In-Depth Performance Analysis of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on AMD and NVIDIA Hardware

Released on October 25, 2024, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has quickly become a landmark title within the franchise, being labeled as “the biggest Call of Duty release ever”in just a week. With such monumental success, we received an opportunity from AMD to analyze the game’s performance on their hardware, particularly due to its optimization for AMD Ryzen processors and Radeon GPUs.

AMD claims that their technology, particularly Smart Access Memory (SAM), can enhance performance by up to 9% when paired with Ryzen and Radeon systems. As stated in a recent community blog post, AMD has collaborated with Activision to ensure an exceptional gaming experience:

AMD has worked directly with Activision on optimizing performance for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on AMD Ryzen™ CPUs and Radeon™ RX GPUs to deliver a fantastic experience. When pairing Ryzen™ and Radeon™ together, experience up to 9% more performance on average when using AMD Smart Access Memory™ technology in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

In our testing, we aimed to evaluate how effectively AMD has optimized this title, comparing their Radeon RX 7900 XTX against NVIDIA’s RTX 4080 SUPER. While the NVIDIA 4080 and 4070 Ti SUPER are likely more comparable in pricing, the 4080 SUPER was the card available for our tests, providing a solid reference point.

The benchmarks were conducted on a high-end machine equipped with a Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor and 64 GB of DDR5-6000 CL 30 memory. Instead of standard 16:9 testing, we utilized a 32:9 aspect ratio, specifically at a resolution of 5120 x 1440, drawing parallels to near 4K gameplay performance as well as examining the aesthetic quality and overall experience in ultrawide format.

We used AMD’s and NVIDIA’s latest optimized drivers (AMD WHQL driver version 24.10.1 and NVIDIA 566.03) and executed our tests on Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.2033, the latest Patch Tuesday update available at the time of testing. The results were intriguing, revealing the substantial efforts AMD has made in optimizing performance for Black Ops 6.

During our benchmarks on the Lowtown map, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX achieved an impressive average of 116 fps. This was accompanied by a 5% low or 95th percentile frame rate of 96 fps, which matched the average performance of the RTX 4080 SUPER. Additionally, the 1% low frame rate was recorded at above 90 fps, indicating that gamers can expect a smooth high-refresh-rate experience without sacrificing visual fidelity.

In a head-to-head comparison, the 7900 XTX demonstrated approximately 21% more speed than the 4080 SUPER in average frame rates. This performance, coupled with the game’s attractive graphics, is depicted in the gallery at the article’s conclusion.

It’s essential to note that default settings for FidelityFX CAS (Contrast Adaptive Sharpening) and NVIDIA Image Sharpening (NIS) were used, making direct comparisons slightly off, yet the visual discrepancies remained minimal. Even upon disabling these settings, the performance outputs from both cards showed remarkable similarity.

At AMD’s request, we also looked into the performance of FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3. Currently, there are issues with upscaling performance, resulting in noticeable regressions. AMD acknowledged the situation and expects a timely update to address the integration of frame generation and upscaling into the game:

.. COD has not added the frame gen portion of FSR 3.1 to the game yet; it’s coming soon! Remember, AMD allowed for the frame generation to be decoupled from the upscaling; as of right now, FSR 3.1 is only providing upscaling and not improving frame rates. We hope the update arrives in the next couple of weeks.

We discovered inconsistencies in VRAM usage during our testing. Despite typically running three tests for accuracy, erratic memory usage led us to execute two additional trials. Results fluctuated significantly, with the 7900 XTX utilizing approximately 20 GB of VRAM in three of the runs, while in two runs, it dropped to about 16 GB. These variations suggest a potential bug affecting VRAM reporting.

Notably, both the RX 7900 XTX and the RTX 4080 SUPER consumed around 83% to 84% of their available VRAM capacities in Black Ops 6, a significant observation considering the absence of ray tracing, which often demands substantial memory resources.

In terms of value for performance, the RX 7900 XTX is currently priced between $800-$900, significantly lower than the approximate $1,000 cost of the RTX 4080 SUPER. This pricing advantage equates to superior performance at a more economical price point.

For gamers specifically interested in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, we highly recommend considering AMD GPUs or any of their Radeon cards over their NVIDIA counterparts, as the performance advantages will continue to be reflected in future titles.

Image Gallery: Black Ops 6 Performance – AMD vs NVIDIA

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