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Middle-earth: Shadow of War PC performance thread

Pilgore

Neo Member
This might be the first game in...years....I just can't run on a respectable framerate. And the game looks like ass so it that makes me think it's just weirdly optimized (it doesn't look all that better than the first).
No matter what, I can never keep a stable framerate, always hovering between 20 and 40 FPS. I guess I'll just wait for optimization patches or not play it all because my head hurts from the hours of tweaking and figuring out what the hell is tanking my FPS I've done.

I've come to the conclusion it's not 1 setting, it's any of them. the FPS dip from "lowest" to "medium" is 15+ frames, "High," "Highest" and "Ultra" are out of the question . Dyanmic Resolution set to 50 makes the game look like a PS2 game because of all the decompression is has to do to keep the FPS stable. The game's a dead end performance wise for my rig.
 
I downloaded the 4k cinematic textures and I am losing my fucking mind over how every time there is a cutscene it seems like it's stuttering slightly with the fps but steam insists it's still 60
 

Staf

Member
Is there anyway to turn off Online Vendetta? I never do them and there's enough clutter on the map as it is.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
3570k @ 4.3 / GTX 970 / 16GB DDR3 2133MHz

60+ using a mix of medium/high/ultra settings with 60fps as the target for dynamic resolution. No stuttering or hitching of any sort. I'm happy with how it runs.
 
This might be the first game in...years....I just can't run on a respectable framerate. And the game looks like ass so it that makes me think it's just weirdly optimized (it doesn't look all that better than the first).
No matter what, I can never keep a stable framerate, always hovering between 20 and 40 FPS. I guess I'll just wait for optimization patches or not play it all because my head hurts from the hours of tweaking and figuring out what the hell is tanking my FPS I've done.

I've come to the conclusion it's not 1 setting, it's any of them. the FPS dip from "lowest" to "medium" is 15+ frames, "High," "Highest" and "Ultra" are out of the question . Dyanmic Resolution set to 50 makes the game look like a PS2 game because of all the decompression is has to do to keep the FPS stable. The game's a dead end performance wise for my rig.

Damn that sucks, I thought this game would be smooth sailing on PC judging from Shadow or Mordor and after taking a look at the graphical settings of this game.

What specs do you have btw? Just curious.
 

Zen Aku

Member
3570k @ 4.3 / GTX 970 / 16GB DDR3 2133MHz

60+ using a mix of medium/high/ultra settings with 60fps as the target for dynamic resolution. No stuttering or hitching of any sort. I'm happy with how it runs.
Could you share your settings? I have a GTX970 and trying to hit 60fps
 
Could you share your settings? I have a GTX970 and trying to hit 60fps

He's using dynamic resolution to hit 60. I'd suggest that first and see if you notice any drops in resolution. If you can't then I'd stick with it. I used it for a while on 4k and seems to do the job very well.
 

Pilgore

Neo Member
Damn that sucks, I thought this game would be smooth sailing on PC judging from Shadow or Mordor and after taking a look at the graphical settings of this game.

What specs do you have btw? Just curious.

Yeah it's a bit of a head scratcher.

Specs:

GTX 980
I5 3570k 3.40GHZ
8GB ram

Monitors native res is 3440x1440 but I'm playing at 2560x1080.

2560x1080 can seem quite blurry at times depending on the game, with a game struggling to get 60 though and with Dynamic Resolution enabled? Looks atrocious. So I'm forced to play with it turned off but that will force me to lower the settings etc etc.
 

Lashley

Why does he wear the mask!?
yeah I definitely don't notice resolution drops and I keep a solid 60 at least with a 970
 

KingV

Member
Pretty disappointed to find out it doesn’t allow simultaneous mouse and joystick controls for steam controller support. I’m pretty sure the first one did and mouse joystick is a poor substitute.
 

Invis

Member
What would be the first settings to turn down that give marginal increases in fidelity? I just reached Act II and seeing some dips under 60.

I'm running on the Ultra preset + TAA, 1440p with a GTX1080 and 7700K.
 

Kuranghi

Member
What would be the first settings to turn down that give marginal increases in fidelity? I just reached Act II and seeing some dips under 60.

I'm running on the Ultra preset + TAA, 1440p with a GTX1080 and 7700K.

I set everything to max and res to 2160p [DSR on a 1080p screen], then I turned every setting that goes to Ultra down to High, except Texture Filtering, I also set Ambient Occlusion to Medium. With these settings, I saw minimal visual difference, I was very surprised that dropping the AO did not make a big difference, this is on a 970 SC. I left AA on TAA.

I can set dynamic res to 60 and do somewhere halfway between 1080p & 1440p or to 30 and get somewhere between 1620p & 1800p, so I'd say you could push it to 2160p easily and keep 30, in fact I get 19 fps at 2160p so I think even 1070 could do it.

I'm only at the first city, [with the big white tower] does the game get particularly more taxing later? Because I ran around for 20 mins and it was locked 30 & 60 depending on the dynamic res setting.

