Armored Core 6 Fires of Rubicon tech review: Laptop and desktop benchmarks

Right now, our gaming benchmarks are performed using these laptops. Click on the images to visit the respective product page. All other test systems (tower PCs, mini-PCs, etc.

) are listed at the end of this article. Opinions on Armored Core 6 are quite divided amongst gamers. For instance, whilst some people laud the game’s difficult boss fights, others express their dismay at the rather dull storytelling (cool cutscenes notwithstanding) and the drab, lifeless and graphically fairly uninspiring levels.

We can understand both viewpoints and consider Fires of Rubicon a solid, albeit unexceptional game, unlike FromSoftware’s other releases such as Elden Ring . Unfortunately, there are few things to criticise in the technical department. As we hinted at earlier, the game’s visuals are very mediocre for a title released in 2023.

Other than textures, the level of detail, environmental variety and effects leave something to be desired every now and then. In general, Armored Core 6 looks quite blurry and not very sharp even at higher resolutions. Mechs are also somewhat oddly animated and appear quite stiff in motion, particularly when hovering.

Armored Core 6’s graphics menu is very similar to the one in Elden Ring. The main tab lets you adjust things such as screen mode, resolution and frame rate limit (maximum 120 FPS) and turn V-Sync and HDR on or off. The Quality Setting option offers four handy presets that change almost everything found in the detailed settings window.

Ray tracing quality, which only applies to the mech garage, is the only thing unaffected by the quality presets. You won’t find any comparison images for the individual settings, but at least the game provides short notes explaining what they do. By contrast, it’s fantastic that you don’t need to restart the game after changing any of the settings.

The game takes a while to launch because it needs to initialise the anti-cheat, but load times are fine otherwise. At roughly 60 GB, the file size is neither large nor small for a modern game. For our benchmark sequence, we used the beginning of the “Destroy Artillery Installations” mission from Chapter 1, which is accessible after the first boss fight.

As you can see in the video below, we flew the mech along a set path for around 30 seconds. Frame rates were recorded using CapFrameX. We deem the game decently playable from 40 FPS onwards, but you’ll need at least 60 FPS for a truly smooth experience.

One major advantage of the game’s modest graphics is the moderate GPU requirements. Though an iGPU like the Radeon 680M can probably only cut it at 720p and minimum settings, a dedicated mid-range GPU like the RX 6800S or similar should have no problem handling the game at 1080p and Ultra settings. The game’s system requirements are also manageable at QHD.

A GeForce RTX 4050 is already capable enough to deliver around 60 FPS at 1440p and max settings. Armored Core 6 becomes a little demanding only at 4K. We recommend having at least a GeForce RTX 4060 or RTX 4070 if you want to play the game at 4K and max preset.

Because gaming tests are very time-consuming and are often constrained by installation or activation limits, we are only able to provide you with part of the benchmark results at the time of publishing this article. We will be adding more graphics cards over the coming days and weeks. .