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Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – PC Settings Unveiled, Ultra Textures Require 6GB Of VRAM

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Things are quickly getting out of hand. NeoGAF’s member ‘Regret Truth’ has shared an image from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor that shows the PC settings for it. What really surprised us, however, was the fact that: a) there will be an Ultra Texture Pack available for download in day-one and b) it will require 6GB of VRAM when these Ultra textures have been activated.

And that is at only 1080p. We’re not talking about 4K resolutions (so imagine what it will take to push this title at such high resolutions).

Just yesterday, Bethesda claimed that The Evil Within would require 4GB of VRAM in order to be properly enjoyed (at presumably max settings). And now here comes Monolith with those somehow ridiculous requirements. I mean, seriously now, not even the newly released GTX970 will be able to run it. Hilarious.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor releases next week.

Enjoy and stay tuned for more!

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  • Dracula ™ © ®

    And that’s how they gonna promote the 8GB version of GTX980/970.

  • qqq

    Ultra Textures Require 6GB Of VRAM

    • Christian Canilang

      LOLZ! XD

    • Yeltnerb1

      PC GAMING FTW! Upgrade or GTFO!

      • randir14

        Upgrade to what? There isn’t even a GTX 980 with 6gb.

        • Upgrade to a GTX Titan Black or R9 295 X2 just for the VRAM requirements.

          • Psionicinversion

            295×2 wont work…. dual GPU’s have same data copied to both ram buffers equaling still only 4GB it just processes it faster. there are 8GB 290x cards though from sapphire

          • Russell Collins

            Too bad they’re only in Europe and there’s only 500 or so.

          • Actually didn’t think about that so yeah ,the 8GB is shared between the two GPUs on the card.

          • ROdNEY

            OR buy a current console 🙂

          • Psionicinversion

            with medium textures lol

          • AMD 3GB VRAM cards are cheap anyway and the consoles won’t use much more for video than 3GB.

        • deSSy2724

          haha even SLI/CF wont help us (games can use only the VRAM from a single GPU, not both GPUs). ahha FU** HILARIOUS!!!

        • PIRATE or NINJA

          ive got a 6gb 780

          • ROdNEY

            6GB has bellow <0.5% share, 4GB has <1.5%. Nice to see they are making games for those people. WELL DONE!!!

          • PJ

            That’s over two million people.

            And it’s not like this is without precedent. Crysis released with higher recommended requirements for “Ultra” than would be popular for years. It just means you play through today on High, and enjoy the improvement when you replay the game in 2016.

        • Yeltnerb1

          8GB GTX 980s are coming soon. I’m afraid that many of us will have to exercise some patience.

      • Amir

        go to he*l idiot

    • LOLWUT

    • ROdNEY

      Nah, they just do not bother by optimized porting from consoles using unified memory (HSA). And since consoles have 8GB we can expect even bigger requirements than this :/

      • Wrong, consoles have about 5.5/6GB of memory available for games. Video and other game data all use that. 3GB of the 8GB is reserved.

  • anaconda

    wtf is happening 4gb Vram now 6gb Vram
    crysis 3 barely uses 2gb Vram and it look gorgeous
    and i think its gonna hurt gtx 980 970 sales

    • PB

      WIth SMAA crysis vram usage is OK, but I cant play crysis 3 on my 2GB card with MSAAx4. Performance will be good for maybe 5 minutes, but when game will use all available Vram on my card, performance will be cut in half, from that point game is unplayable. In 4K and MSAAx4, crysis 3 needs 3680MB

      • JustAnotherDude

        Yeah, but that’s at 4K. This is only 1080p. 6GB of VRAM in 1080p is ridiculous, and it can only mean that the devs did a sh**ty job of optimization.

      • Russell Collins

        SMAA is superior anyways

        • PB

          SMAA looks acceptable, but its just blur filter and it doesnt add missing details. It does look sharper compared to FXAA but still looks noticable worse (especialy during movement) compared to MSAAx4 +transparency option in Nv panel. I even prefer just MSAAx2 +transparency than SMAA.

