Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Vulkan)

id Software is popularly known for a few games involving shooting stuff until it dies, just with different 'stuff' for each one: Nazis, demons, or other players while scorning the laws of physics. Wolfenstein II is the latest of the first, the sequel of a modern reboot series developed by MachineGames and built on id Tech 6. While the tone is significantly less pulpy nowadays, the game is still a frenetic FPS at heart, succeeding DOOM as a modern Vulkan flagship title and arriving as a pure Vullkan implementation rather than the originally OpenGL DOOM.

Featuring a Nazi-occupied America of 1961, Wolfenstein II is lushly designed yet not oppressively intensive on the hardware, something that goes well with its pace of action that emerge suddenly from a level design flush with alternate historical details.

The game has 5 total graphical presets: Mein leben!, Uber, Ultra, Medium, and Low. Staying consistent with previous 1080p testing, the highest quality preset, "Mein leben!", was used, in addition to Ultra and Medium.  Wolfenstein II also features Vega-centric GPU Culling and Rapid Packed Math, as well as Radeon-centric Deferred Rendering; in accordance with the presets, neither GPU Culling nor Deferred Rendering was enabled.

To preface, an odd performance bug afflicted the two Maxwell cards (GTX 960 and GTX 950), where Medium Image Streaming (poolsize of 768) resulted in out-of-memory sub 2-fps performance. Using the Medium preset but with any other Image Streaming setting returned to normal performance, suggesting an issue with memory allocation, and occuring on earlier drivers as well. It's not clear how much this affects sub 2-fps performance at the "Mein leben!" preset, which is already much too demanding for 2GB of framebuffer.

Wolfenstein II - 1920x1080 -

Wolfenstein II - 1920x1080 - Ultra Quality

Wolfenstein II - 1920x1080 - Medium Quality

Wolfenstein II - 99th Percentile - 1920x1080 -

Wolfenstein II - 99th Percentile - 1920x1080 - Ultra Quality

Wolfenstein II - 1920x1080 - Medium Quality

With the VRAM-hungry nature of Wolfenstein II, the GTX 1650's 4GB keeps it from suffering a premature death like all the other 2GB cards. Or even the 3GB card, in the case of the GTX 1060 3GB. Even at medium settings, the bigger framebuffer turns the tables on the GTX 1060 3GB, which is faster in every other game in the suite. So the GTX 1650 takes the lead in both performance and smoother gameplay experience.

The VRAM-centric approach does uncover more oddities; here the GTX 1650 overcomes the RX 570 4GB at higher settings, but the RX 570 8GB remains undeterred.

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  • Yojimbo - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link

    That's true, and I noted that in my original post. But the important thing is that the price/performance comparison should consider the total cost of ownership of the card. Ultimately, the value of any particular increment in performance is a matter of personal preference, though it is possible for someone to make a poor choice because he doesn't understand the situation well.
  • dmammar - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link

    This power consumption electricity savings debate has gone on too long. The math is not hard - the annual electricity cost is equal to (Watts / 1,000) x (hours used per day) x (365 days / year) x (cost per kWh)

    In my area, electricity costs $0.115/kWh so a rather excessive (for me) 3 hours of gaming every day of the year means that an extra 100W power consumption equals only $12.50 higher electricity cost every year.

    So for me, the electricity cost of the higher power consumption isn't even remotely important. I think most people are in the same boat, but run the numbers yourself and make your own decision. The only people who should care either live somewhere with expensive electricity and/or game way too much, in which case they should probably be using a better GPU.
  • Yojimbo - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link

    How is $12.50 a year not remotely important? Would you say a card costing $25 less is a big deal? If one costs $150 and the other is $175 you would not consider that to be at all a consideration to your purchase?
  • OTG - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link

    How IS $12.50/year even worth thinking about?
    That's less than an hour of work for most people, it's like 3 cents a day, you could pay for it by finding pennies on the sidewalk!
    PLUS you get much better performance! It's a faster card for a completely meaningless power increase.
    If your PSU doesn't have a six pin, get the 1650 I guess, otherwise the price is kinda silly.
  • Yojimbo - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link

    I like the way you think. Whatever you buy, just buy it from me for $12.50 more than you could otherwise get it, because it's just not worth thinking about. What you say would be entirely reasonable if it didn't apply to every single purchase you make. I mean if a company comes along as says "Come on, buy this pen for $20. You're only going to buy one pen this year." would you do it? Do you ask the people who are saying NVIDIA's new cards are too expensive because they are $20 more expensive than the previous generation equivalents "How is $10 a year even worth thinking about?"

    Hey, if you are willing to throw money out the window if it is for electricity but not for anything else that's up to you, but you are making unreasonable decisions that harm yourself.
  • jardows2 - Monday, May 6, 2019 - link

    Using your logic, why don't we all just save bunches of money by using Intel Integrated graphics. Since the money we save on power usage is all that matters, we might as well make sure we are only using Mobile CPU's as well.
    What your paying for here is the improved gaming experience provided by the extra performance of the RX570. For many people, the real-world improvement in the gaming experience is worth the relatively low cost of energy usage. Realistically, the only reason to get one of these over the 570 is if your power supply cannot handle the RX570.
  • Sushisamurai - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - link

    Holy crap man! The amount of electricity I spent to read this comment thread and that mount of keyboard clicks that've been consumed from my 70 million clicks from my mechanical keyboard from my total cost of ownership was totally worth reading and replying to this.
  • OTG - Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - link

    If you're pinching pennies that hard, you're probably better off not spending 4 hours a day gaming.
    Those games cost money, and you know what they say about time!
    Maybe even set the card mining when you're away, there are profits to be had even now.
  • WarlockOfOz - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link

    Anyone calculating the total ownership cost of a video card in cents per day should also consider that the slightly higher performance of the 570 may allow it to last a few more months before justifying replacement, allowing the purchase price to be spread over a longer period.
  • Yojimbo - Sunday, May 5, 2019 - link

    "Anyone calculating the total ownership cost of a video card in cents per day should also consider that the slightly higher performance of the 570 may allow it to last a few more months before justifying replacement, allowing the purchase price to be spread over a longer period."

    Sure. Not that likely, though, because the difference isn't that great so what is more likely to affect the timing of upgrade is the card that becomes available. But at the moment, NVIDIA has a big gap between the 1650 and the 1660 so there aren't two more-efficient cards that bracket the 570 well from a price standpoint.

    Of course, some people apparently don't care about $25 at all so I don't understand why they should care about $25 more than that (for a total of 50) such that it would prevent them from getting a 1660, which has a performance that blows the 570 out of the water and would be a lot more likely to play a factor in the timing of a future upgrade.

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