Mankind divided requirements. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: system requirements and review before release

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a first-person shooter with elements of stealth action and role-playing game, which is available on platforms such as Windows, Linux, Playstation 4, and Xbox One. This game is a continuation of the Deus Ex series. It was created by Canadian developer Eidos Montreal. Work on the project became known in April 2015.

The game takes place in 2029 – 2 years after the events of the previous part. The main location is Prague. The main character is again Adam Jensen. This time he got a job with Interpol. In this part, augmented citizens are persecuted, and various organizations are trying in every possible way to infringe on their rights. In opposition to this, many underground opposition communities are beginning to be created. Their main goal is to restore rights to augmented people. These groups are considered terrorist. Adam, as an Interpol agent, must establish the involvement of these communities in certain terrorist acts.

The player can visit various shops and establishments. You can get into them through the front door, ventilation, roof, and so on. You have to look for many hiding places. The number of additional quests, although small, is equal to a medium-sized DLC. Almost every mission involves investigations, infiltration and interrogations. This part introduces a new useful feature - in cover, the cursor turns into a pointer: where to go. You need to select a point and Adam will move to a new barricade - this way it’s easier to escape from under fire. A competitive mode has also appeared, in which hackers penetrate the servers of various influential companies. The game does not have multiplayer, there is only a single player campaign.

  • Series: Deus Ex
  • Developers: Eidos Montreal, Nixxes Software BV, Feral Interactive
  • Nominations: The Game Award in the category "Best RPG"
  • Publishers: Square Enix, Feral Interactive
  • Platforms: PS 4, Xbox One, Windows, Linux

System Requirements

minimum:

  • OS: 64-bit versions of Windows 7 SP1 or later
  • CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 or AMD equivalent
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • Video card: AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2GB video memory) or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2GB video memory)
  • HDD space: 45 GB
  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K or AMD FX 8350 Wraith
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • Video card: AMD Radeon RX 480 or NVIDIA GTX 970 - 1920 x 1080 resolution
  • HDD space: 55 GB (including space for DLC)

There are ten days left until the release of the action game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and now Eidos Montreal is trying to attract even more attention to the game than before. The studio recently published a list of system requirements for the PC version of the game, and also announced the start of pre-loading on the Steam digital store.

Although it cannot be said that 16 GB is becoming a new standard for computer games, this amount of RAM is increasingly found in system requirements. This amount of RAM is recommended, for example, for Mirror's Edge Catalyst and some Microsoft games ported from Xbox One, such as Quantum Break and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. RAM of this size will also be needed by those who hope to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided at maximum graphics settings.

The Intel Core i7-3770 and AMD FX-8350 processors specified in the recommended requirements were also recommended for Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Hitman, Tom Clancy’s The Division and Doom. As a rule, in the case of games for which the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 is recommended, the AMD Radeon R9 290 (Tom Clancy's The Division, Doom) or AMD Radeon 290X (Mirror's Edge Catalyst) is indicated as an analogue from AMD, but the recommended requirements for Deus Ex : Mankind Divided has a more powerful video card - AMD Radeon RX 480.

However, the game has lower minimum requirements than Hitman, Doom and Dark Souls 3.

Minimum system requirements:

  • OS: Windows 7.1 SP1 64-bit or later;
  • CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 or AMD equivalent;
  • RAM: 8 GB;
  • video card: AMD Radeon HD 7870 with 2 GB of built-in video memory or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 with 2 GB of built-in video memory;
  • : 45 GB;
  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit;
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K or AMD FX 8350 Wraith;
  • RAM: 16 GB;
  • video card: AMD Radeon RX 480 or NVIDIA GTX 970 (for 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution);
  • free space on your hard drive : 55 GB (note: additional space required for DLC).

The add-ons mentioned in the requirements are included in the subscription, which is already available for purchase for $29.99 (649 rubles on Steam; on consoles - only as part of special editions). The description says that the Season Pass includes story content and virtual items. The developers are keeping the remaining details of these DLCs secret for now. Deus Ex: Human Revolution received only one addition - the story episode The Missing Link.

The game will be available for pre-load on Steam next Friday, August 19th at 10:00 pm BST. Xbox One users can install the game in advance now, but PlayStation 4 owners will have to wait until August 21st. The action game will be released in all countries on August 23.

Last week, a one-minute TV commercial for the game appeared on the series' YouTube channel, made up of fragments of a cinematic trailer and gameplay.

Meanwhile, Square Enix announced that turn-based puzzle game Deus Ex GO, the successor to the successful Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO, will be released next Thursday, August 18th. Like the two named games, it was developed by Square Enix Montréal and will be available on mobile devices running iOS and Android. Unlike them, in Deus Ex GO the playing field will be divided not into squares, but into hexagons. In addition, for the first time, users will be able to create their own levels and share them with other players.

based on Gigabyte solutions

Brief information about the game

  • Release date: August 23, 2016
  • Genre: Action/RPG
  • Publisher: Square Enix/Buka
  • Developer: Eidos Montreal/Nixxes Software

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a first-person shooter with role-playing and stealth elements, which is part of the very popular Deus Ex series. This part is a continuation of the previous game in the series called Human Revolution, which was released back in 2011. The new project was developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix on August 23, 2016 in versions for PC and Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 consoles. In Russia and the CIS, the game was published by Buka and was translated into Russian.

