Total War: Shogun 2

Our next benchmark is Shogun 2, which is a continuing favorite to our benchmark suite. 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. Even 2 years after its release it’s still a very punishing game at its highest settings due to the amount of shading and memory those units require.

Total War: Shogun 2 - 1920x1080 - Ultra Quality

Total War: Shogun 2 - 1920x1080 - Very High Quality

Shogun at Ultra quality has been favoring our NVIDIA cards as of late. As a result the GTX 650 Ti Boost becomes the cheapest card to cross the 30fps threshold at these Ultra settings. Though at the more meaningful very high quality settings, we get something that’s more an archetypical outcome for these cards, with the GTX 650 Ti Boost in close pursuit of the 7850 and clearly ahead of the 7790. This is a shader bound game, so compared to the vanilla GTX 650 Ti, the boost variant picks up some performance, but it’s still not enough to even halve the gap to the GTX 660.

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  • Zstream - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    Any specific reason as to why the 1gb wasn't used?
  • Zstream - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    In addition, the 7790 will have 2gb cards as well so I'm just confused overall.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    Probably because nVidia only sent a 2GB sample. I assume once retail cards are available a 1GB model will be tested too.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    Of course they didn't send the 1GB model. It's absolutely completely positively ridiculous. It has no business existing.
  • shandy706 - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    They say why in the article. I think I'd read it before commenting.

    lol
  • Zstream - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    I guess I don't see where that's in the article. Can you comment on the paragraph?
  • shandy706 - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    "Please note that the GTX 650 Ti Boost NVIDIA is sampling is the 2GB card. We’ll take a look at 1GB cards later once those arrive, since they were a late addition."

    Second page, very middle.
  • HighTech4US - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    From page 2 (clear as day, if you just bothered to read)

    Please note that the GTX 650 Ti Boost NVIDIA is sampling is the 2GB card. We’ll take a look at 1GB cards later once those arrive, since they were a late addition.
  • Zstream - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    Thanks for clearing that up. I will have to wait to see if the 2gb is a paper launch.
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - link

    2GB 650 TiB launches this week. It will be 1G that will come later.

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