I was quite skeptical of the 6gb VRAM recommendation leading up to Mordor's release, and turns out I was right to be skeptical. I installed the HD texture pack from Steam, set everything to Ultra, turned motion blur off, and I'm getting 60 fps stable during gameplay at 1920x1200. VRAM usage is maxed out at 3gb, as expected.

Other specs on this particular machine: 4690k at 4.6ghz, 16gb DDR3 1600mhz CL9, Samsung 840 EVO SSD. CPU usage is pretty low and evenly spread across 4 cores, and system RAM usage is only around 1.25gb.

Wonder if this will work with r9 290

I've got a GTX 770 and I'm installing it now. I doubt the Ultra Textures will work because it's 2GB VRAM. But still, it'll probably look good.

Really I can hardly tell the difference between High and Ultra at 1080p. High looks really good, so you you shouldn't feel like you are missing anything. There are lots of options so I'm sure you will be able to find a combination you are happy with.

I got a GTX 770, i5 3570k and it runs at 60 fps with everything maxed out expect "ambient occlusion,tessellation" in certain spots it chugs but hopefully the next driver update smooths things out.

I've got a GTX 560 ti and an i5-2500k and the game runs like butt for me unfortunately.

I'm thinking the video card is my problem but worried both may need an upgrade at this point.

lol amd

Aren't Ultra textures not out yet?

They're out. Check the Steam store page, it's handled as a free DLC download.

I have a 780 ti, i7 2600k, 8GB and with everything at max including ultra textures @1440p I got below 30FPS :(

I'm usually OK with setting everything to max as long as I get 40-45+ but for this I just had to turn off ultra textures :(

It is also crazy that the only AA is super sampling. I just forced FXAA through NV control panel and it looks much better than no AA.

Can anyone with a GTX 780m tell me their experience? It sounds like I should do just fine, but It'd be nice to have some assurance.

My 3GB 780 averages 73 FPS in the benchmark with the same exact settings, but... in game performance is not so hot; it drops below 30 too frequently to be playable (IMO).

With textures set to High it averages 80 and doesn't go below 43 FPS.

My 780 has a 1240Mhz core clock and a conservative 6750Mhz memory clock. The 780 Ti is a beast of a card though, with more memory bandwidth.

@ripelivejam said:

This is my favorite post.

GTX 670 2GB VRam struggles with max settings (high textures included, though it worked just got a bit much in the more hectic fights) though I just bunged it onto the preset for my card and it still looks reallly good and plays silky smooth. Think its time to upgrade the ol' girl I fear it's gonna start to struggle as the generation progresses. The 970 looks to be the card for me now :)

Hmm... If that's the case, I wonder how my 4GB 760 will fair with this game.

Aren't the Ultra textures designed for 4K anyway? I can probably run them when steam stops dicking around with pausing every download every few seconds, I'm just not sure why I'd want to at 1080p.

EDIT: Got it working and I'm inclined to agree with you, I can't see any difference... Except my average framerate is higher.

R9 290X 4GB:

High with recommended settings average FPS was 61~

Ultra with recommended setting: 66FPS

EVERYTHING on Ultra: 86FPS

Weird.

Not even going to try the ultra textures, my 7950 OC'd can't even handle all the other settings at ultra. I usually don't mind playing on lower settings, but honestly this game looks shit on lower settings lol. Guess the time to upgrade is closing in.

Honestly though, at first i was getting 70-80fps, now i'm getting 45-55 fps. Not sure what is causing the change.

Honestly the 2500k should be fine at least for a little while longer, GPU will always be the better upgrade choice for games.

Runs really well at High with a few tweaks with my 660

Good to know, I've got a 660 ti so when MY UNI HALLS BULLSHIT HALF MB INTERNET FINISHES DOWNLOADING THE 35+ GB FILE, I can be happy :)

Thank you for the tip. I just finished downloading Shadow of Mordor literally a minute ago, and went back for the HD pack. Was that really 34 gb's I just installed?...took forever.

I have a single high end card installed, and it will be interesting how it does. I'm glad the 6 gig doesn't really seem to play for others. I assume SLI would also help with say the memory requirement?

I have a gtx 780 SLI config, so I can't wait until they (hopefully) add support for that down the line. For right now though, I am maxing out everything except textures and getting a stable 60 fps with no overclock. With the Ultra texture pack installed and on it kinda also worked, but instead of lowering the fps evenly it pretty much ran at 60 except whenever I would pan the camera around then it would go down to probably as low as like 20 fps (just eyeballing it). But yeah, otherwise loving the game. The Nemesis system makes the combat utterly satisfying.

Unfortunately not...when you SLI two or more cards together, they mirror their entire available memory to the other cards, so the VRAM isn't increased. Two 2gb cards in SLI will give you 2gb of addressable VRAM, not 4gb. It just gives you more processing power.