For people saying the Dynamic Res is blurry or not working for them I'd say persevere and try to fix it as its amazing when working, on mine I can just set the res to 2160p and dynamic res to your preferred framerate and it will use around 95% of the GPU to try and get it there. So it always looks the best it can res-wise. My suggestion is to change one setting [such as res] to something else then back to refresh the whole setup, seemed to work for me 4 out 5 times on two difference machines.
 
So have we decided on on what the true frame rate killers are? (10 fps or more drop)

Are you guys having better luck with fullscreen vs borderless, or no change at all?
 

ren008

Neo Member
So have we decided on on what the true frame rate killers are? (10 fps or more drop)

Are you guys having better luck with fullscreen vs borderless, or no change at all?

Lose 13 fps going from High to Ultra Shadows at 1080p with everything else at Ultra and Lumasharpen to help with the TAA blur on my 1070.

Nothing else seems to hit it as hard. VRAM usage is insane for a game that looks like this too :(

https://imgur.com/uTvtHwh
https://imgur.com/HMYXdnv
 
I have everything on high with filtering on ultra. AO might be on medium. Turned off dof, motion blur. I generally stay at 60fps or above. At the start of fortress missions where there are hundreds of guys around I might drop to 45fps for a second or two. This is with a 970 amd 3770K. Sometimes Ill drop to the 50s in really intense scenes.

But I am using gsync which really mitigates my noticing.
 

Iceternal

Member
Damn , the game was running pretty well except from some minor drops. But now I just started act II and wow .... I can't maintain 60 fps on ultra with my 980 ti ... such a shame ...
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Lose 13 fps going from High to Ultra Shadows at 1080p with everything else at Ultra and Lumasharpen to help with the TAA blur on my 1070.

Nothing else seems to hit it as hard. VRAM usage is insane for a game that looks like this too :(

https://imgur.com/uTvtHwh
https://imgur.com/HMYXdnv

Apparently, the game is merely caching texture data and doesn't actually need anywhere near that much (1440p and 4K benchmarks omitted):

Using a GTX 1080 Ti, which has 11 GB of VRAM, we tested the game's memory usage.

VRAM usage with "High" textures is very reasonable and barely exceeds 4 GB. Once you download the high-res texture pack and pick the "Ultra" setting, memory usage is roughly doubled, topping out at slightly above 9 GB - at 4K resolution. However, if you take a look at the benchmarks on this page, there is very little performance lost from enabling Ultra textures, even on cards with less memory.

My theory is that the game tries to fill up the VRAM by as much as possible, with the majority of textures never or rarely being needed. Considering that ALL Ultra textures - all the textures for all the maps, enemies and every piece of equipment - amount to just 10 GB, it seems like a reasonable assumption to make because it's impossible for a scene to use all those assets at the same time.

1080_high.png
1080_ultra.png
 

b0uncyfr0

Member
I can set dynamic res to 60 and do somewhere halfway between 1080p & 1440p or to 30 and get somewhere between 1620p & 1800p

How are you checking this? I want to use it but finding it hard to believe it doesnt just drop everything to 720p to achieve whatever frame rate you've chosen.
 

nOoblet16

Member
How are you checking this? I want to use it but finding it hard to believe it doesnt just drop everything to 720p to achieve whatever frame rate you've chosen.
Imo implementation of dynamic res on PC games have been quite shit. Check this for instance, in Dishonored 2 Death of the Outsider, I can play the entire game at solid 60FPS at 1440P with no drops, and when running at 1620P it drops framerate whenever I use that vision power thingy but is 60FPS most of the time and in other areas I can get 60FPS at 1800P or even 4K. The dynamic res option in that game lets you pick between 3 options that determine how low the resolution can drop in order to maintain the framerate that you set. These options are 85% reduction or 70% or 50%. At 4K these resolution become around 1800P, 1620P and 1080P respectively (no option for me to pick 1440P as the lower base, and I would have liked that because I can run 1440P at 60FPS 100% of the time).

So it stands to reason that if I play the game at dynamic 4K with 50% reduction as the lower limit then the game will never drop below 1440P right? Nope !! Wrong ! Because the moment I select that option the game automatically drops to 1080P....even when I'm looking at something like the sky or a background that would usually run at 4K/60FPS if I were to manually select that option. Absolutely ridiculous !

I'm trying to see if it's the same here in Shadow of War but at the very least it seems like dynamic res doesn't automatically drop the game to 1080P in my case.
 

nOoblet16

Member
I never notice when the res drops tbf, 1080p monitor though not 1440p

I have a 1080P monitor as well but I can still tell because sub pixel objects like hair, branches, foliage, wires, fur, and as well as the things in distance would be blurry and undefined at 1080P compared to running at higher resolution, as super sampling effectively provides the information necessary for the additional detail and clarity.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Could you share your settings? I have a GTX970 and trying to hit 60fps

Sure. I'm using:

Lighting: Medium
Mesh quality: Medium
Motion blur: On
AA: TAA
Shadow quality: Medium
Texture filtering: Ultra
Texture quality: High
AO: Medium
Vegetation range: High
Deepth of fild: On
Tesselation: On
Large page: Off

It never drops under 60fps (with 60fps as the target for dynamic resolution) which is more important than visuals to me, 60fps is always my goal for minimum fps. The game still looks really great IMO.
 
