Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor was a highly anticipated game. A couple of months ago, Monolith surprised everyone with the game’s PC requirements. And if that wasn’t enough, just mere days prior to its release, the team claimed that the game would need huge amounts of VRAM in order to be enjoyed even at High settings. So, after the controversy surrounding its enormous PC requirements, it’s time to see how this bad boy performs on the PC platform.
As always, we used an Intel i7 4930K with 8GB RAM, NVIDIA’s GTX690, Windows 8.1 64-bit and the latest version of the GeForce drivers. While Monolith stated that it’s currently working on an official SLI profile – that will be most probably released this week – there is a workaround for all SLI owners and as you may have guessed, you will need the NVIDIA Inspector Tool.
In order to enable SLI, all you have to do is browse the available profiles until you find the one for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, add the game’s executable file, add FEAR 3’s SLI compatibility bits (0x000202F5) and make the following adjustments.
Once you’ve done these changes, SLI should work. This workaround is not perfect, however, as there are scenes in which SLI scaling takes a dive. This happens mostly while fighting enemies, so hopefully the official SLI will not be plagued by such issues. Still, we strongly suggest using it for the time being as for the most part, scaling is great.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a open-world game, meaning that it should normally be a CPU-bound title. Well, it appears that Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is the exception to that rule. Even though Monolith’s game scales well on six cores, it runs amazingly well even on dual-cores (with HT enabled). We did notice some minor drops to 45fps in some scenes with our simulated dual-core system but for the most part, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor ran with constant 60fps. A quad-core, on the other hand, was behaving exactly the same with our hexa-core (it didn’t matter whether HT was enabled or not). Ironically enough, Monolith suggests an i7 3770; a far better CPU than our simulated one. So rest assured i3 owners, you will be able to run Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor without issues unless you are GPU limited.
So what about its GPU requirements? Monolith recommends a GTX670, however this GPU is simply unable to offer a constant 60fps experience at Ultra settings. In fact, our GTX690 in Single GPU mode (meaning that it was behaving exactly like a GTX680) was running this game with 36-45fps at 1080p with Ultra settings (and High Textures instead of Ultra). By lowering Ambient Occlusion and Shadows to High we were able to gain 20fps, however we were still noticing drops to mid-50s. In order to achieve a constant 60fps experience, we had to use High settings (including High Ambient Occlusion).
As we’ve already said, GPUs with 2GB of VRAM are able to handle the game’s High textures. There was minor stuttering due to swapping in various occasions, though it did not turn the game completely unplayable. Ultra textures, on the other hand, are simply too much for such GPUs. Not only that, but there not big of a difference between them. For what is worth, we strongly suggest increasing the resolution and in order to downsample – if you have more than 2 or 3 GB of VRAM – instead of using those Ultra textures.
Performance wise, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor ran with 70fps on our PC with SLI enabled and the following settings. And while a GTX680 is unable to maintain constant 60fps with Ultra settings, Monolith has provided a wide range of options to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Lighting, Textures, Texture Filtering, Meshes, Shadows, Ambient Occlusion and Vegetation Range. In addition, you can enable or disable Motion Blur, Depth of Field, Order Independent Transparency and Tessellation. Disappointingly enough, there is no AA option, something that will definitely displease a lot of PC gamers.
Graphics wise, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a great looking game. While there are some tilling issues and the game does not justify its VRAM requirements for Ultra textures (though on the other hand, uncompressed textures do not equal to dramatically better textures, especially when the raw material is not that different from the compressed High versions), it comes with highly detailed characters, lovely shading effects, and gorgeous rain effects. We were also surprised by the fact that almost all light sources cast shadows. There is a nice variety of Orcs, they can be decapitated and there is moveable vegetation. If we’re to nitpick here, we’d say that we were let down by the limited interactivity with the game’s environment, the fact that there aren’t a lot of objects to destroy, and that your character does not leave real-time footsteps.
Now as we said, those are mere nitpicks and nothing more. For what is worth, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor looks great, though we have to say that it’s not up to what we’d consider a true current-gen title. Most of the times, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor feels like an enhanced old-gen game. To put it simply; it does not have the ‘WOW’ factor of let’s say Oblivion (an open-world game that wow’ed us when it was released back in the first days of X360).
