Total War: Warhammer II (DX11)

Last in our 2018 game suite is Total War: Warhammer II, built on the same engine of Total War: Warhammer. While there is a more recent Total War title, Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, that game was built on the 32-bit version of the engine. The first TW: Warhammer was a DX11 game was to some extent developed with DX12 in mind, with preview builds showcasing DX12 performance. In Warhammer II, the matter, however, appears to have been dropped, with DX12 mode still marked as beta, but also featuring performance regression for both vendors.

It's unfortunate because Creative Assembly themselves have acknowledged the CPU-bound nature of their games, and with re-use of game engines as spin-offs, DX12 optimization would have continued to provide benefits, especially if the future of graphics in RTS-type games will lean towards low-level APIs.

There are now three benchmarks with varying graphics and processor loads; we've opted for the Battle benchmark, which appears to be the most graphics-bound.

Total War: Warhammer II - 2560x1440 - Ultra Quality

Total War: Warhammer II - 1920x1080- Ultra Quality

Rounding out our look at game performance is Total War: Warhammer II. Here, the GTX 1660 is a neat split between the GTX 1060 6GB/RX 590 and the GTX 1660 Ti.

F1 2018 Compute & Synthetics
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  • flyingpants265 - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    used cards have no warranty and arent a realistic option for most people
  • Bp_968 - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    EVGA warranties are usually 3 to 5 years and transferable. And as long as it works for a week or so after you install it its likely good forever at that point. Out of the 120+ video cards I've owned and installed over the past 25 years I've only see a handful fail and the majority of those were DOA right off out of the box.
  • AustinPowersISU - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    Do you work for Nvidia by chance? I mean, they had $500 million less sales in Q4 last year due to (partly) the used market eating into their profits. I guess bashing the reliability of old products is a way to increase sales of the new, but it damages the brand.

    If a $200 purchase would literally cause you massive financial pain if it broke, I would make the argument that you shouldn't be purchasing anything, regardless of warranty.

    I would also make the argument that a 1070 that has lasted for years is probably more reliable than turing, which had failure problems at launch.

    The true solution would be to actually release a product that increased performance over last gen at a better price, but that doesn't seem to happen with Nvidia anymore.

    Enjoy the lower performance for more money. I'll keep gaming on my 1070 I picked up for $175.
  • Mr Perfect - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    Page one paragraph three starts with "Turing our eyes to NVIDIA’s new card then"

    I can't decide if that's a typo or a pun.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    I'm going to go with "both".

    Thanks!
  • atiradeonag - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    $219 1660 offers better perf/$ than both RX 580 and RX590, AMD your move
  • Death666Angel - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    RX590 was never a perf-per-dollar leader. RX580 still is according to TPU. TechSpot has the 1660 slightly ahead. Guess it depends on the seller and the price you can get. Does the 1660 offer any game addons? Seems like this is the first time in a while we have competition. Now we just need it for the 300€ range and we're golden. Let's see what Navi brings.
  • eva02langley - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    Like I mentioned, at 180$, the RX 580 stand at 2.30$, below the 1660... and you get Resident Evil 2 and DMC 5 for free.
  • Qasar - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link

    eva02langley and what if you dont want to play those games?? then what?
    RX580 starts at $320, 1660 $300 ( for preorder, price could change ) where i am ( canada ) i wish video cards were that inexpensive up here....
  • Death666Angel - Sunday, March 17, 2019 - link

    "what if you dont want to play those games?? then what?"
    Have you heard of this newfangled thing called "Ebay"?

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