@shinboy630: So when looking for a new card should I go for something with higher memory or is that not as important as other features? I'm not looking to drop too much money on a card so I'm looking at something mid-range like a 2GB GTX 760

Always confused by this, because my current card has 2GB of memory so it looks on paper to me like a crummy upgrade.

@rockyraccoon37: Get a 4GB 970. They are pretty affordable and really powerful.

Is anyone else getting random moments of single digit framerates? The game runs at 60 for me but sometimes it just chuuuuuuuugs.

@corevi: I'm ideally looking to spend $300 or less, so that one is a little out of my price range.

@rockyraccoon37: what about a 3gb GTX 780? They're still around and prices dropped on them considerably once the 900 series cards came out. But really, some of the 4gb 970s are only 329...maybe wait a little bit?

I think I heard somewhere that the 6GB requirement was supposed to be for 4k, but the game makes no mention of that in the options. At any rate, with my 680 2GBs in SLI I can manage ultra everything except for ambient occlusion, which I turned down to high, and textures, medium, at 2560x1440. I'm averaging a frame rate right around 60.

Yeah it happens to me as well. Mainly when I'm aiming the bow which is really frustrating.

@rockyraccoon37 said:

The 4gb GTX 970s are back in stock at newegg, ranging from $330-350 after rebate. That'd get my vote, though it may be higher than your price range.

@mb: I'm in Canada and I'm seeing them priced at $370 but I only did a quick look

I'll check out the GTX 780 though, thanks!

@corevi: You are probably running out of VRAM. Try turning down texture resolution and test to see if the problem persists. I had that problem too when I was running on high textures. Turning them down to medium fixed that for me.

My 4GB 970 runs this game at max settings (barring Ultra textures, which I haven't tried) at a 100% solid 60 at 1080p, so I might try bumping up to Ultra textures. I'm wondering how much of a difference there actually is, though; are there any comparison screenshots out there?

It's barely noticeable at 1080p.

Hmmm 3GB eh... I wonder how my now-somewhat-aged EVGA 580 3GB edition will do...

I just updated from a GTX 465. I would play games well over the memory for that card. Windows would use virtual memory for the extra it needed. Do normal cards even come with 6gb? I just bought a 4GB 770 and dont recall seeing 6gb even on other models.

@john1912: Titans are the only cards that have that much VRAM.

OK, I was somewhat expecting that. Thanks for the confirmation, I might not worry about it then.

Anybody have any screenshots or can link a comparison? I'm kind of interested to see the difference between the two.

@i_stay_puft: For the last hour I've been switching back and forth between Ultra and High and at 1080p I can barely tell the difference.

I'm going to switch over to 1440p and take some screenshots and post them, give me a bit.

@mb: Wait does it use the full 3GB of your GPU? In that case I would love to hear from someone who has more than 3GB to see if more of the VRAM is being used for them.

Only other tweak I did was to drop ambient occlusion from ultra to high. Everything else is running smooth on my 770 although I'm looking forward to getting the 980 more

@i_stay_puft: Here's just a couple of 1080p screenshots...I restarted the game after switching so I didn't get exactly the same angle, but here you go. First one is High, second is Ultra. Everything else maxed. I could take some screenshots of different areas or characters if anyone wanted me to, but honestly the difference isn't that great, at least on my card. Maybe someone with a 4gb card or a Titan or something like that would see more of an improvement on Ultra.

@mb: Wow the difference is barely noticeable when comparing those screenshots.

Yeah, I wonder if its because the game detects that the VRAM is only a X amount thus it doesn't force out more detailed textures even if you set the settings to Ultra.

@gaspower: I also have an Asus 1440p monitor and noticed no visual difference between High and Ultra, but there sure was a performance hit...so the game isn't reducing anything on the back end, it definitely is running the "higher" textures otherwise I would not have seen a drop in FPS.

After spending hours and hours screwing around with two different machines, three different monitors, and all kinds of settings, I've settled on just playing Mordor on a 55" 1080p TV driven by a GTX 780 played with a wireless 360 controller. Textures on high, everything else on Ultra. Looks fantastic and runs at a locked 60.

Digital Foundry has put up an article on the Ultra textures: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-eyes-on-with-pc-shadow-of-mordors-6gb-textures

Monolith recommends a 6GB GPU for the highest possible quality level - and we found that at both 1080p and 2560x1440 resolutions, the game's art ate up between 5.4 to 5.6GB of onboard GDDR5. Meanwhile, the high setting utilises 2.8GB to 3GB, while medium is designed for the majority of gaming GPUs out there, occupying around 1.8GB of video RAM.

The actual visual differences seem minor though, especially considering the massive prerequisites to make them happen. Although I suppose most people (myself included) will only be able to reach the medium textures setting and the step up from medium to high quality textures seems quite a bit more noticeable. Not to mention that the medium setting actually seems to be inferior to what the current gen consoles offer.

Anybody with high res monitors having this issue? I can't get exact 1080p, it only gives me the 2 resolutions shown in the pictures