          But right now I’m using lanczos downsampling 1.5x resolution + SMAA, and it gives superb results, better than MSAAx4 and performance hit is similar. Before I tried standard downsampling (bilinear resampling) but picture wasnt that sharp compared to lanczos.

  • It’s just NVIDIA trying to sell more GTX Titans because they’re the only NVIDIA cards(reference designs) with 6GB VRAM+. Quite a coincidence hey? 🙂

    • Dracula ™ © ®

      There are 290/290X with 8GB and 780’s with 6GB.

      • NVIDIA only use reference cards, if it was shown at Game24 then it would have been running on a reference GTX Titan.

        • Dracula ™ © ®

          Bear in mind that at this time, High and Ultra has no difference at all.They will release a texture pack for Ultra textures.I’m really curious for the differences..I bet that they will be minimal or none at most parts.

          • Can’t be any worse than Watch Dogs where the Ultra textures run bad on anything. As long as it runs good but yeah, we will have to see what high and ultra look like in comparisons.

          • Dracula ™ © ®

            Watch_Dogs seemed to like specific systems.I mean, a friend of mine can play Watch_Dogs at ultra settings(Plus textures) and MSAA with a GTX670 2GB on 1080P.I also have a GTX670 2GB and i couldn’t play with ultra textures without having serious stuttering issues.

          • Bundy

            Watch Dogs ran like poop for me. And I have a 780 GTX, i4770 OC@ 4.5Ghz and 16GB RAM. And that wasn’t even on ultra settings. It’s the only game I had an issue with, everything else I can crank right up

          • JoNaXKaY

            Sleeping dog high res pack looks amazing. I played that game without high res pack, in the mid of the campaign i installed them… and oh boy… the quality bump was there.
            And the performance hit was not sooooo hard. I dont know man… hope they dont pull another watch dog. But 6gb ram its way too much. Da fuq 6gb!!!!! :/ im feeling sick now…

    • Amir

      agreed, they cancelled their titans and 780ti models, by doing this kinds of things i guess they are trying to sell the last ones, specially after showing this on Games 24

      • According to my readout from MSI Afterburner, Hitman Absolution uses 2.8GB of VRAM on max settings, 1080p. 2012 game. :p

        • Amir

          funny thing is that game is constant 60fps for me 2GB, was that nixxes too ?

    • Durka Durka

      MORE? They said they cant keep them in stock.

  • VeTi

    If Ultra setting will have super high-res textures (like 2/4k on everything, even samllest props) then I don’t have problem with this. I wish some devs would make a game like first Crysis – where Ultra setting were designed for PC 1 or 2 generations ahead.

  • ArchnophobiA

    Things like this happen only with nvidia based games…

    • Amir

      it happens on AMD side too but yeah it’s getting more and more annoying on nvidia’s side

  • The Glorious PC Master Race

    The heck? Why would this game need 6GB VRAM when it looks like this on PS4? Reeks of unoptimized port.

    Trigger warning: PotatoStation 4 shot

    http://i.imgur.com/sccLKsN.png

    • boniek

      Maybe ultra textures are PC only? Would make sense. If so it is nice for them to provide them even if almost nobody can run them now. I mean there are people that miss old days of Crysis 1 which couldn’t be maxed at the time it was released..

      • Despite what people might think, the consoles can’t do ultra and they don’t even have 4GB of the 6 or so for video, so yes ultra 6GB VRAM ultra textures requirement is PC only. Some would say Watch Dogs on the PS4 used ultra textures but the 900p, FXAA, lack of higher qaulity AF makes the textures look lower qaulity

    • Are there any uncompressed 1080p screenshots of both PC and console versions?

      • The Herald Of GabeN

        Only found one of the PS4 version with some compression. WB is keeping a tight lock on footage and screens.

        It’s basically Ass Creed with better character models but still looking like a “Last gen” game (Then what does that make the new consoles?)

        http://i.imgur.com/sxLgnAT.jpg

        • yes

          >Then what does that make the new consoles?
          Sh*t

    • Durka Durka

      Why are we using potatoes instead of real pcs comrad commisar?

      Because real pcs cost a whole lot more than you peasants.

