Alienware Alpha Model:
i5 | 8 gig RAM | 860m/750ti 2 gig RAM - Overclocked (+135 core clock & +400 memory clock)
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a fairly demanding game and a good test of what you can squeeze out of this tiny little gaming PC. I was expecting to match something close to the Xbox One Performance of the game and I think it even runs a little bit better overall.
For a game like this my target is hitting 30fps at 1080p. If you get the odd drop here and there below, I would still class that as acceptable just so long as it’s not to frequent.
After working through one of the more demanding areas in the game I managed to settle on what I feel are the best settings for a solid 1080p 30fps performance.
Recommended settings:
| Fullscreen: | ON |
| Exclusive Fullscreen: | OFF (this makes it full screen in a borderless window) |
| Resolution: | 1920 x 1080 |
| Anti-Aliasing: | FXAA |
| Vsync: | Triple Buffered |
| Texture Quality: | Medium |
| Anisotropic Filter: | 8x |
| Shadow Quality: | Medium |
| Sun Soft Shadows: | OFF |
| Ambient Occlusion: | OFF |
| Depth of Field: | OFF |
| Level of Detail: | Medium |
| Tessellation: | OFF |
| Screen Space Reflections: | OFF |
| Specular Reflection Quality: | Normal |
| Dynamic Foliage: | Medium |
| Bloom: | ON |
| Vignette Blur: | OFF |
| Motion Blur: | ON |
| Purehair: | ON |
| Lens Flare: | ON |
| Screen Effects: | OFF |
| Film Grain: | OFF |
In the Video below there are a few settings that are different. The main one is textures were set to high and I later realised that this was causing the hitching you see at times in the video. Its simply that the 2 gig of Graphics Ram the Alpha comes with is not enough to keep up with high textures. As soon as I changed it to Medium the hitching stopped. A few other settings are different (such as motion blur and exclusive full screen) because the video is to show the game running with an unlocked frame rate. When locking it to 30 it's best to play using borderless windowed mode and have motion blur as it makes the game feel smoother at half refresh rate.
To lock the framerate to 30fps I recommend using RivaTuner in conjunction with MSI Afterburner. This software combo will give you all the tools needed to overclock your gpu, monitor your hardware performance and lock specific games to a certain frame rate and maintain decent frame times. Many ingame options I have used to lock the framerate to 30 often give poor results and make the game feel sluggish and jittery due to poor frame times.
Verdict
Rise of the tomb Raider is a pretty demanding game so it should be expected that you will need to turn a lot of settings to low or even off when using hardware such as what is in the Alpha. Despite this the game still looks very detailed even at lower settings and you will soon get drawn into the game worlds visuals regardless.
1080p is something I personally like to hit because even on lower settings, the crisp look it gives adds a lot more to the overall visual experience than some additional particle effects or slightly higher quality shadows. Lowering the resolution to below the monitors native setting introduces blurring which I find distracting.
A locked 30fps is also a good target to aim for. While you can just leave the framerate unlocked so that you experience those moments that hit close to 60fps (and it does at times), as soon as it drops back down it can be very distracting. I personally find it better to just get used to 30fps so that it never becomes a distraction. This however is very subjective and you will have to judge for yourself what you prefer. People have different tolerance levels for frame rate variance. For me, if the game can stay above 45fps for the majority of the time I will normally be fine with it. But if it is constantly dropping back down to the 30’s then I will lock it to 30 and be done with it.
The Alpha offers a very playable 1080p 30fps experience with this game as long as you are willing to make some visual sacrifices.
