Tom Clancy’s games have a reputation of being extremely optimized on the PC these past few years. We were utterly amazed by Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and the closed beta build of Rainbow Six: Siege performed amazingly well on the PC platform. This latest Tom Clancy game is now available, so it’s time to see how the final build performs on the PC.
As always, we used an Intel i7 4930K (turbo boosted at 4.0Ghz) with 8GB RAM, NVIDIA’s GTX690, Windows 8.1 64-bit and the latest WHQL version of the GeForce drivers. NVIDIA has already included an SLI profile for this title, meaning that you will not have to mess around with third-party tools – such as NVIDIA Inspector Tool – in order to enable it. And contrary to Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, the SLI profile for Rainbow Six: Siege offers incredible scaling across two GPUs.
Rainbow Six: Siege is mainly a GPU-bound title. In order to find out how this game performed on older CPUs, we simulated a dual-core CPU. And to our surprise, that system was able to handle it without any performance issues at all. Our simulated dual-core system was running Rainbow Six: Siege with constant 60fps, meaning that those with relatively old CPUs will be able to enjoy this title (provided of course they are not limited by their GPU).
When it comes to its GPU requirements, an NVIDIA GTX680 is able to handle Rainbow Six: Siege with constant 60fps at 1080p with High Details. On the other hand, cards that equivalent to the NVIDIA GTX690 will be able to run it at 1080p with Ultra settings (with some minor drops in some maps to 50fps though). Do note that the in-game benchmark tool is not that good as there are some maps that are more demanding than the one featured in the benchmark. Surprisingly enough, we did not witness major stutters when we enabled the game’s Ultra Textures on our GPU that is equipped with only 2GB of VRAM (per GPU core).
Ubisoft has provided a wide range of graphics options that PC gamers can tweak/adjust. Alongside the ability to choose their native resolution (that supports up to 4K resolutions), Refresh Ratio, Aspect Ratio and Field of View, PC gamers can tweak the game’s Texture Quality, Texture Filtering, LOD Quality, Shading Quality, Shadow Quality, Reflection Quality, Ambient Occlusion, Lens Effects, Depth of Field, Post Process Anti-Aliasing and Multisample Anti-Aliasing.
Now while Ubisoft has included TAA – a technique that is also used in Fallout 4 and does an incredible job at smoothing jaggies – we strongly suggest disabling it. You see, this particular post-processing AA technique brings a lot of blurriness. And when we say a lot, we mean… A LOT. If you can’t stand jaggies and are willing to enjoy blurrier visuals, then by all means enable it (or use Reshade in order to add some extra sharpness to the image). If you, however, can’t stand blurry textures and environments, we suggest staying away from it.
And let’s address the elephant in the room; the game’s visuals are not as good as Ubisoft’s pre-release screenshots. The biggest issue here is the lighting system as it seems to have taken a big hit. Moreover, the lighting system of the final build is not as good or advanced as the one featured in its E3 2014 build. As a result of that, some maps feel a bit underwhelming. In short, yes; the game’s lighting system has been downgraded from its E3 2014 build.
However, this does not mean that Rainbow Six: Siege is an ugly game. Far from it. Rainbow Six: Siege looks great for the most part, and packs the best environmental destruction system we’ve ever seen. As showcased in its E3 2014 demonstration, players can create holes in the walls and cause havoc. Ubisoft has nailed it as players can come up with some really interesting strategies in order to complete their goals (or kill their opponents). And that’s one of the big features of Rainbow Six: Siege. There are also some lovely reflective surfaces, most of the environmental textures are of high quality and the debris stays and does not ‘magically’ vanish.
All in all, Rainbow Six: Siege is a really well optimized game for the PC platform. The game does not require a high-end CPU to run, features a spectacular destruction system, provides PC gamers with a lot of graphics options to tweak, and its Ultra textures work fine on GPUs with 2GB of VRAM. Furthermore, the game offers a FOV slider and does not suffer from any mouse acceleration/smoothing side effects. The game’s netcode needs a little bit more work, so hopefully Ubisoft will further optimize it. It would also be great to have a browser list as the matchmaking system is not that great, but nowadays most games do not offer such a thing (which is a damn shame). For what is worth, we did not encounter any issues finding/joining games, though we do not know how things will be in three or four months from now.