      Yes cod 2.

      I do enjoy calling the new cosnoles potatoes becuase they kinda are potatoes.

      shhh demfax is coming.

      • demfax

        Sick fanboy screaming about peasants that needs mental help.

        • Durka Durka

          Go back to your potato peasant!!

          Also its “screaming about peasants that need mental help”

          Dont make mistakes when you posts facts.

          You peasants really are mentally ill and you are a prime example.

          I mean seriously? You accuse someone being a xbot and then he gives you his psn and you send him multiple long rant voice messaages.

          Sounds like you are the master peasant who needs mental help.

          Getting so butthurt about what people think in the internet about your POTATO box is beyond r3tarded.

        • Any chance you can engage in a proper conversation about PC gaming instead of saying the same crap?

    • Amir

      ewwww that 6GB

  • I don’t understand this , I mean games in the past had similar or higher textures and required less Vram , to me this has got to do with how the engine streams the textures on consoles, won’t be surprised if current gen porting is the reason.

    • Miroslav

      There is nothing to understand, the new consoles are cheap and weak AMD processor and to things even worse is low frequency.Respectively to unload CPU they saving from “decompression ” texture ….. of course there are Transcoding GPU algorithms but no one deals to optimised and “Voi la” 4-6GB VRAM.

      • I try to understand the logic behind it,but yeah it’s a waste of time to try and figure it out, its current gen porting that’s the problem,sadly if we both even said that on a console based forums we’d get very very stupid replies resulting in Destiny and “insert paid console exclusive” instead of logical answers, because exclusives (software) trumps hardware.

      • Nines

        You look like a guy who knows what he’s talking about. I was thinking about this, and I have a question. Why they’re using VRAM for this, instead of RAM?

        • Miroslav

          New console used unified DDR5 memory , which have high speed but also high latency.There is no separation of system and video memory.

          • Nines

            Yes, I know but I mean.. for example, Evil Within requires 4 GB RAM and 4 GB VRAM. Why not 6GB Ram and 2GB VRAM? Wouldn’t it be better for PC gaming? RAM is much cheaper than VRAM.

  • corinthiansgo

    Try harder Sony…U wont get me into consoles…im not even interested in this game!

    • boniek

      It is good news that they are providing PC specific feature even if we can not take advantage of it yet.

      • corinthiansgo

        I can take advantage of it…so far any game. But as Papa perfomances review almost all games cant provide good use for a i5k.

      • Amir

        no it’s not. unless they use some new ground breaking features which is not the case here

        • boniek

          Hires texture pack is not ground breaking feature but it is nice to have nonetheless. It is something consoles won’t have and what will make game run prettier. You will always be able to disable it and use high so it is purely optional. I don’t understand your line of thinking here.

          • Amir

            “Hires texture pack is not ground breaking feature”
            thats the point. it’s not ground breaking, it’s not that special but it needs 6GB vram. all of the games on PC have better textures and more extras even more than monolith can imagine but they don’t need 6GB vram. example ? crysis 3, wanna more ? he*l even ryse on 4k don’t need 6GB, it needs 4GB, more ? Metro (all versions) compared to it’s ps4 and x1 versions, it has way more superior textures (best to date) on pc + voumetric lighting exclusive to pc + tessellation exclusive to pc (best to date) + physx and it destroys shadow of mordor in any terms on technical level and it don’t need 6GB vram. prettier ? far more than that. now maybe you can understand or continue to hide your head in your bu*t

  • Raushan

    I think the ultra textures are for 4K because it says there that ultra textures are only available with the UltraHD texture pack which I’m guess is 4K textures.

    • Nines

      You can screw it up even with 512 x 512 textures if you want to, by loading more assets into the memory (considering that it is an open world game). Basically that is what they’re doing right now. I doubt 6gb is for 4K.

    • Amir

      it clearly says it’s for 1080p, see the pic

      • Raushan

        Yes I know it says that but the way it says it needs the Ultra HD texture pack makes it seem that it’s 4K textures. That’s just my guess.

