GPU Tests: Civilization 6 (1080p, 4K)

First up in our CPU gaming tests is Civilization 6. Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fifth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.

Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.

Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.

At both 1920x1080 and 4K resolutions, we run the same settings. Civilization 6 has sliders for MSAA, Performance Impact and Memory Impact. The latter two refer to detail and texture size respectively, and are rated between 0 (lowest) to 5 (extreme). We run our Civ6 benchmark in position four for performance (ultra) and 0 on memory, with MSAA set to 2x.

For reviews where we include 8K and 16K benchmarks (Civ6 allows us to benchmark extreme resolutions on any monitor) on our GTX 1080, we run the 8K tests similar to the 4K tests, but the 16K tests are set to the lowest option for Performance.

MSI GTX 1080 at 1920x1080

(1080p) GTX 1080: Civilization 6, Average Frame Rate(1080p) GTX 1080: Civilization 6, 99th Percentile(1080p) GTX 1080: Civilization 6, Time Under 60 FPS

MSI GTX 1080 at 4K

(4K) GTX 1080: Civilization 6, Average Frame Rate(4K) GTX 1080: Civilization 6, 99th Percentile>(4K) GTX 1080: Civilization 6, Time Under 60 FPS

ASUS GTX 1060 at 1920x1080

(1080p) GTX 1060: Civilization 6, Average Frame Rate(1080p) GTX 1060: Civilization 6, 99th Percentile(1080p) GTX 1060: Civilization 6, Time Under 60 FPS

ASUS GTX 1060 at 4K

(4K) GTX 1060: Civilization 6, Average Frame Rate(4K) GTX 1060: Civilization 6, 99th Percentile(4K) GTX 1060: Civilization 6, Time Under 60 FPS

Sapphire R9 Fury at 1920x1080

(1080p) R9 Fury: Civilization 6, Average Frame Rate(1080p) R9 Fury: Civilization 6, 99th Percentile(1080p) R9 Fury: Civilization 6, Time Under 60 FPS

Sapphire R9 Fury at 4K

(4K) R9 Fury: Civilization 6, Average Frame Rate(4K) R9 Fury: Civilization 6, 99th Percentile(4K) R9 Fury: Civilization 6, Time Under 30 FPS

Sapphire RX 480 at 1920x1080

(1080p) RX 480: Civilization 6, Average Frame Rate(1080p) RX 480: Civilization 6, 99th Percentile(1080p) RX 480: Civilization 6, Time Under 60 FPS

Sapphire RX 480 at 4K

(4K) RX 480: Civilization 6, Average Frame Rate(4K) RX 480: Civilization 6, 99th Percentile(4K) RX 480: Civilization 6, Time Under 30 FPS

Benchmarking Performance: CPU Legacy Tests GPU Tests: Shadow of Mordor DX11 (1080p, 4K)
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  • hojnikb - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    Any word on R5 1400 review ? Would be interesting to see how 1/2 of L3 cache hits performance.
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    We've been promised a sample to arrive soon. I'm off some of next week, so after then :)
  • Omega215D - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    Just steal it from LinusTechTips... You know he has that stuff just lyin' around after fumbling with it =)
  • msroadkill612 - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link

    No, but we have evidence of the effect of double l3 on ryzen cores - if that helps.

    current 4 core ryzens have double the l3 per core as 8 core ryzens do.
  • Infy2 - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    Shame 7700K is not among the results so we can't compare Ryzen 4C/8T to the best of Intel's 4C/8T.
  • ddriver - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    Slightly better in games, marginally behind in intensive computations.
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    For CPU tests, it's in our Benchmark database: www.anandtech.com/bench

    I still need to run our gaming tests on a whole raft of CPUs, something to do the rest of this month!
  • 0ldman79 - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    Any chance the formatting could be corrected to the FX line can be directly compared to the Ryzen line?

    Some of the benchmarks overlap but the formatting is different. A direct comparison isn't possible now in a single window. We have to open two windows to compare.
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link

    All the old data was on Windows 7, the new data is Windows 10. I've made it so in the same window the scores are comparable on the same OS.
  • milli - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    Something really weird is going on with the Rise of the Tomb Raider and Ryzen. There's a huge drop in performance in DX12 for Ryzen+nVidia.
    I mean, how on earth can the A10-7890K be faster than the 1500X? That game or nVidia's drivers need updating.

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