All in all, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor performs great on the PC. The game scales well on multiple CPUs, and despite Monolith’s claims, it is perfectly playable on dual-core CPUs that support Hyper Threading. While gaming we did not notice any mouse acceleration side-effects, so that’s another point for Monolith. And while Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor requires a high-end GPU to shine, Monolith has added a lot of graphics options to tweak in order to achieve playable framerates.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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This is a fairly nice-looking game…
And its great to have so many graphics options to tweak.
Yeah, it does look quite good. I don’t agree that it looks like a enhanced last gen game.
I mean, it doesn’t look as good as the best current gen games, but it looks better than some and not too far off of the best we have seen. I’m not talking about unreleased games like The Witcher 3 and Uncharted 4, I’m talking about the games of this year.
Honestly to me it looks like a unreal 3 engine game with a HD texture pack…or your typical AC game, its not graphically impressive but the requirments are nuts.
Boring, generic and overhyped…thats was the real perfomance of this game!
Are you retarded? The game is none of those things.
lmao…sorry boy, Ive played it, what I cant say of u? did u played any game with orginal story or at least great story?
It is almost a MP only game(go there and do it…all of it again and again…again! )
You know, when you type like that people do assume you are stupid. I usually compare a text conversation to what a real world conversation would be, and if you came up to me and said “sorry boy, Ive played it, what I cant say of u? did u played any game with orginal story or at least great story” I would indeed think you were retarded.
Also, the game is great. It has a fun combat system that is semi based off the Batman Arkham series. The nemesis system is fun and interesting, and is the bulk of how you will spend time in the game. The runes are interesting, and create pretty interesting game balance, as well as a pretty cool set of unlockable abilities. Graphics look pretty swell too.
Y u sai dat?
I am amazed at how people can type out “4 or 5 syllable words” but have to use “u” for a single syllable word.
I myself can’t wait for the return of grunting.
Cant blame me if that game is in-all a garbage.
And please dont mix one of all greatest games ever with a barely fun game like this one.
I can pretty use the same arguments of you that only a stup people would compare batman with a completely generic story like this one.
Uh, it’s single-player only.
You really are a moron.
C’mon mate, don’t cuss on people, what about apresent a nice argument instead so we can make this comment session a little polite?
hes not retarded, i can confirm and i’m very smart 😛
game just not bad for “AAA” cash cow though , can’t say for story cause i didn’t play it yet, but from what i saw gameplay is very boring and repetitive , casual and dumb QTE infested junk…(just how all kids love it these days)
where are combos like we had in Prince of Persia and similar games
Only a re**rded would ask another if hes re**rd? lmao!
Despite are u sure we are talking(someone could say it) about the same game?
As I said OVERHYPED!
This game received only a modest amount of coverage and press, and is getting very good reviews. Meanwhile Destiny and Titanfall were given massive pushes in media and advertising, and ended up being average at best by most accounts.
I know this is hard to believe, but the world does not revolve around
your personal opinions. Other people really like the game. Deal with it.
Nope. The world does revolve around marketing forced opinions.
Deal with it!
It’s sitting at an 86 on Metacritic and all my friends are telling me it’s cool. But hey, your opinion is the only one in the entire world that matters. You are the center of the universe!
Metacritis? almost all games that i liked didnt had great scores at that site. so…
And dont get me wrong sir. I didnt say that the main core mechanics and quests of the game were boring…only story-side of the game.
“You are the center of the universe!”
this one was great lemme write it to remember…U could easily write a book…lmao!
Good for you. You like sh*t, and hate good games. Now f*ck off.
calm down boy…I loved Deus EX too!
Piss off, you douche. Nobody gives a f*ck about your sh*tty opinion.
Douchebags like you who think the world revolves around them and that always try to force their opinion down everybody else’s throats are pathetic.
ultra lmao!
Yes, because anyone who doesn’t agree with you is re**rd. With that said, I found the game to be great.