        • Amir

          it make sense if it’s for 4K otherwise it’s just a crappy port

          • yes

            Texture resolution =/= resolution

            He doesn’t mean the resolution the game is running at is 4k, but the textures themselves are 4k.

  • Psionicinversion

    ram requirements are ridiculous how the frack does it need 6GB. it shouldnt do unless theres ALOT of wastage in the models/textures etc doesnt make any sense

  • Foxiol

    Watch Dogs Syndrome of poor optimization.

    • Nope, both Total Biscuit and Linus Tech Tips said the game runs well and seems well optimised, frame-rate it pretty stable.

  • mamabicho

    we should be happy devs are finally pushing the hardware and not some sh**ty console limited port. no more getting held back, lets do this! bring it!

  • Nines
  • Durka Durka

    Those textures better be more detailed than real life.

  • James Haynes

    did not people want games to hammer the hardware, people used to brag for years about the extra memory people had on their pc’s

    • Bundy

      Yeah I don’t get it. Gamers keep whining that games aren’t pushing the bleeding edge anymore, and instead we’re relegated to low def console ports. The someone makes a game that uses a ton of VRAM and same group starts crying bloody murder.

  • Alan James

    We’re so used to crank everything to ultra even on medium-end hardware because of crappy console ports that we forgot than ultra should be for the best rigs only.
    We’ll have to see, but maybe medium or high quality textures will be decent and equivalent to other games and ultra will be crazy 4k textures like a modded skyrim, so people with titans can actually use them for something. I mean it would be nice to have the option.

    • Amir

      no, dead rising 3 and watch dogs proves that, even those people with beat rigs can’t play them on ultra, and their ultra is not something special.

      • Alan James

        Well those were really unoptimized ports to begin with.

  • Sikandar Ali

    WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • guest

    So conboles version are equivalent to low on PC. lol

    • Sikandar Ali

      Haha…. I really can’t believe this!!!!!!!!!!!!!
      I’ve just watched ign review for PS4 version. they gave 9.3/10. But also mentioned the game is running quite perfect. but lag sometimes on slow motion sceneplay….

      • guest

        lol ign review

  • Ville N

    How come 2GB is enough for skyrim with 2K textures but this requires 3 times that and probably has worse textures?

  • PB

    “note, ultra only differs from high if the ultra HD texture pack is installed”

    So 3GB Vram for now, but later on they will release optional texture pack that will require 6GB Vram . If only game will look fine on medium texture settings (2 GB Vram
    card), than it’s not a big deal for me. In essence, this is how PC
    gamming should look like, different settings, for different setups.
    Crysis 1 looks good even now, because it was also done with future
    setups in mind. PC enthusiasts are always disappointed when game is just simple console port, and not use modern hardware, so now you will get your modern textures and 6GB requirements 🙂

    W_D already can use 3.2GB @1080p with SMAA (and 3.8GB with MSAA/TXAA). IMHO just 4 GB in 980GTX is way too low, and thats why I still waiting for 8GB cards, or maybe even next generation. For now I will still use 680GTX OC and medium/high texture settings

    • Amir

      “Crysis 1 looks good even now, because it was also done with future
      setups in mind”
      agreed with the rest but this game is nothing compared to Crysis back in it’s day, game looks cool, animations are awesome, models are high quality but still we can’t compare it to crysis because it’s not something special and doesn’t offer anything mind blowing like crysis. ram usage is one thing but very high ram usage without any good use is just wasting the memory. even that W_D’s 3GB is waste of memory on cards with 6GB+ vram because it made no difference on performance than a 2GB cards. it’s not future and they didn’t designed them for the future, that’s just bad design

      • PB

        You right Amir, it will not look like Crysis did in 2007 :).

        But in regards to W_D, on guru3d site one dude replaced his 780GTX 3GB for 980GTX 4GB, and he wrote that this game runs much better now and stuttering is almost gone :). In 1080+Ultra+MSAA that game is using 3.8GB (and 3200 with SMAA), so no wonder 4GB helped a lot in this game.

