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It's the first day of quarter 4 2014. So, with there are actually new games

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season officially upon us, it's time for our first game performance video since

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we did Watchd Dogs way back in May of this year. Welcome to our guide to the

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best graphics cards for Middleear Shadow of Mordor on PC.

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Corsair gaming RGB keyboards feature precision Cherry MX RGB key switches for

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16.8 million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited customization.

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Click now to learn more. There are a couple of things we're changing this

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time around. First up, we're going to continue to run overclocked graphics

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cards for our nuts andbolts video card overviews since those are more geared

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towards tweakers anyway. But we're going to start starting today running all

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cards at stock for our game specific showdowns. Since most gamers shopping

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for a new graphics card to play a specific game probably won't be

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overclocking anyway. Second, with 4K

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becoming more affordable all the time, we're going to be adding 4K to our

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standard 1080p testing. This will be particularly relevant for gamers who are

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picking up a 4K monitor or are about to soon, but also for gamers who are

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running brand new high-end graphics cards like the GTX 970 or 980 from

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NVIDIA who want to leverage dynamic super resolution. NVIDIA's new feature

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that essentially is super sample anti-aliasing, but is a little bit

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easier to use. Speaking of the 970 and the 980, that leads me to this sweet

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shirt I'm wearing. You guys should check out the link in the video description if you want uh zombie Linus and Luke shirt

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if you were there for the mod 24 PC

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modding live stream event that we hosted. It was pretty cool. It was

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pretty fun. If you made it through it the way that we did, even though we

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looked like this by the end of it, then uh check out the link in the description

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for a shirt. Anyway, without further ado, here's my co-surviver Luke to tell

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you about Shadow of Mordor performance

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things. Shadows of Mordor is a thirdp person hacken/openworld game which is

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getting rave reviews which makes sense when it's being compared to giants like

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Batman and Assassin's Creed. It seems very well optimized for PC and even has

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an integrated benchmark for us PC folks. But as usual, we'll be doing our own

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benchmark. Anyways, so stay tuned to the end of the video if you want to see how

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your graphics card stacks up against the currently available options. We're using

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our usual graphics card test bench to demonstrate the differences between

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graphics cards by removing bottlenecks elsewhere in the system. So, keep that

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in mind when looking at the charts. We'll start with 1080p performance. This

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game is very well optimized and ran like a dream on every card we tested it at

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very high presets with medium textures and no motion blur. In fact, two of our

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cards, the GTX 970 and 980, even bumped

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up against the 100 FPS limit on their maximums. Uh, that unfortunately is

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built into this game. So, when looking at these numbers, keep in mind that the

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average frame rates could have been a little higher for both of these cards.

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At 4K, the observation that we made about how amazingly well optimized the

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game is continues. Even though frame rates were much lower, partially because

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we increased the resolution and partially because we cranked the game settings even higher, the game just

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feels smooth, especially when compared to other games. Even we're not running

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at 60 FPS and even as low as 30 to 40 FPS. And on top of that, we notice we

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noticed very little tearing without G-Sync or VSYNC or any kind of frame

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rate limiting technology. So now we'll show you guys how we got our numbers so

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you can replicate it on your own. I'd like to do a quick tour of the in-game

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settings before we start, though, because they're straight

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badass. Every in-game visual setting has its own little explanation of what it

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does and how it impacts performance. Even giving suggestions in some cases

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for how to get the most out of your game with your system. I think my favorite example of

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this is the way that they suggest different levels of texture quality depending on the amount of RAM your

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graphics card has, and then go as far as to not expect you to know how much you

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have. They put a handy little indicator in the corner. One reason they might

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have done this is that performance really tanks in a way we have rarely

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seen if you configure texture quality too high for your video frame buffer.

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Our save point is at a respawn point, which I believe all save points are at.

