Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Performance on ROG G771 & G551 (GTX 860M) Gaming Laptops

The Metal Gear series has garnered an extraordinary fan-base over its 27 years in existence, since July 1987. It was available on the MSX2 (!!) and NES (if you are old enough to know what they were!). As various consoles and platforms have come and gone, Metal Gear; considered to be the progenitor of the stealth genre, has stood the test of time. It has since then made it across more platforms, the latest installment Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is on PC, PS3, PS4, XBOX 360, XBOX ONE, and acts as a prologue to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain which is currently due for release later this year.  It's good to know we (PC gamers!) have the best platform to showcase games with more definition and effects available than any other, when you the see Snake on the title screen for the first time, you must agree the graphics look truly impressive.

It used to be that the introduction mini-movies were the best-looking parts of the game, because when you enter the actually game, you were left wondering why the game didn't look as good as the intro.  Now, we don't need to worry about that, we have the POWERRRRR!  I love how the intros in Japanese games have a certain flair (albeit the dialogue could be more natural), especially when you have developer Kojima Productions, publisher Konami and Hideo Kojima as the director; there's particularly more attention put into mannerisms, smooth movements and cinematography so the characters don't seem like lifeless puppets.  Whereas the dialogue was often corny and cheesy, Metal Gear employed top talents; David Hayter is known for giving life into Solid Snake and Naked Snake (he has beaten all the Metal Gear games he's voiced in!), and also writing the screenplay for the X-Men film, in this installment and the next Kiefer Sutherland (needs no introduction) provides the voice of Big Boss, replacing David Hayter.  It is easy to tell Hideo Kojima wants to make each game feel like a Hollywood Blockbuster, as you can probably guess why Snake looks familiar and his name is also in Escape from New York, Kojima also gets his inspiration from 007 (obviously with solo secret missions when fate of the world hangs in the balance), 24 (split screens), Ghostbusters (the merging of proton pack energy streams), Star Wars, The Terminator, and many others.  Here are some screenshots from the cinematic into:

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You are Snake, and your mission is to infiltrate Camp Omega, rescue Cipher agent Paz Ortega Andrade and Sandinista child soldier Ricardo "Chico" Valenciano Libre.  You have the freedom to choose in what order events in the story take place by selecting missions in any order you like.  There are seven missions and upon completion of the main series you will unlock side ops set at different points in the day, and there are also two extra op missions to unlock as well. To accomplish a more open world experience, new ways of traversal and sneaking methods are now available, such as taking a car, a jeep, or even a helicopter around the mission area.

Fox Engine

As well as giving you taste of what's to come in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, this is a great opportunity to show off their newest graphics engine.  It has been a long wait for the sequel to MGS4: more than six years in fact!  It's been worth the wait as Kojima Productions has spent much of the time developing the new cross-platform, cross-generational Fox Engine, with their goal of making the best engine in the world. Despite the fact the PC version was late to the party, it compensates by offering graphics beyond current-generation consoles, and claims high scale-ability from older gaming PCs up to 4K goodness - if you spent all your lunch money on the latest dream machine.  

The ultra-realistic images are courtesy of Physically-Based Rendering (PBR) which allows materials, surfaces and objects to react to lighting and shading in real-time, as they would in the real world, the images can be so convincing that in testing many gamers were completely stumped when put to the test of identifying whether an image was an in-engine real-time PBR reproduction.  Subsurface Scattering  to render translucent materials such as natural skin to create life-like complexion, Deferred Rendering to render dynamic lighting efficiently, Normal mapping for simulating surface details such as bumps and dents without using more polygons, some high-resolution face and full body capture that enables the creation of detailed heads and character models. This and more are further explained in Kojima Productions' GDC Fox Engine deep-dive.

PC-Exclusive Graphics Enhancements

The PC edition of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes marks the first use of 4K compatibility in the whole Metal Gear Solid series, boasting an increase in the number of simultaneous light sources, the number of models that can be displayed on screen, increased shadow resolution, improvements in shading and character hair, and the all-new Screen Space Reflections.  The game itself is also leveraging the NVIDIA 4K technology within.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Performance: Best Gameplay Settings

The G771JM and G551JM are ROG’s ‘performance-mainstream’ 17-inch and 15-inch gaming laptops respectively, both feature up to a quad-core Intel Core i7 4710HQ processor, 16GB of DDR3 and Nvidia GTX 860M graphics.

Let’s find out what the best playable gameplay settings are for these gaming laptops:

G771JM & G551JM tested spec:

• Intel Core i7 4710HQ processor
• 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 (2x8GB)
• Nvidia GTX 860M graphics card 4GB DDR5 (Maxwell: 640 cores)
• 256GB PCIe SSD option
• Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS display
• [ROG Gladius gaming mouse]
• Nvidia GeForce driver: 344.65 WHQL
• Intel HD Graphics driver: 10.18.10.3910 WHQL
• Windows 8.1 Pro

First things first, let's check out at what options there are and what happens when we max out all the settings, so we can see if we need to do any tweaking.  The opening opening scene with the wide vista of the Camp Omega is the worst case scenario making it the ideal place to start.