The first rumors about the development of a new part of the series appeared in the spring of 2014, when Square Enix registered the trademark Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and in October of the same year they confirmed that work on a new part was underway, although the announcement of the game itself took place only on April 8, 2015 year. At the end of August last year, the release date of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was officially announced - February 23, 2016, but then it was postponed to August 23 for the usual reasons for us in the style: “we want to finalize the game to perfection.”

In Mankind Divided, the user plays as Adam Jensen, who deals with the events described in Human Revolution that happened two years earlier and 23 years before the events of the first Deus Ex game, when mechanical improvements got out of the control of their carriers. The plot of the game Mankind Divided is closely related to what happened to Adam in Human Revolution, where he had to make a choice on which the life of humanity depended. Two years later, he realized his mistake and wanted to correct it, for which he had to contact Interpol. In the new part of the series, citizens with mechanical enhancements are persecuted and their rights are violated, who want to restore underground communities considered terrorist. The main task is to find a balance between all these factions.

In general, the mechanics of the game repeats its predecessor; in the new Deus Ex series, you can play the game both in stealth mode, quietly disabling enemies, and in “Rambaud” mode, destroying all opponents. As in other games in the series, abilities for hacking various electronic systems, as well as opening locks and doors, also play an important role in Mankind Divided. An important change in the new game was the introduction of automatic energy replenishment, which was not present in Human Revolution. New enhancements were developed for Mankind Divided, such as a titanium shield that temporarily protects Adam from damage, or a Tesla module, an electromagnetic weapon built into the hand that serves to neutralize opponents - a sort of alternative to a stun gun. Another non-lethal weapon has also appeared - the P.E.P.S. stun gun.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided uses a new version of the Eidos Montreal engine called the Dawn Engine, which, in turn, is based on a significantly modified Glacier Engine 2, developed by IO Interactive and known to us from the game Hitman: Absolution. Work on the first generation of the Glacier engine began back in 1994, and since then it has been subject to constant modifications and improvements. The first game based on the first version of Glacier was Hitman: Codename 47 in 2000, the last was Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, which was released in 2010. But starting with the game Hitman: Absolution in 2012, a new generation engine began to be used - Glacier Engine 2. One of its most important innovations was the ability to simultaneously render large groups of characters (more than a thousand) without a noticeable drop in performance.

Eidos Montreal announced the use of the Dawn Engine in Mankind Divided in December 2014, and since then even more new features have been added to make the future game look as modern as possible. Accordingly, the Mankind Divided engine has support for many DirectX 11 features, such as tessellation, includes algorithms for simulating global illumination, volumetric lighting, advanced reflection rendering, high-quality Contact Hardening Shadows rendering method, etc.

Compared to the Human Revolution game engine, which was based on the Crystal Engine from various Tomb Raider games, the new engine is noticeably different for the better. It uses physically based material rendering with advanced lighting calculations, giving Mankind Divided a wider color palette than previous games in the series.

I must say that the graphics in the game at maximum settings are very good in general, and the picture in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided looks very modern thanks to good textures (not without exceptions) and modern effects and algorithms. True, with such settings the game becomes overly demanding and even the most powerful video cards have great difficulty coping with them in WQHD and 4K resolution, but to solve this problem the game has detailed quality settings so that the user can select the graphics settings specifically for their system.

Unlike many modern games, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided supports full-screen anti-aliasing not only using post-processing, but also a higher-quality and more familiar multisampling method - with a number of samples from 2 to 8. However, a post-processing filter for anti-aliasing is also available here advanced settings - Temporal Anti-Aliasing, which has a much smaller impact on performance.

There was no support for the new version of the DirectX 12 graphics API at the time of the game's release, although it was promised when the game was announced under the auspices of the AMD Gaming Evolved program. The introduction of this feature was delayed until later patches released towards mid-September. At first we wanted to wait for a version of the game with official DX12 support, but it still has not left the beta stage, so we simply tested this mode in its current form on Gigabyte video cards in DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 versions of the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

System Requirements

Minimum system requirements:

  • CPU Intel Core i3-2100 or similar from AMD;
  • 8 GB;
  • video card Nvidia GeForce GTX 660(2 GB) or AMD Radeon HD 7870(2 GB);
  • 45 GB;
  • Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and higher;
  • CPU Intel Core i7-3770K or AMD FX-8350;
  • RAM of at least 16 GB;
  • video card Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 480;
  • free storage space 55 GB(including DLC);
  • 64-bit operating system Microsoft Windows 10;

The requirement to use 64-bit versions of Windows operating systems has long become commonplace for modern gaming projects, and this is not at all surprising, since it helps to get away from the inconvenient limitation of 2 GB of RAM used per process. At the moment, any modern version of the Windows operating system is perfect for the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - since the game is currently content with DirectX 11, the use of Windows 10 is not necessary, although it is recommended by the developers just for using the DX12 renderer.

The game's hardware requirements are at a high modern level; even the minimum video card models suitable for the game are the Radeon HD 7870 and GeForce GTX 660, which are not so weak by modern standards. To run the game you will need 8 GB of RAM and an Intel Core i3-2100 or equivalent CPU from AMD - this is the average level for today. The game is probably not too CPU dependent if it is content with this. Although the recommendations already include Core i7-3770K and AMD FX-8350 processors, it is not very clear why such power is needed in a game that should mainly rely on the capabilities of the GPU.

