Total War: Shogun 2

Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. As it also turns out, it’s the single most punishing game in our benchmark suite (on higher end hardware at least).

Unfortunately for NVIDIA the Kepler performance bug persists with Shogun 2, which makes things particularly wretched for NVIDIA at Ultra settings. At 2560 the GTX 670 can’t beat a Radeon HD 6970 let alone a 7950. The fact that the GTX 670 does so well at 1920 where this issue doesn’t come up does give the GTX 670 a great deal of hope however, as at this point it’s fast enough to climb past both the 7950 and 7970. It will be interesting to see just where the GTX 670 fits in once this bug is fixed, though we’re expecting it to be on the low side of the performance curve relative to the GTX 680.

On that note this is one of a couple of games that really drives a wedge between the GTX 670 and the GTX 570, even with the Kepler issues. The GTX 570 and it’s increasingly puny 1.25GB of RAM can’t even run this game with our 2560 benchmark settings, meanwhile at 1920 it has enough RAM but the GTX 670 still beats it by 68%.

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  • Spunjji - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link

    Sick burn ;D
  • yankeeDDL - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link

    Why would AMD fans be sad?
    AMD enjoyed a multi-months lead in performance, over-charging for their cards that had, substantially, no competitions at their price levels.
    Now NVIDIA made a move, and it's a very good one: AMD will need to drop the prices and I see really no reason why they couldn't, as they have just a marginally larger die size (300mm2 vs 365mm2) on the same fab/technology.

    Price drop is always a win for the customers, be that an Nvidia or an AMD fanboy (or just an enthusiast).
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link

    That's right. With some more pressure and HD7950 at 300€ GCN may actually start to become a real option! Saying this as a Cayman owning AMD-preferer.
  • andrewaggb - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link

    It's not like the 7970 is a bad card, it's somewhat slower at games, has more ram, is much faster at gpu compute, and is still a relatively low power offering.

    There's always something better just around the corner. Buy what's best when you need it, and be happy about it :-). Give it 6 months to a year and there will be something better than the 670 as well.
  • CeriseCogburn - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link

    If the 7970 is much faster at gpu compute, why did it lose 3 of 5 compute benchmarks in this review ?
    Hmm... loser but better, loser but better...

    Also amd power loser but "still relatively a low power offering", loser but relatively a winner, loses but it's a winner anyway...

    I've got it ! The loser is better and wins !
  • SlyNine - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link

    Seriously dude. I MIGHT could give you the first point, if it wasn't riddled full of biased.

    But the second point doesn't even make sense.

    "Also amd power loser but "still relatively a low power offering", loser but relatively a winner, loses but it's a winner anyway..."

    Now you're just throwing words in his mouth he didn't even use. What a fail!

    GTX680 owner speaking.
  • CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link

    " and is still a relatively low power offering." (his words I responded to)

    Okay, maybe I went overboard.

    On the other hand, we haven't heard this going the other way at all, and the 7970's loss in the power envelope is loss of a reason to buy an amd card.

    Relatively, it's a high power offering, we are after all comparing the two brands, and it's high power usage allows the claims for victory in compute (even when the software base does not).
  • Galidou - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link

    ''Okay, maybe I went overboard.''

    You do that all day long going overboard...
  • CeriseCogburn - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link

    You do nothing but lie and attack, so you have zero room to talk.
  • Galidou - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link

    And I am the one who attack, I attack but not you? LOL you're so fun, don'T make me copy and paste every word lack of respect the abuse of words such as massive ignorance, stupid, everyone lies but not you... and everyone lacks of respect but not you... OMG that's extreme

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