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.

The standard Ultra, High, and Medium presets were used with the more graphically-bound battle benchmark.

Total War: Warhammer II - 1920x1080- Ultra Quality

Total War: Warhammer II - 1920x1080 - High Quality

Total War: Warhammer II - 1920x1080 - Medium Quality

Rounding out our look at game performance is Total War: Warhammer II. While the GTX 1650 is closer to the GTX 1050 Ti than the GTX 1060 3GB, the subdued performance of the RX 570 brings them near-level.

F1 2018 Compute & Synthetics
Comments Locked

126 Comments

View All Comments

  • nevcairiel - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link

    A P-Frame (Predictive Frame) by definition is only in one direction - backwards. B-Frames (Bidirectional Predictive Frame) are allowed in both directions. This is an import distinction because it matters in which order those frames are put into the encoded video. "Future" frames of course need to be send first, or you can't use them for prediction.

    Thats where pattern like "IPBBB" come from. You start with a single I frame, a single P frame referencing that I frame (the P might be shown after some B frames), and then an array of B frames that reference both the I and P frames - and possibly each other.

    P and B frames are otherwise identical in how they work. Both contain motion vectors and entropy data to correct the interpolation.

    Also note that H264 already supported up to 16 reference frames for interpolation. Its called bidirectional not because its two frames, but two directions - past and future.
  • Opencg - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link

    please include fortnight average fps over 10 hour playtime. for all cards. all on the same patch. thx
  • Bulat Ziganshin - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link

    The "NVIDIA is holding back a bit" part is duplicated on pages 1 and 2
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link

    Whoops. That was meant to get excised when I rearranged the article. Thanks!
  • eva02langley - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link

    This card shouldn't exist.

    R7 was making sense because it was cheaper than a 2080, however this is more expensive than a RX 570... AND WEAKER!
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, May 4, 2019 - link

    It apparently exists for the GTX 960 buyers (the people who don't do their homework).
  • eek2121 - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link

    In before 1650ti. ;)
  • AshlayW - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link

    Wow. This card makes no sense. Go watch hardware unboxed's video where he conveniently shoots down the "power efficiency" argument. It's a load of rubbish, there is absolutely no reason to buy this card over even the 4GB 570, for any new gaming build. This review tried so hard to paint this turd in a positive light, continually underscoring AMD's "technological disadvantages" and "thin profit margin". P20 isn't even that much bigger than TU117 also.

    I'm sorry I just feel it is too friendly to nvidia and doesn't criticize this terrible product pricing enough. RX570 8GB pulse, fro sapphire is cooler running, quieter, vastly higher build quality, >10% faster, twice the vram and 135W board power, which is perfectly fine even for potato OEM builds anyway.

    Seriously, drop Ty efficiency arguy. This card is DOA at 149 because 570 killed it.

    1024 CC card at 130 bucks would've been passable, not this joke.
  • AshlayW - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link

    The 570 8Gb pulse is also the same price or cheaper than 1650, at least here in the UK. Forgot to mention that important point.
  • AshlayW - Friday, May 3, 2019 - link

    Typos as I'm on my phone and I have fat fingers.

    Should read: "drop the efficiency argument"

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now