This is what the recommended requirements for video cards say. The developer believes that to play at maximum graphics settings in Full HD resolution, you will need a gaming system with Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 970 video cards, which corresponds to a good level of the most modern and GPU-demanding gaming applications. These recommendations seem adequate, and the specified solutions from AMD and Nvidia are close to each other in performance, although Radeon will have a clear advantage if the DX12 version is used. In general, judging by the minimum and recommended requirements of the game, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided makes fairly average demands on the power of universal and much more serious requirements on the speed of graphics processors.

Test configuration and testing methodology

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is included in the marketing and technical program Gaming Evolved from AMD, and its specialists, together with the game developers, worked on the implementation of several graphics technologies, including: Pure Hair imitation (advanced AMD TressFX technology), blurring soft shadows using the Contact Hardening Shadows algorithm, advanced parallax mapping method Parallax Occlusion Mapping , simulated depth of field (Depth of Field), volumetric lighting, and subsurface scattering for realistic skin rendering.

In our today's study, we used the version of Nvidia drivers released on September 21 - 372.90 WHQL, the latest at the time of testing and intended, among other things, for such a new game project as Forza Horizon 3. By the way, we will soon also test this game on Gigabyte video cards.

Luckily, like previous Deus Ex games, the game in question has built-in performance testing - and this benchmark is actually quite handy. Although it was not made using full-fledged recording and playback of the gameplay, and the scene from time to time may differ in small details (how the characters stand and what they do), this option is suitable for our tests. Fortunately, the difference in the average frame rate due to such inconstancy of the scene in the benchmark does not exceed several percent.

The main feature of the built-in benchmark is that the scene shown in it is quite heavy compared to typical gameplay. The location used in the test in the game itself shows much better performance than in the benchmark, which is quite strange in itself. For example, if you get 40-45 FPS in the test, then there is a good chance of getting a stable 60 frames per second in typical gameplay. So we can consider the result of the built-in test as the worst case, and the average FPS in it can be considered almost the minimum when playing.

After passing the test, information about the minimum, average and maximum frame rates is displayed on the screen. We also ran a traditional test that displays CPU and GPU resource usage statistics using the MSI Afterburner utility. The CPU load during testing averaged about 30%, and rarely exceeded this value. The graphics processor in the test, even at medium settings, was 99-100% loaded with work when running on a system with a mid-level GeForce GTX 960 video card, not to mention ultra-high settings.

To enable the ability to use DirectX 12 in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, you need to open the game properties in Steam, and on the beta versions tab, select DX12-Preview from the drop-down menu - in order for the special DX12 build of the game to be installed. Only after this the option to select a DirectX 12 renderer will appear both in the initial menu and in the in-game menu. For greater accuracy, we ran the test three times, averaged and rounded the value, since in the process of measuring performance, some scattering of results is possible, depending on changes in the test scene (alas, it is slightly different with each run).

This time we paid attention mainly to the average rather than the minimum frame rate, although there is such an option in the benchmark. Since the release, the rendering speed and FPS stability in the test have improved and the average frame rate figure is quite sufficient for evaluation, from which one can draw conclusions about the overall smoothness and comfort of the game. We consider average values ​​of 30-40 FPS as acceptable, although even when a relatively high FPS is achieved, small but unpleasant slowdowns sometimes appear during the game.

The use of video memory by Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is not too aggressive and the requirements for its volume cannot be called strict. When using medium settings in Full HD resolution, 2 GB of video memory is enough, as is the case with simply high ones. With very high settings or in the case of a resolution of 2560×1440, it is better to already have 3 GB (at the same time, the same GeForce GTX 960 4 GB will not run into a lack of memory, and even the 3 GB version of the GTX 1060 will have enough video memory), and only with ultra- In settings at WQHD resolutions and higher, video memory usage can reach 5-6 GB, so for 4K resolution and maximum settings you will need a top-end video card with 8 GB of memory. And for all other conditions, even less is enough - we consider 4 GB to be quite sufficient VRAM for this game.

Impact of settings on performance and quality

Graphic settings in the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided are changed both from the launcher, launched before the game, and directly inside the game from the menu, which can also be called up directly during gameplay. The settings window in the game launcher looks similar to what we've seen in other Square Enix games: Hitman and Tomb Raider, although the quality parameters themselves differ, and there are quite a few of them.

It is very convenient that changing almost all graphic settings in the game takes effect immediately and does not require restarting the application, except for one parameter - Texture Quality, which requires you to exit and start the game again. Therefore, adjusting the rendering quality in this game is quite convenient, and you can do it right during the gameplay, immediately assessing the changes made visually.

In the main image settings menu, you can select the display, change the screen resolution, select the refresh rate, display options (windowed, full-screen or exclusive full-screen mode), configure vertical synchronization, select the level of full-screen anti-aliasing using the multisampling method (see below). The option to select the DirectX 12 graphics API version is not available in the release; it can only be enabled in a special beta version, as described above.

The game also has an additional menu for advanced image quality settings, in which you can find almost two dozen detailed parameters, as well as select a preset settings profile. In our work, we used the Medium (medium settings), High (high settings) and Ultra (ultra settings) profiles without any changes, skipping the Very High profile:

Medium settings



High settings



Ultra settings



As always, it's best to tweak the rendering quality and resulting performance to suit your needs based on your own experience. Moreover, the influence of some parameters on the resulting rendering quality with different settings in the game is not always noticeable, especially in screenshots. In videos, it is somewhat easier to note the different rendering quality corresponding to different levels of graphics settings, but it is also not easy.