The more I play this game, the longer it seems to take to get up to 60fps when I first start, and my HDD is going crazy. Used to be instant, but now when I first spawn in it can take a good 30 seconds before everything is loaded and my framerate stabilizes. Not sure what's going on.
 

Kuranghi

Member
How are you checking this? I want to use it but finding it hard to believe it doesnt just drop everything to 720p to achieve whatever frame rate you've chosen.

I set the resolution to 1440p & V-sync to 60, with dynamic res off, then ran around the world getting in fights and generally trying to stress the GPU.

I found that it would dip VERY occasionally from 60 fps when there was loads going on, so I took a screenshot and then set the res to 3840x2160, V-sync on 60 and Dynamic Res on 60 and after 10 seconds to sort itself out [jumps between locked 60 and 30 at first] its locked 60 and then I took a screenshot to compare with the 1440p one and it seems pretty similar.

The reason for setting it to 3840x2160 is for certain situations like the Army screen where it can push the res up even more and still keep 60 fps.

I did the same for 30, where I ran it at 1620p, then 1800p [1620p was locked 30, 1800p had some dips in big fights], but I never did the comparison for 30 fps V-sync + 30 fps Dynamic Res [also at 3840x2160] with a 1620p/1800p screenshot because I wanted to actually just play at this point but by eye the res was noticeably higher.

My friend had a crazy time getting it to work on his actual 4K TV [KS7000], it doesn't show the right refresh rates and sometimes it just does as you say and locked to some terrible res like 540p and is obviously not working properly, so YMMV. He ended up just locking it to 1440p and 60 V-sync with no dynamic res on. He is on a 970M tho so maybe the feature doesn't like mobile cards.

I can only speak to mine and my friends experiences but I'd be happy to help people troubleshoot it because when it works its freaking glorious, I still can't decide on 30 or 60 and flip back and forth, the materials of the buildings are visible at middle distances with 30 fps but of course the animation and responsiveness is so much better looking/feeling at 60.
 

MaLDo

Member
Imo implementation of dynamic res on PC games have been quite shit. Check this for instance, in Dishonored 2 Death of the Outsider, I can play the entire game at solid 60FPS at 1440P with no drops, and when running at 1620P it drops framerate whenever I use that vision power thingy but is 60FPS most of the time and in other areas I can get 60FPS at 1800P or even 4K. The dynamic res option in that game lets you pick between 3 options that determine how low the resolution can drop in order to maintain the framerate that you set. These options are 85% reduction or 70% or 50%. At 4K these resolution become around 1800P, 1620P and 1080P respectively (no option for me to pick 1440P as the lower base, and I would have liked that because I can run 1440P at 60FPS 100% of the time).

So it stands to reason that if I play the game at dynamic 4K with 50% reduction as the lower limit then the game will never drop below 1440P right? Nope !! Wrong ! Because the moment I select that option the game automatically drops to 1080P....even when I'm looking at something like the sky or a background that would usually run at 4K/60FPS if I were to manually select that option. Absolutely ridiculous !

I'm trying to see if it's the same here in Shadow of War but at the very least it seems like dynamic res doesn't automatically drop the game to 1080P in my case.


50% if the account for every axis, means 4K -> 1080p

Also, if you are using some framerate limiter, maybe the game thinks is not reaching 60 fps in any moment and then applying the max reduction.
 

Carm

Member
Does anyone else get the flicker in the video below at the 15 second mark, while using elven speed? It also happens when going to the pause menu and you have a orc targeted the orc will flicker the same way. This happens every time in both instances, oddly except in the video only once. I fast traveled to other regions and happens everywhere. Oddly, I didn't noticed this the 42 hours I've played till this morning.

It happens at the 15 second mark.

https://youtu.be/n4Wml1-CEPA?t=13s

Updated video drivers, no change, switched between borderless and full screen also no change.

Just a annoying visual glitch, just want to make sure something odd is happening specifically with my set up.
 

Vlaphor

Member
So, I'm actually able to run this game fairly well at 4k with high res textures and everything maxed (thank to my 4790k and 1080ti), but I'm having an issue. I was having some issues with frame times, so I ran RTSS and locked it to 60. Now it runs fantastic, but I get screen tearing like mad. If I run V-sync, that brings back the unresponsiveness in the controls.

Anyone here have any ideas? I'm somewhat new to RTSS, but I'm liking what I'm seeing.
 
Okay I finally made it to act 2 and yeah it's gotten more demanding, I'm still maintaining my half refresh rate (72fps) just fine but my 1070 and 2500k are working harder. Also had some audio issues with it dropping for a second the last time I played as well.
 

Zen Aku

Member
Sure. I'm using:

It never drops under 60fps (with 60fps as the target for dynamic resolution) which is more important than visuals to me, 60fps is always my goal for minimum fps. The game still looks really great IMO.

Thanks mate.
----------------------------------
Wait so 4K texture pack isn't that big of a performance impact? Is it a huge different from normal texture?
 
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