Call of Duty: Black Ops III has finally been released and early reports suggest it’s a technical mess on PC. A large number of the Steam Reviews describe the latest COD entry as “unoptimized” which struggles to achieve a smooth frame-rate. Unfortunately, it seems the game is marred by stuttering, sudden frame drops and micro-stutter. Even on top-tier hardware, the performance is atrocious and should be avoided until patches are released to help rectify these major problems:
The general consensus is remarkably similar to early testing conducted by TechPowerUp which indicates the game utilizes a ridiculous amount of system memory and VRAM. During their initial benchmarks, a GTX 980 Ti was monitored and almost used 6GB VRAM under load, and system RAM reached a maximum utilization of 12GB. Even more concerning, when the GPU was swapped with a Titan X, the engine started to increase the VRAM usage up to 8GB. Apparently, the game runs much smoother on a GTX Titan X compared to the 980 TI which can only be a result of memory differences.
This is extremely disappointing as a spokesperson prior to release discussed improved mouse controls, a GPU bound-engine and low CPU overheads. Clearly, this isn’t an accurate reflection as people are experiencing major problems on lower threaded CPUs. An official statement reads:
Call of Duty: Black Ops III is the perfect example of why you should be very suspicious when pre-ordering video games.