The medium quality profile differs from the ultra settings in lower resolution textures, reduced quality of lighting and shading, lower quality effects, etc., but this difference, although noticeable, is not noticeable, you have to look closely. Moreover, full-screen anti-aliasing using the MSAA method is enabled separately in all quality profiles. However, due to the fact that it is too demanding on GPU power, we completely turned off anti-aliasing using the MSAA method at any settings, content with the post-processing filter.

Medium settings

Ultra Settings

Let's look at the basic quality settings available in the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. We conducted a study of these parameters on a test system with a medium-power video card, approximately similar to the GeForce GTX 970, at a resolution of 1920x1080 with an ultra-quality profile and an anisotropic filtering level of 16x. Next, we changed the parameters downwards, determining how much performance this increased - this approach allows us to quickly find the game settings parameters that have the greatest impact on the average frame rate in specific conditions.

Texture Quality Setting Option Texture Quality offers five possible quality levels, from low to ultra, and the maximum of them will require 6 GB or more of video memory. The optimal setting is simply a high value, lowering it to low and medium levels affects the quality of the graphics and is only useful for video cards with less than 2 GB of memory. Well, a very high and ultra value slightly improves the appearance of the textures, but is too demanding on the amount of memory. However, on top video cards you can safely choose the maximum value. Even on our system in Full HD resolution, the difference between Low and Ultra turned out to be only 1 FPS on average.

The ability to customize the quality of texture filtering always distinguishes PC versions of games from console ones. Parameter Texture Filtering allows you to select the degree of anisotropic filtering for textures, up to 16x. On all modern GPUs, this value has a very slight effect on performance (in our case, disabling anisotropic filtering increased FPS by 1 frame per second), so you can safely set it to maximum. And only in the case of very weak video cards can you go down to 8x, so as not to lose the clarity of textures on surfaces in the scene located at an acute angle to the camera.

Settings Shadow Quality allows you to change the quality of shadow rendering, from medium to very high. This mainly relates to the resolution of the shadow maps, which increases as the value of this setting increases, which reduces the number of jaggies at the edges of the shadows. On sufficiently powerful PCs, you can set the settings to high or very high. The minimum possible value gave us only 1 additional FPS.

Settings Contact Hardening Shadows controls the inclusion of the appropriate algorithm for filtering shadow maps. At the same time, realistic rendering of shadows is simulated, when shadows close to the objects casting them look sharp, and distant shadows (for example, from tall trees, wires and poles) have blurry edges, and the greater the distance, the softer they are. In the current version of the game, there are obvious errors in this technique that only worsen the quality of the picture: shadows flicker in motion and are not drawn at a certain distance. So, until a patch fixes the error, it would be better to disable this technique completely. In our testing, for some reason the setting did not affect the rendering speed at all - an obvious flaw of the game creators.

The game has the ability to enable temporary scene smoothing using post-processing Temporal Anti-Aliasing, which eliminates flickering and pixel bleed artifacts when the camera and/or objects move. One of the unpleasant side effects is severe blurring of the picture, which not everyone will like on a PC. But there’s really nowhere to go; enabling MSAA causes too much of a performance drop, so TAA remains the most popular anti-aliasing method on PCs as well. Disabling it on the test system did not affect performance in any way, so choose according to your taste and color.

Enabling motion lubrication Motion Blur It just adds softness to the picture. The game engine supports rendering the motion blur effect both separately for objects and as a whole for the finished image. The effect is useful for adding cinematic realism to a moving image, and does not affect performance too much (about 1 additional FPS), but not all users like it, so you need to decide whether to enable this feature yourself, based on your own impressions.

In order to increase the clarity of the image rendered by the game after the motion blur and TAA filters, the game engine can increase the clarity with a post filter Sharpening. However, it seems to us that the specific filter in the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is configured far from optimally and highlights the edges of objects too much, raising the contrast. So many players will appreciate the ability to turn off the effect, but it would be even better to be able to adjust the amount of sharpening, as is done in some games. This parameter does not affect the final rendering speed in any way.

But you need to take into account that since the game is multi-platform, it was configured primarily to use Temporal Anti-Aliasing together with a post-sharpening filter, which removes excessive blurriness of the picture, doing this unnecessarily aggressively, in our opinion. On a PC, if you have a very powerful GPU, you can use MSAA, completely disabling the anti-aliasing and sharpening post-filters, while getting a clearer image without any artifacts.

Settings option Depth of Field is responsible for enabling and selecting the quality of the post-processing effect that simulates the depth of field of the optics. You can either disable the effect altogether or select one of the following values: on, very high and ultra. Even just turning it on gives a good DOF effect with bokeh, but higher values ​​only improve the rendering quality. Most often in the game the effect is used in cutscenes and dialogues, but it is also present in the benchmark, and disabling it gives the greatest increase in speed - from 29 to 32 FPS on average.

Parameter Volumetric Lighting controls the degree of rendering of such an effect as volumetric lighting, when the light emanating from sources is clearly visible - like in fog. In the game, the effect is not used for volumetric lighting from the sun, but is available for other sources. It adds quite a bit to the atmosphere of the game, so we wouldn't recommend turning it off if you're running low on performance. True, it is in the benchmark that its influence is quite large, because the speed with a medium-power video card when the effect was turned off increased by as much as 10%. So, if there is a lack of smoothness, you can try to reduce the level of detail in the volumetric lighting by at least setting it to On.

