We got access to the Battlefield 2042 Beta and hopped in with our Shadow PC and our Mid-tier GTX 1080 Maximum Settings machine to see how it would play. Is Shadow ready to handle the latest and greatest games like Battlefield 2042? Does the our Maximum Settings machine play it well with using the aging GTX 1080? Let’s find out!
Battlefield 2042 Beta on Maximum Settings
When I got in, I didn’t even care about firing, I just looked at the guy next to me. You can see that he was heavily pixilated. I’m not sure if this is the Beta or if this is Maximum Settings but it wasn’t up to par. went to the settings to see what everything was set at. Max Settings defaulted at High.
I also activated the in-game FPS counter to see how well my machine was performing. This can be done by hitting the “tilde” button to bring up the game console and typing “PerfOverlay.DrawFps 1”.
So, how does Maximum Settings perform? Eh. It could be worse but honestly, I don’t think it’s Maximum Settings fault. The frames were very inconsistent never went over 40 fps in a match. I even changed the graphics settings down to medium then to Low to see if I could get some additional FPS from this and I didn’t see much of a difference.
Never went over 40 fps in a match
I think the graphics were even worse when I took the settings down to the lowest setting. Check out what I mean: But again, I don’t think these are specifically Maximum Settings problems, I think this is just the game overall from being a Beta. Hopefully, these kinds of issues will be fixed for launch. I also hope FPS concerns for lower end PC will get addressed as well for a smoother experience.
Battlefield 2042 Beta on Shadow PC
It took a minute, and some NVIDIA driver updates, but I was able to get the early access Battlefield 2042 beta running through Steam on my Shadow PC.
The first thing I did as I usually do with these tests, is check out the default graphics settings. To my surprise, Shadow has their settings set to HIGH. I’ll roll with it just to see how well it performs. I’ll also activate the in-game FPS counter as I did with Maximum Settings.
I get in game and notice the same graphical issues that we had with Maximum Settings. But this time I notice that the frames were more consistent and higher. I was able to play pretty well with the HIGH settings.
Be aware that my Shadow is using the Quadro P5000 GPU. If your Shadow is using the same GPU, you’ll have similar results. Now this is still a Beta and it doesn’t run perfectly or to be honest, look perfect but, Shadow performs pretty well at High settings.
30-50 fps at any given time
Surprisingly enough, I didn’t have any of those weird graphical issues I had on Maximum Settings. I also had no need to adjust the settings to a lower graphic setting because this was suitable for me. I think I was pulling around 30-50 fps at any given time. Now I do expect the final build to be a lot more optimized so hopefully, the graphics are smoother and run better on PCs that are a bit older.
Shadow has announced that they will be providing significant upgrades to their machine, but we just don’t know exactly what those upgrades are when we will get them. Hopefully they will come soon so we can play more up-to-date games with better quality.
Battlefield 2042 Game Pass Early Access
Battlefield 2042 launched early access for Game Pass and we got a chance to play on our Shadow machine to see how well the final release plays. Will Shadow be able to handle Battlefield 2042 now that the full game has launched?
Right off the bat, I do have to say being a member of Game Pass Ultimate for $15 a month is worth it just for this. Once thing I have noticed before I hopped into a match is that these specialists are purely designed to be a cash cow like Modern Warfare with all the different skins for your player. As of now the game says these will be unlocked by playing the game. We’ll see what the seasons and battle passes throw at us. I have a feeling the rest of the options will be purchasable only. Welcome to gaming in 2021.
Now they did do a lot of work to fix certain issues that people hated from the beta but that doesn’t mean the game still doesn’t have its problems. This is still a launch day EA game. Expect issues and different oddities. The game probably should have had another 6 months or so of development. But, bills don’t pay themselves especially before the Holidays so this is why we got what we got. We did get some solid gameplay to show off on Shadow for the base game and Portal. Graphics are set to medium on default at 1080p. We’ll have the performance video monitor up to check FPS performance.
Overall, things are once again good not great. FPS was between 25 and 50 depending on the map if you were noticing in the footage. I’d say it was an average of about 35. It is definitely time for some Shadow upgrades.
FPS was between 25 and 50 depending on the map
I’ll definitely be playing on Shadow again soon to get in some practice so stay tuned to see more coverage of that. For me, Portal is the way to go. I’m a Battlefield 3 and 4 kind of guy so I’ll be doing more in the BF3 part of Portal.
I hope this game comes to cloud on Game Pass like all the other recent Battlefield games have. Especially since crossplay is enabled.
Battlefield 2042 Crossplay Videos
We have a couple of videos on playing the Battlefield 2042 Beta on Shadow and Maximum Settings. The first is a side-by-side splitscreen:
Here is the other crossplay video we did on Shadow and Maximum Settings with a Point of View on each platform:
I would also like to see this come to either GeForce Now or Boosteroid since they have been pushing EA games lately. If Battlefield 2042 comes to any of these platforms, you can be sure we’ll be covering it. We’ll be performing more crossplay videos on the full version of the game later in the year so make sure to subscribe and keep it locked right here at the only place where you can do battle in gaming heaven – Cloud Gaming Battle.
