Street Fighter V releases on February 16,
which means very shortly the worlds of both PC and PS4 will be awash
with stylised watercolour violence and peope trying to come to terms
with what Ken looks like now. It's very difficult to imagine that the
finely tuned gameplay systems powering all those fights will be anything
other than excellent, but the real question is: how does it run on PC?
That's where PCGamesN come in, poking and tugging at its graphical
options like excited children around the patient family dog.
Tested on an Intel Core i7-2500K @3.7GHz, 8GB of RAM, GeForce GTX 780, Windows 10.
Here's the great thing about Street Fighter V, and it was just as
true of its predecessor on PC: it looks wonderful, and requires very
little from your system. The
system requirements Capcom released way back in September 2015 are testament to that.
The bare minimum Street Fighter V requires to run is an Intel Core
i3-4160, 6GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 480. Recommended specs are a bit
more demanding, but still below the current average - Intel Core
i5-4690K @3.50GHz, 8GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 960. Our own system
falls just below the recommended specs (certainly in terms of age, if
not outright processing power), but we've found it to run at an
unwavering 60 fps at all times.
That means two things: firstly, that you can take those recommended
specs with a pinch of salt and shouldn't be disheartened if your rig
falls a bit below it. Secondly: it's running at a locked 60 fps, with no
option to remove the frame limit in the game itself.
We've been tinkering with the engine.ini file found here:
[Your installation drive]\Steam\steamapps\common\StreetFighterV\StreetFighterV\
Intermediate\Config\CoalescedSourceConfigs
...looking for an obvious "FrameCap = True" entry or similar and
haven't found anything that allows frame rates above 60 so far. We'll
keep trying, though.
Given that Street Fighter 5 runs at a rock-solid 60 fps with all
graphics options maxed out, lowering those options doesn't tell us much
about potential perfomance benefits. What it does show, however, is the
fidelity difference between each graphics setting preset. Speaking of,
let's take a look at the graphics settings now:
Above are the full range of customisable graphics options. Like the
broader Street Fighter design philosophy, it's... streamlined.
Barebones, even. There's no v-sync option here, nor any choice of
anti-aliasing techniques - simply 'low,' 'medium,' high,' and 'max.'
That's how it goes for the other options. Of particular interest is
resolution scaling, which is used to keep the game outputting at your
monitor's native resolution but lower the image sharpness to increase
performance. This can't be boosted beyond 100% though, so it doesn't
work like downsampling - it can't sharpen texture resolutions to those
higher than your monitor's output. Only lower.
Points must be awarded for allowing the player to change all graphics
options without requiring a restart, and further points for those
changes being reflected in the game menu behind you. The difference
between 'low' and 'max' presets is stark, even when observed on a 2D
world map.
There's also an 'automatic' preset which adjust settings based on
yours specs, and a 'custom' preset where you'll get to change all the
individual options manually.
There's also this resolution select screen, which inlcudes a
fullscreen/window mode option. Pretty minimal graphics tweaking is on
offer, then.
That's to be expected, given both the genre of the game and its
console heritage (I know you exist, PC fighting game community, but
you're not the bigger crowd). In terms of fast and consistent frame
production, fighting games might be the only genre to rival competitive
shooters for emphasis and importance.
You need to be able to read animations within their first few frames.
No one wants to lose round after round staring at a beautifully
rendered 24 fps scene, so SFV's options are accordingly focussed on
getting you to that golden locked 60, rather than maxing out your
graphics card's capabilities.
Competitive playing also being at the fore, perhaps the locked 60 is
also a means of levelling the playing field a bit. That said, a v-sync
toggle would have been nice. Scanning the game's .ini files reveals a
few 'FrameSmoothing' entries, but we haven't found editing the variables
to have a noticeable effect in-game.
Before we dive into the graphics presets and how they affect the
game's visuals, it's important to re-emphasise that the game looks
gorgeous because of its art direction and animations, not because of a
slew of advanced post-processing effects. It's by no means a disaster,
then, if you have to drop down to the medium preset.