A parameter already familiar to us from modern games Ambient Occlusion gives you a choice of the quality of indirect lighting rendering, it can be either turned off or set to a very high value, which increases the accuracy of calculations, although it may seem to some users to be a method that darkens the surfaces in the game too much. On our test system, disabling AO gave one extra frame per second, and if there is a lack of performance, you can get by with just a high value.

Another interesting option to talk about is the ability to turn tessellation on and off - Tessellation- dividing objects into a larger number of geometric primitives to increase their detail. In this particular game, tessellation is used very little and does not lead to a visible effect of increasing the quality of geometric objects, although it is used for character models. However, turning on the setting has virtually no effect on the rendering speed, so feel free to leave it enabled - it won’t hurt.

Mankind Divided uses an advanced method Parallax Occlusion Mapping, when different surfaces have height maps depicting real geometry like stones, bricks, etc., simulating volume, but this is drawn on a flat surface. In the game, the method is often used, for example, on the pavement in Prague or on the brick walls of the protagonist’s apartment. The quality setting allows you to either disable POM or select one of two quality levels: enabled or high setting. In the benchmark there is not much effect and the setting has almost no effect on the test result.

Settings Screen-Space Reflections controls the inclusion and rendering quality of realistic reflections on various surfaces, such as puddles and metal sheets. As in many modern games, this effect is used very often in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and adds entertainment. If rendering speed is insufficient, you can disable realistic reflections, and on top GPUs select the highest possible Ultra value to increase the resolution for reflection maps. On our system, disabling realistic reflections gave an additional 1 FPS.

Selecting the level of detail Level of Detail makes it possible to adjust the geometric complexity of the scene. This setting determines how detailed the models and scene are when rendered at different distances. Apparently, only the highest possible setting provides a visible improvement in scene detail and character models, so we advise making a choice at this level, albeit at the cost of losing one frame per second on average.

Graphic settings such as Bloom, Cloth Physics, Subsurface Scattering and Chromatic Aberration They only allow you to turn on and off the corresponding effects and techniques: a post-filter for increasing the brightness of light sources, physically correct simulation of tissue behavior, subsurface scattering when rendering human skin, and a post-filter for the optical artifact of chromatic aberration (also popular recently, but not liked by many players). All these effects have a very slight effect on speed, so set them to your liking.

Changing most of the game's settings to the lowest possible values ​​caused framerate increases of 1 FPS on average at best, and to get a noticeable increase from them requires changing several parameters at once. Although the Advanced menu for graphical settings in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is very rich and the game seems to be well configured, only a small part of them significantly affects the final performance - this is clearly visible in the diagram.

Many of the settings have almost no effect on the speed and on the image (for example, tessellation - there is probably very little of it in the game), especially if you compare high-very high values ​​​​with ultra-high quality, and some parameters simply do not work correctly, judging by the figures obtained - at least in the built-in performance test. Not to mention other bugs - like the fact that the highest shadow quality setting leads to artifacts on them when they are drawn incorrectly from a distance.

Therefore, some general advice after examining the graphic settings in the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided would be this - to achieve the required gaming performance, if you have a fairly modern video card, set the profile to High and run the built-in benchmark to understand how quickly and smoothly the frames are rendered. If the smoothness of their changes is not enough (below 30 FPS on average), then first of all reduce the Depth of Field and Volumetric Lighting settings. Well, if changing these parameters is not enough to achieve comfort, then it is likely that you will have to resort to drastic measures in the form of reducing the resolution.

Performance testing

We tested the performance of four Gigabyte video cards based on Nvidia GPUs and belonging to different price ranges and the last two generations. When testing, we used the two most common screen resolutions (1920x1080 and 2560x1440), as well as three preset settings profiles - Medium, High and Ultra.

We do not consider settings below the average level, since even the weakest video card in our comparison, GeForce GTX 960, should cope with average settings in Full HD resolution. Traditionally, for our site, we always check the maximum rendering quality mode (with the exception of anti-aliasing using the MSAA method, which is very demanding in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided), as the most popular settings option among gaming enthusiasts. Let's first consider the most popular Full HD resolution with a profile of medium quality settings.

Resolution 1920x1080 (Full HD)

Just from the system requirements, it is clear that the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided places quite stringent demands on the power of GPUs, which is confirmed by the not very high speed of the youngest of the current generation models under consideration in the form of the GeForce GTX 960 under medium graphics settings and the most common resolution. Although this video card was able to provide an acceptable rendering speed of 36-38 FPS on average, depending on the version of the graphics API, it had almost no margin.

Three more powerful video cards at medium settings in Full HD were able to show perfectly smooth 60 FPS and higher, and there can be no questions here - all of them (GTX 970, GTX 1060 and GTX 1070) allow you to play in such conditions with maximum comfort. Things are somewhat more complicated when comparing two versions of Microsoft's graphics API. In fact, there is simply no gain from switching from DirectX 11 to DirectX 12 on Nvidia video cards. Even in mode with low GPU load, the new API did not improve overall performance.

