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.

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

AnandTech IGP Low Medium High
Average FPS

Gaming: Final Fantasy XV Gaming: Strange Brigade (DX12, Vulkan)
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  • Netmsm - Saturday, November 16, 2019 - link

    Also, in section "x264 HD 3.0: Older Transcode Test" the result of "3DPM v1 Multi-Threaded" is mistakenly placed instead of "x264 HD 3.0 Pass 2".
  • The_Assimilator - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link

    "I’m sure some people will disagree about those 50 MHz"

    We call those people "whiny bitches who should STFU".
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link

    In a world of such precision and technical pedants, you have to admit that it is false advertising to say 4.7GHz, when it is 50MHz shy. Rounded up, it's OK, but it's only 1% shady.

    For my use case, this sentence nails it perfectly: "the Core i9-9900KS is still running at 5.0 GHz for sustained single threaded work, which is still 7-15% higher than the Ryzen 3950X, and as a result it does pull out ahead in a number of ST tests as well as in low resolution (CPU-bound) gaming". Most of the games I play are not current-gen visual spectacles, but rather twitch and competitive games that are a few years old. My priority is the highest possible frame rates for high refresh gaming. I'm not sure that I do enough video editing to justify Ryzen, as tempting as the rest of the package is.
  • Cooe - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link

    Most every other review I've seen has it hitting the full 4.7GHz, with many even going beyond into the 4.75GHz range when adequate cooling is used. The silicon binning quality of the 3950X seems to be absolutely freaking insane. Meethinks this -50MHz deficit is unique to something specific to Ian's setup here.
  • RSAUser - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link

    Gamersnexus also seems to have gotten a bit of a dud. LTT seems to have gotten a good one.
  • Cooe - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link

    Not just Linus, most people have gotten "good ones". I can count the number reviews with chips that didn't reach the advertised 4.7GHz on one hand & have fingers left over to spare (and if I include all those within 50ishMHz or so, like Ian's here, it drops to just one).
  • zmatt - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link

    Every cpu I have ever owned has always been a percent or so off the advertised frequency either above or below. The number on the box is really just an average and always has been.
  • uefi - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link

    Don't forget, Intel has their share of the occasional performance shaving microcode patches every year or so.
  • eek2121 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link

    I walked away with a very different picture. Right now Anandtech is clearly GPU bound in the benchmarks. They are benchmarking on a GTX 1080, and the results clearly reflect that. Having run some of these games on a 1080ti on my stock 1950X, I get a better result. They really need a 2080ti or 2080 super at this point.
  • plonk420 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link

    they can't really use a 1080Ti or better with GTA5... check out GN's coverage: if you hit over ~180fps, you hit a cap that results in insane stuttering (same with RDR2 and 144hz or so)

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