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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Ubisoft is on a roll! 1st ACS now Siege. I guess for once they are really taking PC gamer’s serious and no longer just typing out nice words to say each year.
And I been enjoying ACS on PC. Will have to buy this game as well since I enjoyed the Beta’s other then match making issues I had.
Now I am looking forward to the new Far Cry game for PC.
Yeah I have to say ACS is a pleasant surprise. Besides being better optimized than Unity, the game itself is great. Possibly the best protagonists since Ezio imo.
yeah he is a cocky sob lol
ACS a good PC port? Are you kidding me mate? Performance is still sh*t, just like Unity. And just a heads up; it will never be fixed.
I have GTX770 2GB, 16GB of RAM and Intel Xeon 1230v3 and I got some serious stuttering, mainly outdoors. That was closed beta. If that wasn’t fixed in the final version, I don’t think the game is optimized as well as you say…
you can be sure if it wasn’t well optimized people wouldn’t spare it on Steam and would tear it up apart with negative reviews. whether it fails on one system or works very well on another means nothing. best answer lies within huge samples and Steam community is the biggest sample.
Well done Ubisoft !!! I want to see all your games with that level of performance.
its a Good Solid Game but that Randoms not Players 😉 are miserable, no Talking, gun&run no Co-op… It’s sad, but still i’m able to find some Great Players with Mic On, then that game Shine.
John how long are you going to keep that desktop background wallpaper
You know it is a Big Game with a lot London City in it.
But after 3-4 patches it will be very playable on Med settings on Med Rig.
I have x6 CPU + 280X + 16GB 2000MHz CL9 1T + SB-Z with Alchemy OAL for all games -> and i can play with reshade, AA and Ultra/High + med Shadows, still in runing i have ~42FPS
Lol performance is great what are you typing about
People on steam are far more brutal then ign trolls Positive (921)
Negative (218) for ACS on steam says you are full of it XD
Still having a good time with the game. If the performance is $hit for you maybe you need to turn down some graphics options. XD
I really like AC syndicate as game, but performs worse than Unity did masses out at 1440p on a 980. Unity could be maxed with exception of fxaa as the AA option. That includes using hbao+ and PCSS and results in fairly stable 60fps, but you can’t manage that on syndicate with same results, even if you turn down environment quality a notch too
There’s also massive performance difference between night and day scenes. 60fps at night is a doddle. In day though, performance can half almost.
that’s because PCSS is used more in ACS and is all over the place in the game then it was with unity.
You have anything to back up this claim? As surely PCSS if being used would be used with all shadows. Why would it use it less in Unity?
it’s covered more in ACS. And they even have a Ultra version of both PCSS and HBAO+. You can tell the difference from Unity and ACS. But I am seeing performance issues more and more with outside gameplay even with gameworks off further into the game. As well as the cloth physics being locked at 30 fps… it’s really annoying infact I am uploading a video right now on youtube. And the AA options are very weak even with 4xmsaa you still see jaggies.
Yeah, I’m not even talking about hbao+ultra and PCSS ultra, they’re even more devastating to performance.
My 980ti can’t manage 4k Max settings and maintain 30fps.I can turn off hbao and PCSS altogether and get 45/50fps, most the time, or with PCSS and hbao+ I about 35/45 most the time.
You still get get pixel crawl at 4k which is pretty shocking
yeah the AA effectiveness is not good at all. Even at 4K you need AA… And the cloth physics under havok is capped at 30 fps… lol.
GTX 970 at ultra settings running at ~120FPS. CPU is Amd FX9370. No stutters or graphics problems.
Amd 9370 2x GTX 970 sli ~130FPS sli not working properly. GPU1 98% GPU2 25%