English

Guardians of the Galaxy in the test: one of the most beautiful PC games with ray tracing

Oct 26, 2021

835

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is currently not running in the cinema, but as a game the popular hero troop is making the universe unsafe again. ComputerBase is testing the PC version. The focus was on benchmarks of numerous graphics cards and also ray tracing, which is used very consistently in the superhero adventure.

Table of contents

1 One of the most beautiful PC games with ray tracing
1. The graphics set standards, but have weaknesses
2. Two graphics menus, one of them in the launcher
3. 10 GB VRAM are enough for UHD with full details and RT
2 Ray tracing and Nvidia DLSS in detail
1. Ray tracing looks really good with the Guardians
2. The three quality levels “high”, “very high” and “ultra”
3. The performance of ray tracing
4. The conclusion on ray tracing
5. The image quality of Nvidia DLSS
6. The performance of Nvidia DLSS
3 benchmarks with and without RT in Full HD, WQHD & amp; UHD and frame times
1. The test system and the benchmark scene
2. Benchmarks in Full HD, WQHD and Ultra HD
3. Benchmarks in Full HD, WQHD and Ultra HD with ray tracing
4. Good, but different frame rates
4 Game review and conclusion
1. This is how good the game is
2. Conclusion

In the cinema, Marvel & apos; s Guardians of the Galaxy is currently taking a break, on the PC, however, the sympathetic hero troop continues to fight for the freedom of the universe. Square Enix has big plans for the game of the same name, especially when you consider that Marvel's Avengers has been received critically. Unlike the colorfully mixed superhero troupe, Guardians of the Galaxy does not take on multiplayer, because this time the focus is on a single player experience including a story.

The graphic sets standards, but has weaknesses

Both games have the same publisher. It is all the more surprising, however, that they come up with a different technique. While Avengers uses the Foundation engine already used in the Tomb Raider parts, Guardians of the Galaxy is based on the Dawn engine. The background is the different studios: Marvel & apos; s Avengers was developed by Crystal Dynamics and thus the studio of the Tomb Raider trilogy (test), Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other hand, by Eidos Montreal, which most recently dealt with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (test) that used the Dawn engine. Both companies have therefore relied on a technology that they are familiar with.

Eidos Montreal has further developed the engine compared to the last use, which you can see from the title. Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG), which only knows DirectX 12, has in places become a really nice game that scores with varied and colorful worlds, detailed surfaces and chic animations. In connection with ray tracing and high resolutions (at least WQHD, rather higher) there is currently hardly a title that can keep up with this look. Without the rays or only in Full HD, GotG loses a lot of its graphic splendor.

The anti-aliasing is weak

Even if the overall impression is very good, Guardians of the Galaxy has to contend with some weaknesses. The anti-aliasing, for example, is not exactly the strongest. Despite the temporal component of the TAA, some objects continue to flicker cheerfully even in high resolutions. In addition, despite the detailed textures, the game never looks razor-sharp. It doesn't help that textures pop into the image every now and then when the camera quickly changes direction. With the many cut scenes this is very annoying at times. And last but not least, the LOD works very aggressively, transitions between different levels of detail are easily visible. In the end, none of that can ruin the very good overall impression.

The full “RTX On” program is available on the PC

Guardians of the Galaxy is advertised on the consoles as well as on the PC with ray tracing, whereby the radiation technology is used exclusively for the reflections. Directly at the start there is ray tracing only on the PC, the consoles should follow later with a patch.

Because the PC version was developed together with Nvidia, DLSS, which is only available on GeForce RTX, made it into the game, which is supposed to provide a better gaming experience – i.e. more FPS – especially in connection with ray tracing. ComputerBase will deal with both techniques in detail on the next few pages.

Two graphic menus, one of them in the launcher

Guardians of the Galaxy uses an upstream launcher on the PC that appears before the actual game is started. A few graphics options can already be set there, but the full scope is only available in the game itself. This is annoying in that the launcher has less scope, but offers more details for some options – that doesn't make any sense.

The presets do not contain ray tracing

With “Low”, “Medium”, “High”, “Very High” and “Ultra”, Guardians of the Galaxy offers five different presets, whereby “Ultra” bundles the maximum graphic details apart from ray tracing. Ray tracing is not included in the presets. In-game upscaling allows the rendering resolution to be reduced to up to 50 percent. It can be set in 1 percent steps in the launcher, but only in 5 percent steps in the graphics menu.

In addition, is it is possible to sharpen the graphics with AMD's FidelityFX CAS. In this case, too, the degree of sharpness can be configured much more precisely in the launcher than in the menu (a value of 20 percent is recommended).

In addition to ray tracing with two different options, DLSS including its own sharpness filter is available and there is also a dynamic resolution that offers 30 FPS, 60 FPS, 90 FPS and 120 FPS as the target frame rate. The function doesn't do anything at the moment, there is obviously still an error.

144 FPS are the limit without VSync

< p class = "p text-width">There is also an FPS limiter that can be configured between 30 and 144 FPS in 1-FPS steps. However, there is no way to turn it off directly, which simply shouldn't be anymore these days.

If VSync is activated, the limiter remains off in this game. If you have a monitor with a refresh rate higher than 144 Hz, you can implement more than 144 FPS in this way. However, it cannot be ruled out that errors of some kind will then occur.

In addition, the PC version offers its own benchmark that shows various fly-by sequences. It is not realistic. Sample screenshots for the individual graphic options are included.

10 GB VRAM are enough for UHD with full details and RT

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is holding back when it comes to memory consumption. From a 10 GB graphics card there are no problems, even in Ultra HD with the highest settings including maximum ray tracing settings, the VRAM is large enough. Although graphics cards with more memory address significantly more memory in places, this does not seem to be necessary – at least the editors did not notice any disadvantages. Even with only 8 GB, the most detailed textures work well; the test did not show any problems in everyday settings.

On the next page: Raytracing and Nvidia DLSS in detail