        • Amir

          don’t know about that dude, game runs bad on 6GB titans for most people if not all. 980gtx is not what this game recommended on (not worthy for that power) but if it runs better on it then it’s not really important. of course people can run AC III 60fps all the time with a hardware 4x time more than what they recommended in the first place that runs the game 10fps~ . forcing games to run better with more raw power which is not needed if they optimize them is not an achievement and it’s not build for future systems, it’s just more raw power to overcome bad coding. yeah some games like crysis can be fixed by more raw power in future systems but that’s not bad coding, that is phenomenal techniques which will be used on future systems, something that we didn’t saw before that, not just a normal game with needs of a high system spec.

  • Edwin Obando Chacon

    Why are you surprised, we all pretty know that companies are getting lazy, and for second they are trying harder for you to get a console, so they are making their games for expensive computers, so most people have to go to the poverty gaming. Anyways Im not getting a console never, not for this game or evil within, so f’ bethesda and monolith.

  • Beatwolf

    On one hand this is getting out of hand and the requirements seem over the top, to say the least. It is amusing however, how much hate and sh*t has been talked about how much consoles are holding pc back etc etc. Now that the games that have presumably been developed for “next-gen” are starting to come out, and require a lot of horsepower, the gaming community is suddenly b**t-hurt.

    When that is said I think 4GB is too much, and does indeed smell of bad optimization for PC. A 3GB max and minimum core i5 with 8GB RAM would be a fair requirement though.

  • jdwii

    hey look another game now pretty sure 90% of everyone will have to upgrade their cards or turn down textures(my favorite graphic option) to medium.

  • Venus

    This is similar to BF4 resolution scale ,usually all would prefer to have it set at 100% but if you want UltraHD then just move the slide to your liking.

  • Steffen Fufb

    All screenshots till now showed crappy textures, that require not more than 2gb.
    Media abuse bullshit

  • Leave Me Alone

    the ultra textures pack better be using 8k sized textures because i can play modded skyrim with ALL 2k and 4k textures and i don’t go over 3gb of VRAM and never have. so unless they’re using some 8k textures or literally use nothing but 4k textures for everything in the world, this amount recommended amount of VRAM is utterly ridiculous.

    • JoNaXKaY

      This. I modded the hell out of skyrim with tons of 4k textures and all kind of new flora and was running pretty damn good.

  • Dudebro Zero

    Once more: RIP Monolith, you were a good company as late as 2005. Then you died. I still miss you.

  • Yeltnerb1

    Finally! PROGRESS! Suck it, nerds. 8GB of VRAM is definitely the way to go. You WHINE about low-res textures & then WHINE when you need more VRAM for higher-res textured games. Upgrade or STFU!

    • Amir

      shut the he*l up you miserable troll.

      “You WHINE about low-res textures”
      that doesn’t mean people wants 6gb vram textures that is the same as medium quality textures, or in evil within’s care which looks like ultra low res (mid 2000’s) textures with high v-ram usage

      • Yeltnerb1

        Its not trolling if its TRUE.

        • Amir

          and it’s not true

  • John

    AHAHAHHAHA! This is getting stupid. Its so obvious nvidia and amd are paying devs to inflate whats needed to play so they can sell more gpu`s.

    This is pathetic honestly.

  • archaven

    The most expensive and powerful graphics on PC defeated by a $399 console?

    • Amir

      how ? does consoles use ultraHD textures ? even if it is (which is not), then consoles defeated in all games before

      • BTW, the PC version has superior drawn distance and density of foliage on ultra, basically a quarter of the screen more draw distance. I have a shot from DF showing it against the PS4 version. The console uses high textures not ultra.

        • Amir

          yeah, see the shot 😀 it doesn’t end on foliage and textures, there are more, from meshes to shadows and AO and tessellation

  • Sometimes I think it’s just a marketing gimmick to look elite. OMG TEH GODZ LOOK AT OUR GAME. ITS SOOOO NEXT GEN IT USES 10GB OF VRAM ON TEH GRAPHIC TEXTURES!

  • Amir

    Rome II empire edition is free till monday i guess

    • anaconda

      Nice joke 😉

      • Amir

        it’s not a joke, it’s on steam

  • sasan maghami

    is this a joke?what the hell are they thinking.we do not know if a game’s visual are not worth it?
    6gb vram for sh*t?high resolution craps my a*s.

