Gaming: Shadow of War

Next up is Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the sequel to Shadow of Mordor. Developed by Monolith, whose last hit was arguably F.E.A.R., Shadow of Mordor returned them to the spotlight with an innovative NPC rival generation and interaction system called the Nemesis System, along with a storyline based on J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, and making it work on a highly modified engine that originally powered F.E.A.R. in 2005.

Using the new LithTech Firebird engine, Shadow of War improves on the detail and complexity, and with free add-on high-resolution texture packs, offers itself as a good example of getting the most graphics out of an engine that may not be bleeding edge. Shadow of War also supports HDR (HDR10).

AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List
Game Genre Release Date API IGP Low Med High
Shadow of War Action / RPG Sep
2017
DX11 720p
Ultra
1080p
Ultra
4K
High
8K
High

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

AnandTech IGP Low Medium High
Average FPS

Going down to the 2300X at 1080p drops performance around 14%, but at 4K and above, all the CPUs perform equal.

Gaming: Final Fantasy XV Gaming: Civilization 6 (DX12)
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  • Le Québécois - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link

    Ian, any reason why more often than not, you seem to "skip" 1440 in your benchmarks? It's only present for a few games.

    Considering the GTX 1080, your best card, is always the bottleneck at 4K, as your numbers show, wouldn't it make more sense to focus more on 1440 instead?

    Especially considering it's the "best" resolution on the market if you are looking for a high pixel density yet still want to run your games at a playable levels of fps.
  • Ian Cutress - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link

    Some benchmarks are run at 1440p. Some go up to 8K. It's a mix. There's what, 10 games there? Not all of them have to conform to the same testing settings.
  • Le Québécois - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link

    Sorry for the confusion. I can clearly see we've got very different settings in that mix. I guess a more direct question would be: why do it this way and not with a more standardized series of test?

    A followup question would also be, why 8K? You are already GPU limited at 4K so your 8K result are not going to give any relevant information about those CPUs.

    Sorry, I don't mean to criticized, I simply wish to understand your thought process.
  • MrSpadge - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link

    What exactly do you want to see there that you can't see at 1080p? Differences between CPUs are going to be muddied due to approaching the GPU limit, and that's it.
  • Le Québécois - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link

    Well, at 1080, you can definitely see the difference between them, and exactly like you said, at 4K, it's all the same because of the GPU limitations. 1440 seems more relevant than 4K considering this. This is after all, a CPU review and most of the 4K results could be summed up by "they all perform within a few %".
  • neblogai - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link

    End of page 19: R5 2600 is really 65W TDP, not 95W.
  • Ian Cutress - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link

    Doh, a typo in all my graphs too. Should be updated.
  • imaheadcase - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link

    Im on phone on AT and truly see how terrible ads are now. AT straight up letting scam ads now being served because desperate for revenue. 😂
  • PeachNCream - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link

    Is there a point in even mentioning that give how little control they now have over advertising? Just fire up the ad blocker or visit another site and let the new owners figure it out the hard way.
  • StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link

    Anandtech had Maleware/Viruses infect it's userbase years ago via crappy adverts.

    That was the moment I got Ad-Block. And that is the moment where I will never turn it off again.

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