‘Gears Of War: Ultimate Edition’ Hits Windows 10, But With Issues For AMD Graphics Cards
Gears of War: Ultimate Edition landed on Windows 10 PCs Tuesday following Microsoft’s spring showcase last week. Unfortunately, the launch is not a clean one for AMD graphics cards owners, as those with high-end $500 cards are experiencing drastic stuttering and other graphical issues.
Forbes’ Jason Evangelho was able to test Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Windows 10 and discovered the disappointing performance for high-end cards. Tests were performed at 1440p and 4K resolutions using high quality textures and Ambient Occlusion lighting using the AMD Radeon Fury and R9 Nano graphics cards. The results show the game stuttering, and artifacts present throughout benchmarking. The same issues are not present when playing the game in 1080p.
Oddly, the Radeon R9 390x performs better than the more expensive cards, while the even cheaper R7 370 runs at an expected slower framerate. Both of the more mainline AMD graphic cards also have no stuttering or glitches with artifacts.
Nvidia cards did not have any issues during Forbes‘ testing.
It is genuinely odd to see AMD’s high-end graphics perform so badly, while its mainstream cards don’t. If you guessed driver issues as the cause, you are correct.
“We are working closely with AMD to address a few issues that users of some AMD Radeon Hardware are experiencing while playing Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Windows 10 and expect that they will be addressed quickly in an upcoming update,” A Microsoft PR rep told Forbes.
Meanwhile, an official post on the Gears of War forums shared additional details outlining the issues with AMD graphics cards. A fix is on the way, but it is best to turn off Ambient Occlusion for now.
AMD Performance
AMD is an important partner bringing the promise of DirectX 12 to life for gamers everywhere. We are working closely with them to address a few issues encountered in Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Windows 10 on AMD cards using GCN 1.1/GCN 1.2, and expect they will be addressed quickly in an upcoming update. Please visit AMD support pages for the latest on AMD drivers and software.
AMD and Ambient Occlusion setting
There are visual issues with AMD graphics cards and the Ambient Occlusion setting, it is strongly recommended to turn this setting OFF. We are readying a fix to be deployed in the coming days.To turn OFF Ambient Occlusion:
– Launch Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Windows 10
– From the Main Menu, go to Settings
– Select Video and set Ambient Occlusion to OFF
Gears of War: Ultimate Edition first launched for the Xbox One in August 2015 as a HD remaster of the original Xbox 360 title from 2006. The remake took 18 months to produce and included remastering of over 3,000 art assets to 1080p, upgrading the framerate to 60 frames per second, plus new original motion capture work.
The Windows 10 PC version takes things a step further. The game supports 4K textures, along with an uncapped framerate and support for DirectX 12. That is apparently what the last several months between the Xbox One and PC release were spent on. Unfortunately, the issues with the high-end AMD graphics cards were not caught in time for today’s release.
Gears of War: Ultimate Edition includes all of the content and DLC from the original titles, along with five missions that were previously exclusive to the original PC port.
Update: Some users have reported stuttering issues with Nvidia cards as well, but not to the same degree as the AMD issues above. Nvidia just released a new driver specifically for Gears of War and Far Cry Primal.
Have you had any issues with Gears of War: Ultimate Edition? Sound off in the comments below.
[Image via Gears of War]
