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 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.

Shadow of War IGP Low Medium High
Average FPS

Shadow of War is another game where it’s hard to tease out CPU limitations under reasonable game settings. Even 1080p Ultra is a bunch of Intel CPUs seeing who can tip-toe over 100fps, with AMD right on their tail. The less reasonable 720p Ultra pushes this back slightly – the CPUs with the weakest per-thread performance start to fall behind – but it’s still a tight pack for all of the Coffee Lake CPUs. With the highest frequencies and tied for the most cores among the desktop processors here, it’s clear that the 9900K is going to be the strongest contender. But this isn’t a game that can benefit from that performance right now.

Gaming: Final Fantasy XV Gaming: Civilization 6 (DX12)
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  • 0ldman79 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    AMD needs to improve their AVX processing as well, but they've got Intel in a bit of a predicament.
  • Hifihedgehog - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...

    Intel’s FX 9000 series.

    Now even hotter and more power hungry than ever!
  • mapesdhs - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link

    It reminds me a lot of the P4 days when Intel just had to shove clocks through the roof to remain relevant. And I don't know why tech sites are salivating so much on oc levels that are barely any better than a chip's max turbo, it's a far cry from the days of SB, especially since one can run a 2700K at 5GHz with sensible voltage and good temps using a simple air cooler (ordinary TRUE works fine) and one fan, without high noise (I know, I've built seven of them so far). To me, the oc'ing potential of the 9K series is just boring, especially since the cost is so high that for gaming one is far better off buying a 2700X, 8700K (or many other options) and using the save to get a better GPU.
  • sgeocla - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    Why compare to the TR 1920x ($799) and not to the TR 2950X ($899)?
    The TR 2950X kills it in almost every productivity benchmark even against i-9 9900k.
    Not even mentioning the 9th gen power consumption.
  • Yorgos - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    don't bother with the review.
    They show you the results that makes intel seem good.
    Intel/Purch media have failed to show to the people that they exceed even Threadripper's TDP in order to fight Zen.
    Desperate moves for desperate times.
    Better look somewhere else for an unbiased review.
  • mkaibear - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    What, you mean apart from page 21 where it shows that it almost doubles Threadripper's TDP for the same core count CPU and is 50% greater than the one which has 50% more cores than it does?

    Some reading comprehension lessons needed I think.
  • yeeeeman - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    The 9900K looks like a nice CPU, but damn that power consumption is stupidly high. It is almost twice what the 2700X consumes.
  • Hifihedgehog - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    *High-end AIO required.
  • AGS3 - Friday, October 19, 2018 - link

    Twice the CPU - 8 cores over 5Ghz :)
  • AutomaticTaco - Saturday, October 20, 2018 - link

    Revised down. The first motherboard they used was extremely higher voltage settings.
    https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen...

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