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Over the last week or so, leading up to the release of Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, we heard that Warner Bros was being funny about handing out PC review codes for the game and then we later found out that the graphics settings asked for 6GB of VRAM for ultra textures. Those two things coupled together rose alarm bells for PC gamers, with many assuming that this could only mean that the port is a mess. However, as it turns out, the PC port is actually pretty solid and there's no inherent reason to avoid it.
To test out the game's performance we played for a few hours to spot any performance glitches or bugs and then ran the in-built benchmark tool a few times at different resolutions. The PC we are using contains an AMD FX-8350 CPU and an Nvidia GTX 780 reference card, there is currently no SLI support for this game so making the most of your 120Hz monitor at high settings or even playing at 4K will be a bit tricky.
Here you can see the exact graphical settings we used for 1080p gameplay. We've gone for a balanced approach to the settings to demonstrate the best results you can get while still maintaining high fidelity.
The GTX 780 has no problem running Shadow of Mordor with ultra textures at 1080p, averaging just over 75 frames per second. Those of you running two cards will have no problem running this game across three screens or at a high refresh rates once an SLI profile has been made.
The benchmark has a little glitch at the moment, the minimum frame count is made while the benchmark itself is still loading, you don't actually get frame drops down to 7 frames per second during regular play or benchmarking once it gets going.
We observed the game using between 3017MB and 3030MB of VRAM during our benchmark test so it is very close to capping out. Unfortunately, we don't have a 4GB or 6GB GPU on hand to compare usage results but it looks like gamers will want at least a 4GB card for future proofing. That said, we didn't notice any negative performance impact while using Ultra textures.
If the recommend specs are so widely off, the question that has to be asked is did these guys even run their own benchmark?!
I averaged 73 fps on 1080P with everything maxxed out (motion blur was off as it makes me feel ill), Highest was 265 and lowest was 29. That is with an i53570K(stock) 8Gb 1600 ram and a GTX Titan. I have a sneaky suspicion that nowhere near 6Gb of Vram was used during that benchmark, but hopefully when time permits I will rerun it with afterburner in the background.
I see no difference between the ultra textures and normal, apart from a 30fps drop thanks to Nvidia not releasing a decent SLI profile yet. That being said with everything on ultra apart from the textures, it runs alright on two 760s. I might try the Assassins Creed 3 SLI profile since it’s the same engine, right now my second card is only being used 30%. It sucks so much to get a better score in 3DMark than a Titan by over 10%, then be beat down by VRAM requirements.
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There are no ultra textures for this game unless you download them seperately off steam. Ultra defaults to high. Once you grab that large file and install there are noticeable differences and performance impacts. Also using the fear 3 or batman arkham origins sli profile works just fine for enabling sli on this game.
Already got them but I think they must just effect the Uruks since most of the other textures look the same unless you’re using a magnifying glass or something. Also those SLI profiles kinda work, but seem to fluctuate between 70-90% GPU usage on both.
Monolith said the SLI profile is supposed to be out this week. Hopefully that will provide better GPU utilization. Some people get better utilization so far with Farcry 3 bits, or Fear 3 bits. For my 3 way 780Ti the Arkham Origins profile seems to work best for me. http://steamcommunity.com/app/241930/discussions/0/613937306863973441/#p2
so how come with 980GTX I’m having a hard time at 1440p with Ultra textures with the HD pack? This the biggest load of FUD I’ve ever read. The Ultra texture pack was just an afterthought, albeit great one where they’ve put in the high resolution models / textures from their development machines. Some of which may have in excess of 12gb VRAM. It’s a jitterfest with 4GB and below! Test it properly before you spread misinformation.
well as you can see on my post + links , performance wise there is no real difference with the extra Vram. They do need to create an Sli profile soon though as it seems from things I have seen and read that one card runs the game more consistently with no frame drops.
I think Vram does make a difference, about 20 minutes after starting the game up my frames dropped to 3-5 whilst the cache was being purged, that happened every five minutes or so after on high textures, I think it needs at least 3GBs just as a buffer, since even if it uses say 2.1GBs it’ll still get snagged.
Well it does clearly tell you in the options that you need 6GBs of VRAM for the ultra textures, even if it only peaks at 4GBs you still need more as a buffer.
Wow talk about completely misinterpreting what I was saying.
that sounds feasible, a completely lossless buffer must be the reason for the 4Gb requirement then as I don’t recall getting any frame drops at all. However I have both slept and taken my meds since then so I could be mistaken 😛 guess I’ll have to play some more today – purely for research purposes you understand.
how come i cant pick 1080p as resolution in the settings? (I have a 1080p screen) it says 1440p is 100% and 90% is 2304×1296…(?) 80% 2048×1152 70% 1792×1008.
I checked my nvidia controlpanel to make sure the set resolution was set to render 1080p, wich it was. so whats left for me to do? shouldn’t 100% be 1080p? since…100% of my resolution on my screen is..1080p…(?) i dont know, i might be compleetely off here but…yeah whatever. i just wonder why i cant pick 1080p in the settings? does anyone has answeres to this? i googled it but it just pops up a bunch of sites discussing PS4/Xbone running Mordor at 1080p, wich im not intrested in.
is there any way i can fibble with the game files and type in my own resolution so that it forces it to run at 1080p?
Help plz! D:
I have no idea how the hell they’re coming to that conclusion. VRAM never fills to 100% even if the game requires it. At 1440p with all settings at Ultra, the game uses 5.4GB VRAM. However…as has been reported…currently, “ultra” textures are just “high” textures, as the true Ultra textures come out with an additional download that hasn’t been released yet.
The game will RUN if don’t have enough VRAM. But you’ll notice slowdowns, hiccups, etc etc…
For the record…the requirements for this game aren’t based on the game having good graphics or awesome textures. It’s just poorly ported. It was designed for the consoles, which have a ridiculous amount of shared memory available to them. And they didn’t want to put in the time to port properly to the PC. The game, visually, is actually quite lackluster. Models are low polygon, hair is old gen tech, and textures are really subpar.
What game on the pc looks better? I think it looks great at medium textures,on the amd 290x at 4k. List me a game that looks better and I’ll buy it.
I also get the the jitterfest at 4k on high textures on 290x (clocked at 1120/5700), while medium is smooth as silk. Performance falls off the cliff when the vram runs out. I can max the rest of settings.
A ton of them? Battlefield? Call of Duty? Crysis? Assassin’s Creed? Bio Shock? Metro? Watch Dogs? Tomb Raider? Max Payne? Shadows of Mordor isn’t a graphically impressive game…I’m surprised you think it is.
U just need to go on steam, right click on Shadow of mordor, proprieties launch options and write -width 1920 -height 1080 then go to the game and set 100% and GG