Middle-earth - Shadow of Mordor Graphics Card Showdown & Benchmarking Procedure
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,856 words · ~9 min read
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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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for watching. I'll see you guys next time.