  • arkon

    6GB Vram?yeah righ!
    Another req like CodGho or WD,uberfail game! 😀
    On high textures maybe 2-3GB,but on ultra common…another fail console game port!bye bye moronistic devs!

  • Skyrim doesn’t have much variation in textures Variation plays a big factor in VRAM usage as the more varied textures are, the more they have to be loaded into memory.

  • Nines

    No, he asked if the PC version was ported by Nixxes, and it’s true. Nixxes was responsible for Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, Hitman, etc.

    BTW

    • Amir

      yeah, thanks. man they are good

    • Doesn’t prove what I said was wrong, MSI Afterburner shows the VRAM usage at MSAA 8x, also we don’t know where they took the VRAM tests at.

      • Nines

        I’m not saying if you was wrong or right. I was more interested in how much memory the game uses with MSAA 4x, since I think 8x is not necessary. Turns out that you can set 2560 × 1600 with MSAA 4x and it still will be under 2 GB.

        • Fair enough in this game I suppose, MSAA 8x really does a great job in AC4 with the ropes and cables and uses just over 2GB VRAM at 1080p. Shame my R9 280 can’t keep 30fps with MSAA 8x though haha.

          • Nines

            Maybe you could downsample it from 2K to 1080p with MSAA 4x and compare the results, or just try SSAA?

          • Can’t get downsampling to work, tried a little util for AMD cards but it didn’t work, screen just kept saying “out of range”.

  • John Mellinger

    So you need a 780gtx 8 gig or a Titan/Black and for AMD you need a SAPPHIRE HD 7970 GHz Edition 6GB or newer 6gig non ref cards… Why do I get the feeling this game is not going to look that great anyways? Something seems really off here.

  • Amir

    i said this on evil within article, i’m saying it here too:

    ok they fixed evil within, they announced 4GB total avaliable graphic memory. any 670+ cards
    with 2gb vram can max it. 4gb shared 2gb dedicated. i guess thats the
    case with shadow of mordor too. so 4GB v-ram =/= 4GB dedicated card, it’s 2GB card + 2GB system momery shared with your graphic card

  • Ken Spaziani

    If you choose Ultra without the texture pack as stated where this image originally came from (IGN) it will run ULTRA at 3GB Vram – The optional HD ULTRA TEXTURE PACK is Targeted for 4K Displays or Enthusiast 1080P downscaling the HD ULTRA TEXTURE PACK.

    You can run it in ultra with 3GB VRAM; Also CONFIRMED as a Press Copy finally arrived (late) for me; SLI 780 Ti’s are equaling the HD Texture packs requirement for 6GB Vram via Shared System Video Memory.

    • yes

      Unless you have the HD texture pack installed, high and ultra look no different. That’s why it only uses 6GB.

      Last I saw (from PCGamer), the HD texture pack isn’t available yet. If it’s still unavailable, you couldn’t have tested out ultra. Again, unless that’s installed, high is equal to ultra.

  • Entonations

    There’s a difference between pushing the hardware and being horribly optimized. Pushing the hardware means that eventually with more powerful hardware, you can run the game smoothly at higher settings. A horribly optimized game runs like crap even on more powerful hardware. Unfortunately most AAA games that have been coming out have been the latter.

  • Rajesh Singh

    This is Just Poor Coding Skills, No Excuses, even the 8GB on next gen consoles is shared memory

    Their VRAM is capped at 4GB max as Games require rest of the RAM for AI

    If we have to think of shared memory then on a PC it can be the 2GB VRAM and 6GB or 8GB or 16GB or 64GB of system RAM giving 8GB to 18GB total

    Too bad they dont got enough coding skills to utilize system memory for textures as well on PC as well

    • Console’s memory isn’t shared though, it’s one pool for everything, unlike the PC which has VRAM from one area of the system and main memory on other area of the system. When a PC runs out of VRAM it has to go to main RAM which is a lot slower. Consoles don’t have to go across to other pool of RAM, across the bus to be processed because all of the RAM is treated the same.