On December 1st, The Crew’s designer Serkan Hasan claimed that this MMO racing game would not suffer from all the launch issues that plagued both Far Cry 4 and Assassin’s Creed: Unity. And to his credit, Serkan was right; The Crew runs amazingly well on the PC, offers a native 60fps option from the get-go (contrary to its alpha build), packs a variety of graphics options to tweak, and feels like a really polished title. If only its visuals were as good…
The Crew is powered by the Babel engine and as always, we used an Intel i7 4930K with 8GB RAM, NVIDIA’s GTX690, Windows 8.1 64-bit and the latest version of the GeForce drivers. Thankfully, NVIDIA has already included an SLI profile that offers amazing SLI scaling.
The Crew runs with 30fps on current-gen consoles, something that really surprised. And that’s because the PC version of The Crew seems to go easy on both the CPU and the GPU.
In order to find out whether the game scales well on a variety of CPUs, we simulated a dual-core and a quad-core system. Our simulated dual-core system was able to push 46fps at 1080p with max settings with HT disabled. When we enabled HT, we enjoyed a constant 60fps experience, thus proving that Hyper Threading offers a significant performance increase in this particular title. Naturally, our simulated quad-core and our hexa-core systems had not trouble running the game with constant 60fps.
What’s also interesting here is that Babel scales well on multiple CPU cores. The Crew mainly stresses one CPU core, and scales well on four – in total – CPU cores. While the game also scales on more than, we can clearly see that those additional CPU cores are not put into good use. The Crew is mainly optimized for four CPU cores, but then again as we’ve already said, those with weaker dual-core systems will be able to enjoy it.
The Crew does not also demand a high-end GPU. A single GTX680 was able to push 60fps at 1080p with max settings (with FXAA), while a GTX690 does not have any trouble running this MMO racer at 1080p with max settings and 4xTXAA (with 8xMSAA had some drops to mid 40s). Not only that, but 2GB of VRAM are enough for such settings as we did not encounter any stutters at all.
Graphics wise, The Crew is definitely not up to what we’d expect from a current-gen only racing game. While its world is huge and there is no loading at all while driving, there is noticeable pop-in even with max settings. Not only that, but everything – from shaders to textures – gives an impression of an old-gen title. So while The Crew runs flawlessly, it certainly does not impress with its visuals. There is a nice level of environmental destruction – bushes are bendable – as well as a pretty good damage system, but overall there is nothing to really ‘wow’ you.
All in all, while The Crew performs great on the PC, it does not look like a current-gen title. While it’s amazing that this game features such a huge and varied world, its visuals – as a whole – are disappointing (to say the least). Still, it’s good seeing an Ubisoft title that does not suffer from game-breaking launch issues.
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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As I mentioned on the low vs ultra comparison post, the performance analysis should also be done using mid/high end AMD cards, as I’m able to run this at 60 fps on my pc with a GTX 670 with everything on ultra (except AA which is set to FXAA and vsync off) and can’t do so with a Vapor-X HD7950 Boost at 1080P. What’s more, I can’t maintain 60 fps in cities like Miami and New York even with SSAO and AA off.
Crappy graphics and 60 fps is nothing great.a really good game is the one with great graphics runing great.this crap is nothing impressive in terms of graphics.
“The Crew does not also demand a high-end GPU. A single GTX680 was able to push 60fps at 1080p with max settings”
The GTX 680 is not exactly mid-range (and far from low-range), is it? I mean, it might be getting old, but it’s still quite a performer… If a GTX 750 can run The Crew (even at medium settings) @60fps, then I’d be impressed! 😉
…Not that I’d buy it, anyway. After seeing a post-update DriveClub running, I’ll wait a bit longer until something as impressive as that is released on the PC.
This game looks soo good for me:)
Does it have towers to unlock and a main character that learned to driver in no time?
No joke I think there is places you go to so you can unlock more areas aka like Towers.
LOL
more like all places are unlocked, but there’s radar towers that display you the events in that zone once you find them.
ey. its performance is good, so we should not expect those other ubisoft features either.
yes it has, exactly life AC games and Watchdogs 😀
OMFG Ubisoft……
lel
I just installed it on an Asus RoG from 2011 with a 580m 2GB gpu.
At low it’s 30, med 30, high 25, ultra 15. Using the preset by them.
Making some AA/AO/shadow changes it’s 20 at ultra.
Yes people, 30 fps on my overpriced old not used laptop is great for me.
And it’s an even sweeter 30 fps when I only paid $15 for The Crew.
It’s a candy racer. Enjoy it for what it is, but for sure as hell don’t pay full price.
I gotta know where you paid so little
It’s one of my first off-steam ubisoft game trades ever.
Check the steam forums and steamtrades.
You will find people selling nvidia codes.
I have a lot trades and lots of rep so I never go first.
Proceed with caution.
Oh I totally gotta try it, thanks man!
So for once an Ubisoft game runs great, but the game itself has only gotten mediocre review scores 5-6-7/10 have been the most common scores.
This “article” is a sham. Obviously paid by Ubisuck.
Many people complain about bad FPS stuttering and even in the video you can see it when you look at the environment.