The results show that G771JM and G551JM are ideal for playing Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes in Full-HD; capable of achieving an average of 32FPS (Max=34/Min=29) with everything maxed out in the most demanding scenes!

Model Detail

Model Detail means level of detail with a minor impact on overall image quality.  This adjusts the quantity and/or detail of things such as tufts of grass, cacti, bushes, powerlines, various objects and buildings.  Compared to other settings we feel the differences seem minor, and the impact on tested performance is also minor, however, it does makes an impact in the opening scene. If you want an FPS boost try to lower other settings before trying this one.

Textures

We found there are no discernible differences between Extra High and High.  So you may as well leave it on Extra High since it doesn't impact performance much either, and you have more than enough VRAM (4GB).  However, if set to Medium, the loss of detail is significant; the quality of distant textures will be reduced first.

Texture Filtering Quality

Anisotropic Filtering sharpens textures, it is more noticeable in the mud, and the surface of concrete.  On a modern graphics card this can be left maxed out since there's virtually no impact on performance.

Shadows

More shadows, more defined and dynamic shadows, to compliment all those extra deferred lights.  Unless your shadow looks in the wrong place entirely or it is missing altogether, it's unlikely you'll really notice it (as it should - the best effects are the most subtle!) so you can lower the detail here if you need to, but of course, we still want shadows in a stealth game!

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Lighting Quality

The advantage of having a PC is that you can bring more realism into a game which looks fantastic already.   Deferred rendering and lighting allows more dynamic lights and improved lighting.  While the number of lights is limited to those which are nearest on consoles,  there is a dramatic improvement when PCs can render all of the lighting simultaneously as seen at the beginning of the mission and in unlockable side-missions.  You can enable all of the deferred lights by setting lighting quality to Extra High (for example, the PlayStation 4 is limited to High). Considering whether to gain a few frames per second or have superior graphics compared to consoles?   It's a no-brainer - turn it up!

The view from the fictional Cuban black site Camp Omega is the most demanding scene in the prologue. Oooooo... lights......

 

Screen Filtering

Screen Filtering is better known as Post-Processing, since it enables Bloom Lighting, Depth of Field, Post-Process Anti-Aliasing, but also the all-new Screen Space Reflections.

• Set on Low - enables Bloom Lighting, most visible on fences directly illuminated by spotlights and static lights (visible on fences directly illuminated by spotlights and static lights).
• Set on High - activates Depth of Field and Post-Process Anti-Aliasing (combats many of the game's heavily aliased edges).
• Set on Extra High - enables Screen Space Reflections, which are exclusive to the PC (improves the appearance of extremely bright light cast by the spotlight).

Hideo Kojima makes heavy use of Depth of Field to simulate the out of focus foregrounds or backgrounds seen in movies.  This is one of the major differences between the PC version and the PS4 version. Also exclusive to PCs are Screen Space Reflections, which adds real-time, screen-wide reflections to pools of water, puddles, and reflective materials when the Extra High detail level is selected.  

Screen Filtering has the highest impact on performance out of all the settings, with the activation of Depth of Field and Post-Process Anti-Aliasing being the biggest hit to performance.  And rightfully so, given the impact in fidelity that comes with it.

If need be, setting this to High sacrifices Screen Space Reflections, but makes a significant difference (a few frames per second) and the difference in quality is less obvious.

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Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)

Ambient Occlusion (AO) adds contact shadows where two surfaces or objects meet, and where objects block light from reaching another nearby game element.  Simply put, SSAO adds depth and realism, but it comes at the cost of a few frames per second. This comes second only to Screen Filtering in terms of performance impact, and this would be the second setting to lower if you need to squeeze out a few more frames per second. Setting SSAO to High only makes a subtle difference and you won't even notice it at night.

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Special Effects

Effects like the constant rain become larger and more detailed, it is subtle but adds to the overall atmosphere.  It would be extremely hard to notice any difference between Extra High, High and Low, but you can still leave it on Extra High since I found this makes minimal impact on performance anyway.

Want a Better Framerate?

In case you are wondering how much of an impact each one of these make, here is what would happen if you lower any of the options from Extra High to High:

Although this is a small sample, you can get a rough idea of what has greater impact on performance. Model Detail, Shadows, Lighting and Screen Filtering clearly show there's a difference, SSAO doesn't make an impact here but it's because this is at night.   These laptops run fine with everything maxed out, but if you prefer better frame-rate, you can try lowering Shadows, Screen Filtering and SSAO, as I feel the difference in image quality will not be easily noticeable.

Okay, enough staring at the awesome graphics, on with the mission!