Apparently the main missions are borring but the nemesis system and doing things in diffirent ways is what it is all about.
Funny how no one bothers with new ips anymore, the gmae must be a sequel or based on something sucessfull. As for overhyped, yeah the game had a truckload of trailers.
For what I’ve seen, I think that the nemesis system would be more interesting in another type of game (although being a “undead” sort of thing matched the enemies remembering you). At least the game has something new going on right? ¯(?)/¯
As for the IP thing, in this case I think LotR has a great and well crafted lore already, and while some fans “accepted” this game addition, the “tie in” sometimes drives people off.
i almost killed my screen trying to kill the bug!!!! :/
that trick is so old that i cant fall for it anymore.
Sorry, not sure if you are referring to Destiny, Titanfall, or Watch Dogs.
Didnt all those games and yet Middle Earth were developed by the very same dev? lmao!
10 posts by you and not a single one of them is readable.
lmao!
It’s because Mordor is in general kind of boring 1 color place. Be happy they actually added some green zones to it for the game. I hope the next game will be outside of it.
I wonder can my old 955 run this?
I am asking because its below to the minium requirements and you can trust requirments these days.
gtx660
Had to turn down a few settings to get a constant 60 fps, but it still looks pretty damn good.
thanks john. so the game runs ok on most hardwares, it’s a nice port but requirements is higher than the game actually looks. anyway i don’t like the world design and repetitive gameplay, maybe next year (when it goes 20$ or less) i give it a try. no AA option, does anybody knows what is the default AA the game uses ?
I have an intel e6600, 4 gb ram ddr3 and HD 5750 1 GB GDDR5, i can play this game on low?
Just setting the Force alternate frame rendering 2 mode in the NVIDIA control panel did the trick for me with SLI. Have the same card is in the analysis.
What engine does it use? UE3? How effective is forcing AA through your video card or other sources? I usually just force Ultra FXAA in games like this (via RadeonPro). Effective enough, no texture blurring, works on things like vegetation, and has no performance hit. Really don’t know why people are such snobs about FXAA, it’s just fine for most of us.
Omg that’s still around? Why don’t they use it to make a sequel to No One Lives Forever?!
FXAA blurs the image a lot, that is the main issue, every other post-process AA is better in that regard (MLAA, CMAA, SMAA)
TXAA is just another fancy name for MSAA+FXAA. 🙂
NVIDIA users can use FXAA in their graphics panel, AMD user can use MLAA in their graphics panel or you could just try sweetfx with SMAA.
it’s also playable on a OC’d G3258, that is, has no ht.
It does looks way to easy this game. Did someone finished this already?
brainded gaming incoming. hope they made it short, otherwise i wont be finishing it
Nice!
Only 30fps on consoles. Those poor $0N¥ pauperpeasants.
Sick, evil, lying fanboy shills screaming about peasants. Get mental help. You are sick and evil.
Stop spreading fanboy lies, hatred, and FUD, it accomplishes nothing. It’s not healthy to hate pieces of plastic and people who like playing video games on them. It’s sad that you hate good video games for being on the wrong piece of plastic.
damn.. can my GTX 750 Ti handle this game in 720p ?
Hmm….I have to admit, this game does look very good, plays well too, even better since replacing my HD7870 XT (Tahiti) with a GTX 970, although, I think (personally) the requirements are quite bloated. Easily sustaining 60fps @1080p Ultra with vsync on 40” TV, and yes the hd pack is installed. Lowest drop was 55fps. Not too keen on ‘hack an slash’ type games, just really tried it to see if my old 2500k running at 4.3ghz was up to the job. £258 after 2 years is not bad for an upgrade to play all these ‘nex-gen’ titles. The game in all fairness does look pretty good, not too concerned with the story and even more so the hype surrounding it. The fight system is good too, quick! Responsive……For an old gamer like myself it was an hour of fun and I got bored with it, but alas, just my simple view.
Even though ultra is pretty consuming, lowest actually seems to me even better than most games I play (of course with gt 630m, what can I play on high… oh wait, Sleeping Dogs DE)