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I would try to be more specific about where exactly this is, but I would

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probably have some spoilers. It is pretty close to the beginning of the game, so it's not all that hard to get

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to. We were thinking about doing the benchmark in the open world, but the

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open world is very randomized, which is, I'm sure, great for gameplay, but not

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great for benchmarking. Also, weather effects heavily in impact game

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performance. So, we decided to do the benchmark within this kind of instanced

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mission that we're running to right now, which you can kind of see on screen. Uh,

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because the weather is constant inside the mission, and there's no random

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spawning, or at least there's not a ton of random spawning within the mission.

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So, it's called the Slaver. We'll just accept and start the mission here.

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I see more than any mortal. Little bit sassy, but okay.

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So, we do actually really need to kill the archers or else during this benchmark, we'll get wrecked. So, you're

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going to want to take out uh there there's usually a guy that spawns there.

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There's often at least one guy that spawns on the far side. And one trick is

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to climb up here before anyone really notices you and take out the o archer

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across over here. And then you don't have to waste one of your fairly

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valuable arrows.

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Take him out and then you can just kind of drop on everyone from this little

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rope bridge thing.

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What we're going to want to do now is They didn't notice me.

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Okay. They still didn't notice me. Okay. Well,

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orcs aren't necessarily the smartest people um around. So, wow.

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Okay. Here we go. All right. So, what we're going to want to do is thin the

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herd a little bit. So, start this off by just kind of going on a little bit of a

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rampage, which I don't think anyone's really going to have a problem with

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because you want to kind of bring it down to three or four or five around

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their orcs. You don't want a whole bunch around you as that'll be slightly

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abnormally taxing on your graphics card. And if you just have a somewhat fixed

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number, then it'll be fine. The combat in this game is very

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Batmanlike with the blocks. Um, so just be ready to be blocking a

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fair amount, but there is no real timer or wait time on your block at all. So it

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it's actually not that hard.

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All right, so now we're down to these two dudes. They'll get some reinforcements. So I'm just going to

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kind of sit here and block and wait for reinforcements to show

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up. Now that this guy's here, it's it's probably go time. So, what I do is kind

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of stand on the right side of this pole and just block while looking off into

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the distance for the entire benchmark. There we go. There's a fourth guy.

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Um, cuz it's pretty consistent. I just sit here blocking, looking in the same

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spot. It simulates about the same amount of demand as a normal fight would if I

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was running around stabbing things, but then it's not as randomized as having

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the screen spinning all over the place, which would make it not very easy to

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replicate. That being said, the frame rate in this

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game is extremely consistent. So, even if I did kind of swing the screen

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around, it probably wouldn't make a ton of a difference. Um, but I do have this

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benchmark within 0.01 FPS uh every run.

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So, I do want to keep it as consistent as possible, but it is a really cool

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thing that this game is able to keep really consistent frame rates pretty

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much no matter what you're doing and having only really things like amount of

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characters on screen and weather affected

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heavily. You're going to not want to die. I that that was essentially a death

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save that I had to go through right there. You don't want to have to do that

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because that can actually affect your frame rate. So yeah, you have to be able

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to survive for 2 minutes. The blocking is really not that difficult though, so

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you should be fine. Another thing you don't want to do

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is that. So you don't want to hold right click, you just want to tap it. If you

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hold right click, you'll go into your kind of wraith mode and that will

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definitely affect frame rate as well.

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And other than that, the rest of the benchmark is pretty much just standing on the right side of this pole with the

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prisoner on it, trying to defend yourself by blocking.

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Don't worry about saving the prisoner, though.

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I don't even think you can. All right, guys. Thanks for watching. Don't forget

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to check the link in the description down below for the shirt Lionus was wearing, which I will hopefully be

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getting later. Also, uh let me know what you think about the new testing

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methodology for games in the comments down below. While you're down there,

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like, dislike, favorite, subscribe. I think subscribe is wider. Either way,

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share. Maybe if you want to comment on the video, you can comment here or on

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the forum. If you like commenting on the forum, but you don't like the ads, you

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can become a contributor. And while you're there, if you click the like help Lantis Media Group button thing in the

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kind of mid right hand side, you can change all of your Amazon links,

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bookmarks to to our affiliate code to help us out in the future. Thanks again

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for watching. I'll see you guys next time.