Either Nvidia already has a well-optimized DX11 driver that the new API doesn’t give them anything, or the game developers simply didn’t bother debugging the new renderer on GeForce video cards. The second option is supported by the fact that on the most powerful GeForce GTX 1070, when moving from DX11 to DX12, there is a significant drop in rendering speed, which is difficult to explain. Otherwise, it can be noted that video cards based on chips from the Maxwell family lose a little more when switching to DX12 than Pascal (in the form of the GTX 1060).

At high quality settings, the frame rate for all solutions decreased slightly. The youngest model of the video cards under consideration, the GeForce GTX 960, was still able to provide the acceptable performance we set at at least 30 FPS on average, showing 31-33 frames per second in different modes. This can be considered the minimum acceptable rendering speed in such a demanding gaming benchmark.

More powerful video cards from Gigabyte showed good performance, even with some margin. The same GeForce GTX 970 provides a frame rate of about 50 FPS, the GTX 1060 is close to the maximum comfortable level of 60 FPS in DX11 and DX12 modes, and the GTX 1070 completely exceeds this level in both versions of the renderer. At this speed, playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will be very comfortable.

Alas, using the new version of the graphics API on a system with a GeForce GTX 1070 again leads to a serious drop in FPS, which rather indicates that in this case the game is clearly not working as it should. On other video cards, provided that a newer version of DirectX is used, the speed drop is also observed, but it is very small. Let's see what changes when setting the maximum Ultra quality profile:

When set to ultra settings, the GeForce GTX 960 was able to provide only 22-23 FPS on average, which is clearly below our comfort limit of 30 FPS. So the younger model of the video card, based on the previous generation Maxwell GPU, was unable to cope with the conditions of maximum quality settings in the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and the inclusion of the DirectX 12 renderer again slightly reduced the rendering speed.

More powerful GPUs were much better able to cope with difficult conditions. All three older solutions provide playable frame rates on average, quite sufficient for comfortable gaming. But even the older model of the GTX 1070 video card failed to get 60 frames per second in the benchmark; it fell just short of this bar.

It is especially interesting that if earlier the use of DX12 did not give anything to Nvidia GPUs, then this time DirectX 12 has found some use - the new graphics API in this game on GeForce video cards gives a small increase, mainly when the rendering speed is limited by the GPU's capabilities. But this applies exclusively to new models on Pascal chips (GTX 1060 and GTX 1070), while the old Maxwells, although slightly, still suffer from the use of the DirectX 12 renderer.

Resolution 2560x1440 (WQHD)

When setting a higher rendering resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, the performance of all Gigabyte solutions in the game became significantly lower. The younger GeForce GTX 960 model, in WQHD resolution, was unable to cope with the task of ensuring comfort when playing even at medium settings, because 23-25 ​​FPS on average is clearly not enough for normal gaming for most users, even not very demanding ones.

The speed of older video cards from Gigabyte allows us to say that they provide comfort in the game in question in such conditions. Even the “old” GeForce GTX 970 was able to show an average frame rate of 37-40 FPS, slightly falling short of the 42 FPS of the GTX 1060. Well, the older model GTX 1070 even showed a speed close to the smoothest 60 frames per second. In general, the older three provide comfort when playing in this mode, and the frame rate does not drop below 40 FPS. But there is still no sense in enabling DX12 on GeForce.

When playing with high quality settings in WQHD resolution, the younger model of the GeForce GTX 960 video card still lacks GPU performance. The frame rate level has already dropped to 20-21 FPS, and simply lowering the settings will not help here - you will have to be content with either a lower resolution or upgrade the video subsystem, changing it, for example, to a GeForce GTX 1060.

The GeForce GTX 970's GPU capabilities are still enough to keep frame rates at an acceptable level, and it almost took out the newer GTX 1060. Together they show 34-36 FPS on average, which is enough for a smooth and comfortable game, but at the limit. The older GTX 1070 is moving further away from them, showing 50 frames per second on average. There is almost no difference between DirectX 11 and 12 in GPU-difficult modes, but both Maxwell-based boards lose speed, and a couple of video cards on Pascal chips are, although slightly, faster in DX12 mode.

When setting the maximum quality settings profile in WQHD resolution, only the older model of the GeForce GTX 1070 video card copes with the task of ensuring comfort in the game. It shows a very impressive 37-38 frames per second on average in such conditions, and this is enough to achieve good smoothness when game. Alas, even the GTX 1060 showed frame rates below 30 FPS, limiting itself to 26-27 frames per second. This will not be enough for demanding players who will need to lower some of the settings.

There is no need to talk about the results of the GeForce GTX 960 in this mode, because even powerful video cards could not cope with such conditions. Still, the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is very demanding on the power of GPUs, and the ability to use the new DirectX 12 graphics API only helps the new GeForce GTX 1000 series video cards, and even then not too much. Users with WQHD monitors and outdated video cards can start thinking about upgrading the video system of their gaming PCs.

Well, we can only note the abnormally low result of the GeForce GTX 970 in DX12 mode, compared to DX11. There is no mistake here, we double-checked. Indeed, the GTX 970 loses more than other models in such conditions, and it seems that this is due to the higher consumption of video memory by the game in DX12 mode and at Ultra settings. Probably, the GTX 970 is missing just those 0.5 GB of memory out of the available 4 GB, which operate at a reduced speed (we discussed this feature in our materials) relative to the main 3.5 GB. We cannot explain this strange behavior with anything else.

