft is a ture cancer to gaming
You can shot cops in the legs yes and you can cause a blackout while the cops are about to all shot you.
New racer? Copy and paste from GRID analysis? 🙂
Hehe . Nice observation .
Yes, Thomas is to be blamed for this typo. He kept telling me how awesome GRID actually is while I was writing this article (apparently he managed to get into my head). He just loves it when there are typos on my articles.
Whenever I see, or hear the name Thomas, I can’t help but hear the big black woman saying it from the Tom & Jerry cartoons. Perhaps you could greet him in that manner every time you speak to him…
http://www.twinfinite.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/twa.jpg
I hate when they put anti-aliasing options from low to high, I want to know what AA it actually is and does the option high mean better AA or just stronger FXAA for example.
i guess AA option is only FXAA (maybe MSAA overall not really impact fps too much so it might be FXAA) and there is a seperate SSAA option from off/2.5x to 4x
Probably so.
You can always disable it in-game and set it via the control panel for your video card. I find that often works better anyway for AA and AF.
RadeonPro has different AA options, too. It’s primarily for AMD cards, but basic stuff like FXAA still works with my newer Nvidia card and it’s nice being able to toggle it on/off in-game to see the difference. RP’s FXAA on Ultra is pretty nice imo. Cleans up your edges well but I don’t notice any texture blurring at all. Better than the “stock” FXAA in Nvidia control panel and in most games.
Yeah the Nvidia FXAA is ok but it could be better. Also I like using 2xMSAA before FXAA. FXAA as an in-game option is too little or too much in many cases.
why is it these little companies produce much more optimized titles on shoe string budget compared to EA/Ubisoft?
especially ubisoft, wtf ubi, you no like pc?
i was reading about AC: unity eurogamer’s DF, the demo they showed on MS and Ubi conf this year’s E3 was running on a PC, they analysed frame rate, man that fps was all over the place, most of the time it was in mid 20s, over all it was 16fps to 40fps with lots of stuttering. looks like AC U is going to take the crown from watchdogs for awful optimization
because the little companies care about you and keep customers while the big companies know people will buy whatever they crap out.
Because:
1) Rebellion isn’t small indie developer team
2) Same old engine
3) Has no visuals
1)250 people
2)upraded
3) check the screenshots.
Irrational Games 91 people. Indie team?
Goo point but they got 90 peple NOW because the studio experianced layoffs and many left with ken levine. Also it took them 5 years to make a game.
They cant make next gen games like that only indies.
3) Has no visuals
so is a text based stealth game ?
Because big companies make more money on PC whether they optimize their games or not.
The previous was amazingly optimized and controled awesome as well, but the gameplay was basicly gears of war with a sniper.
They said this time around its more nonlinear with more stealth and options, is that true john?
So how will a gtx 660 fare on this with no AA?
Also the lighting looks amazing.
Indeed. It packs really wide-open environments and you can approach most objectives via multiple paths. Think the game’s levels as mini sandbox environments.
Regarding GTX 660, it should run it with 60fps (without Supersampling)
hooray its like the old days then. When gams had large maps
After booting up the game I was amazed at how well it performed, a constant 60 fps at 1440p with all settings maxed except super sampling. For some reason it runs better for me than Nazi Zombie Army 2 did.
Oh how I’d love for companies to be like Rebellion. Unfortunately, it’s a dream that will remain to be just a dream … tsk tsk tsk ….
I don’t agree, totally. This game is a shame, speaking about optimization.
indeed i have r7 260x and i get solid 60fps with 900p and ultra settings without super sampling
why not do a 4 core 8 thread benchmark for those of us with quad core i7’s?
Hyper Threading brings minor performance improvements to quad-core CPUs (in this particular title). We somehow did not include our 4 core/8 thread test, so apologies for that.