Let's take a look at the game running with all graphics options maxed out:
(
Bigger version)
Here's Chun Li about to throw down on the newly redesigned Ken for
having the gall to turn up to a fight with a man-bun. It's incredibly
tricky to take like-for-like images in such an animation-crammed game,
and SFV doesn't allow graphical option customisation mid-fight, so we've
retreated to training mode to analyse the fidelity of each preset.
As we mentioned before, our modest system can run this scene at a
flawless 60, and that's a great result. It suggests an engine
well-optimised for PC. It isn't hugely surprising though, since there
are only ever two high-poly characters on screen at any time, and only a
sparsely populated background with lower detail objects for your GPU to
worry about behind them.
The AA is doing its job well here, and the smoke effect around Chun
Li's feet isn't having the slightest impact on frame rate. You can see
the effect that Chun Li's Trigger is having by casting light on her
character model. Though the shadows are almost obscured in that screen,
you can get an idea of their blurriness and detail by checking out the
bigger version.
The only negative takeaway from this shot is the letterboxing
occuring at 1920 x 1200 resolution. Since there's no option to adjust
the aspect ratio, we're stuck running the game at 1920 x 1080 with black
space at the top and bottom of the screen.
Next, let's drop down to 'high' settings:
(
Bigger version)
As we lower all graphics option from 'max' to 'high,' it's actually
the resolution scaling that has the biggest impact on fidelity. It's
dropped down to 87% of the native resolution, which makes the final
image that bit grainier. It's especially noticeable on our monitor
because the locked aspect ratio means we're already down from our 1920 x
1200 to 1920 x 1080.
That's most noticeable in the UI and text, although you can also see
increased blurriness in Chun Li's face. The lightning-fast animations
produce a lot of blur in screenshots at the best of time, but that's
accentuated when the resolution's also being scaled down. We'd advise
you keep the scaling at 100% and instead manipulate the other graphics
options to increase performance.
Generally, the difference between 'max' and 'high' is subtle. The
visuals don't fall off a cliff as we drop down to medium, either:
The obvious difference between these screens is in the background
scenery, but it isn't related to the graphics options. The planes
visible at 'max' and 'high' just haven't landed yet in this particular
randomised scenery animation.
The graphics options-led changes are a bit subtler. The smoke around
Chun Li's feet is a bit simpler in this instance, and the effect of her
Trigger lacks a bit of definition. The specs of colour in particular
appear blurrier, while the AA's having to work that bit harder to avoid
jaggies at such a reduced resolution scale. Ken's shadow has also been
simplified slightly.
The most noticeable change in fidelity comes when dipping from 'medium' to 'low' preset, though:
It's at this point, with the resolution scaled down to 50% and all
options running at their lowest, that you could make the argument it's
possible to get SFV looking like SF3. The pixellation of everything in
the 3D scene, alongside the blurriness of te UI, are a marked difference
from 'medium' and above.
While all presets result in a locked 60 fps on our system, we can
speculate with reasonable assurance that this configuration will produce
a playable frame rate on anything more advanced than a potato alarm
clock.
Character models still look great. That wonderful
watercolour-meets-claymation art style that has defined the series since
SFIV is intact. The animations and effects are still as Capcom
intended. Really, the trade-off is a graininess to everything on-screen,
and a blotchy effect resulting from the AA being stretched too far
(while also operating at its lowest preset).
So, does it get the pass? It's hard to see why it shouldn't. Most
importantly, the frame rate absolutely flies at all settings on our
just-below-recommended specs. Secondly, it still looks great as far down
as 'medium' presets. That's really all PC players need to know before
taking the plunge.
The graphics options aren't comparable to a CD Projekt RED game,
true, but they also don't need to be. On a technical level, Street
Fighter V does a good job of giving PC players the best chance to
experience the game at the intended 60 fps, and letting its wonderful
art direction do the rest.