Conclusion

Today we were once again convinced that the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided turned out to be, although not too demanding on the power of central processors, but it does place severe demands on the performance of graphics processors. For this game in Full HD resolution, we can recommend all tested Gigabyte video cards, starting from the GeForce GTX 960, but it would still be better to choose a new generation solution from a pair of GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1070. And the latter of them is perfect for WQHD resolution .

Although all Gigabyte solutions showed sufficient performance for smooth gaming in the lightest conditions with medium quality settings in Full HD, to get smooth frame changes in this resolution at maximum settings, you will need to use a video card of at least GeForce GTX 970, but to achieve at least 60 FPS in the most difficult conditions is impossible even for the GTX 1070, although it came closest to this level. The junior video card in comparison, the GeForce GTX 960, provided an acceptable frame rate in the game at medium and high settings in Full HD resolution, but failed at all in WQHD.

For owners of weak GPUs of previous generations and WQHD monitors, it's time to think about upgrading your video card - the GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 from the G1 Gaming series are perfect for this. These models provide 55 FPS or more at high settings in Full HD resolution, and the older model showed perfectly smooth frame rates at ultra settings in Full HD and more than 30 FPS in the most difficult conditions of our testing. Considering the increased load on the GPU in the game's built-in benchmark, these solutions will provide you with smooth 40-60 FPS and above during typical gameplay.

As our tests have shown, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will be sufficient with a mid-range quad-core processor, since it does not place high demands on the CPU. During testing, the test processor was loaded with work most often at the level of 25-30%, and only sometimes at 35%. The requirements for the amount of RAM and video memory for modern games are average - 8 GB of system memory is enough for the game, but it would be better to have a reserve of 12-16 GB, and the requirements for the amount of video memory are not too strict by today's standards - for medium settings in Full HD it will be enough a couple of gigabytes of video memory, for higher picture quality at maximum settings you will need 4 GB, and only for ultra-quality in high resolutions the game can use more than 4 GB.

As for the version of the renderer that uses DirectX 12 and is still in beta testing, it does not work very well on video cards with Nvidia GPUs. Not only is this version really unstable, and the game can crash out of the blue, which clearly requires improvement, but it also does not provide a significant increase on GeForce under any conditions. With the focus on the speed of the CPU on the most powerful GeForce GTX 1070, we observed a significant drop in rendering speed, and even at high resolutions and maximum graphics settings, when the frame rate is limited by GPU power, the increase from switching from DX11 to DX12 turned out to be extremely small and was noted us only on video cards based on Pascal architecture GPUs.

Most likely, the developers of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, as well as other game programmers, have not yet applied new development techniques specifically for DirectX 12, with new resource management capabilities, more efficient use of video memory and computing power of graphics processors, and other features that may give a significant increase, including on Nvidia video cards. So far, we see a very small positive effect from enabling DirectX 12 on Pascal GPUs, and on Maxwell this effect is most often completely negative. As a result, taking into account the identity of the final image when using DX11 and DX12 in this game, we cannot recommend enabling the second mode on systems with GeForce video cards.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a new game from developers from the Eidos Montreal studio. The next part of the popular shooter with a mixture of role-playing and stealth will soon appear on all shelves around the world on disk and in digital form. In this article you will learn everything about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: system requirements, expectations and a description of the plot of the new product.

Game plot

The great series is a representative of the noir genre with cyberpunk elements. It is precisely because of the style that the project is loved by many players around the world. Before we look at the system requirements for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, let's take a look at the history. According to the plot, the new product is a direct continuation of Deus Ex: Human Revolution from the same developers. Approximately two years have passed since the events of the last game. In the new game you have to correct and eliminate all the consequences of the choices from the previous game.

But Adam Jensen can’t do anything without outside help, so he is looking for an influential patron who can help him implement all his plans. The hero had to work for Interpol. As the game progresses, you will have to make many decisions, choose between two opposing camps and defend your position, because Adam is an outcast in the new world.

Mechanics

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (system requirements described below) is a completely redesigned game. Many players complained that the previous part provided too little freedom. Your choices had virtually no effect on anything, and the variability of the shooter experience suffered from this. In the new part, according to the developers, the player will have to make decisive choices much more often than in the final mission of the first part of the series.

The mechanics of the new part have also undergone significant changes. New features expand freedom of action and flight of fancy for stealth playthroughs of the game. But no one is stopping you from picking up a machine gun instead of a shock pistol and shooting all the enemies. The combat system has been heavily redesigned and new animations have been added to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The system requirements, despite the new game engine, are surprisingly quite affordable. The release of the new product is planned very soon. The release date is set for the end of August this year. Journalists and critics reacted warmly to its predecessor, so Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is not in danger of failure. The project is released on three different platforms at once: PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: system requirements (PC)

To run the game at minimum graphics quality settings, you will need approximately the following processor with four cores and 2 GHz from Intel or AMD, 3 GB of RAM, a video card with support for 3 shaders and 512 MB of memory, 40 GB of free space on hard drive to install the game. It is with this kind of hardware that the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will have to work stably. System requirements may be slightly changed by developers before the game is released, so it is not recommended to completely rely on the specified parameters. For comfortable gameplay with good graphics and stable FPS on the screen, you will need a configuration at least twice as powerful as that specified in this article.

On August 11, the system requirements of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided became known, and very soon, on August 23, the continuation of Adam Jensen’s adventures in the cruel world of the cyber-renaissance will reach release.

And we again help you cheaply and cheerfully choose the right gaming hardware for your next potential masterpiece.

Note . All prices listed below are the minimum prices available in various stores and are current as of mid-August 2016.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided minimum system requirements

operating system: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit.
CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 @ 3.1 GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 B50 @ 3.2 GHz.
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2 GB or AMD Radeon HD 7870 2 GB.
RAM: 8 GB.

We remind you that even if the requirements above indicate video cards and processors from five years ago (and this time it is the case), this does not mean that the game will “fly” for you. Typically, owners of configurations close to the minimum system requirements can afford a stable 60 frames just at the minimum graphics settings. Or you'll have to lower the resolution.

Processor for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

As already mentioned, the minimum requirements for the new part of Deus Ex indicate fairly old hardware. This means you won’t find this in stores anymore. However, after a good rummage on the Internet and studying performance ratings, we managed to select two extremely inexpensive processors from Intel and AMD. This time we took the BOX version, since the difference in price compared to OEM (without the included cooler) is only a few hundred rubles:

Intel Core i3-6100 BOX @ 3.7 GHz for 8900 rubles (left) and AMD FX-4300 BOX @ 3.8 GHz for 4800 rubles (right)

Judging by the synthetic tests, the first (dual-core) version is about 30 percent more powerful than required, and the second (quad-core) is by 60 percent more powerful. However, do not forget that AMD products, as a rule, perform well only in synthetics, but in reality, in games, dual-core or quad-core Intel often outperforms its quad-core or eight-core counterparts, respectively, from a competing company. There are, however, cheaper models in stores, but all of them no longer reach the minimum requirements of the game.

Video card for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Video cards like the GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon HD 7870 have also been discontinued for a long time. I had to find modern equivalents:

ASUS GeForce GTX 950 2 GB for 11,300 rubles (left) and ASUS Radeon R7 370 2 GB for 11,800 rubles (right)

Both GeForce and Radeon performance is very close to those models specified in the minimum requirements for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Moreover, a graphics card based on a chip from NVIDIA turned out to be even a little cheaper! This, by the way, is very rare. Therefore, we advise you to take this opportunity and choose a more reliable product.

RAM for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

At the moment, DDR4 and DDR3 RAM are sold at almost the same price. Therefore, we first wanted to take memory from more modern technology. But it turned out that there are still no motherboards supporting DDR4 and AMD processors at the same time. Therefore we chose:

Kingston HyperX Fury DDR3 1600 for 3100 rubles

These are two 4 GB sticks with good frequencies and timings from the long-established American manufacturer Kingston Technology.

Motherboard for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

If previously we always chose motherboards manufactured by Gigabyte Technology (GIGABYTE), now we have decided to abandon them. Recently, the products of this Chinese company have been receiving unflattering reviews. And this also applies to video cards. After studying the budget segment of the motherboard market, we took a closer look at solutions from Micro-Star International (MSI) and ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (ASUS). In the end, we settled on the last option:

ASUS B150-PLUS D3 (for Intel) for 5800 rubles (left) and ASUS M5A97 PLUS (for AMD) for 4500 rubles (right)

These are excellent models for their class in the full-size ATX form factor. We remind you that any stripped-down versions of boards like Mini-ATX or Micro-ATX are highly not recommended for installation even in a budget gaming PC. You may save another thousand, but you will also greatly reduce your options for further upgrades.

Hard drive for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Our favorite Western Digital hard drive is still on sale. One terabyte of free space in August 2016 is still more than enough, so feel free to take this model:

Western Digital WD10EZEX 1 TB for 3900 rubles

You can, of course, look for smaller hard drives to save money, but you will only save a few hundred rubles, but you may already run out of space.

Case and power supply for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

This time we are also changing the case manufacturer:

Exegate CP-313 (500 W) for 2600 rubles

This model looks quite decent and without frills. An ordinary strong steel box in strict black color with a nice front panel, a ventilation grill on the side wall and a complete 500 W power supply. More than enough for an inexpensive computer.

Final cost of a budget PC for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

    Intel Core i3 6100 BOX + ASUS GeForce GTX 950 2 GB + Kingston HyperX Fury 2×4 GB 1600 MHz + ASUS B150-PLUS D3 + Western Digital WD10EZEX 1 TB + Exegate CP-313 (500 W) = 35,600 rubles

    AMD FX-4300 + ASUS Radeon R7 370 2 GB + Kingston HyperX Fury 2x4 GB 1600 MHz + ASUS M5A97 PLUS + Western Digital WD10EZEX 1 TB + Exegate CP-313 (500 W) = 30,700 rubles

Well, the difference is about 100 dollars at today's exchange rate - 6,300 rubles. If this is a lot of money for you, then you can try to save money by choosing the first option. But such configurations usually have fewer guarantees of uninterrupted operation.

Let us remind you that we previously also assembled an inexpensive PC for games such as Doom and Mirror’s: Edge Catlyst.

* * *

Again, thank you very much for reading our blog. If the cost of the described computers seemed too high to you or you have not yet saved up enough money, then we invite you to use a powerful virtual gaming PC. All you need for this is a reliable Internet connection and from 590 rubles per month. Our cloud gaming service has a very good library of the most popular blockbusters that can be played on absolutely any PC or laptop.

Enjoy the rest of your summer! All the best to you!

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