Monolith’s Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor has been getting a lot hype ahead of it’s release tomorrow and if the big game review sites are to believed, rightly so.
- 8/10 – Gamespot.com
- 9.3/10 IGN.com
- 5/5 GiantBomb.com
- 4.5/5 GamesRadar.com
It’s also one of the first games to be released in recent memory that might actually require some beefy PC hardware to play at it’s higher settings. But just much grunt will you need to enjoy this game at 1080P?
A Neogaf forum thread started on Monday titled ‘Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor PC Performance Thread‘ is 23 pages long at the time of writing this post with many users chiming in to post their hardware and frame rate results from the in game benchmark test. This game does allow for an Ultra Texture pack to be installed in addition to the standard game, presumably provided separately to minimize the game download size. Lets take a look at some of the reported results below;
- Ultra : i7 4770k / GTX TITAN / 16GB DDR3 @ 2560×1440 : 44.97fps (Ultra Texture Pack)
- Ultra : i7 3770 / GTX980 / 16GB DDR3 @ 1920×1080 : 87.03 fps
- Ultra : G3258 @ 4.2ghz / HD 7970 / 8GB DDR3 @1920×1080 : 59.19 fps
- Ultra : i7 4770K / GTX 780 / 15GB DDR3 @ 1920×1200 : 64.24 fps (Ultra Texture Pack)
- High : i7 920 / GTX 570 / 8GB DDR @ 1680×1050 : 62.9 fps
- Medium : i5 2500k / GTX 680 / 8GB DDR3 @ 1920×1080 : 70 fps
Judging by the fact the G3258 was able to pull 60fps under ultra settings (although be it overclocked to 4.2GHz) it seems this game’s performance is, like most 3D action games, more GPU bound than CPU. Using a combination of this data and the benchmark results compiled from GameGPU (link) we put together a few custom gaming PCs specifically for this game.
For the gamer with a 1080p monitors looking for an average frame rate of 60fps with high (not ultra) presets, we have the the i5 4460 / R9 280X / 8GB DDR3 / Windows 8.1 / 120GB SSD powered Valkyrie, currently $1,295 including full assembly, setup & burn in testing plus 2 year on site warranty.
For those who want to crank it all the way up to ultra and maintain that 60fps performance, the i5 4690 / GTX 770 OC 4GB / 16GB DDR3 / Windows 8.1 / 180GB SSD powered Sirin weighs in at $1695, again full assembled, setup, burn in tested and backed with a 2 year on site warranty.
And finally for those on a tight budget who want to play Shadows of Mordor but are would be happy at medium presets at around 45 fps, we have the G3258 / GTX 750TI / 8GB DDR3 / Windows 7 SP1 / 500GB HDD powered edition of the Sirin, fully assembled setup and tested with a 12 month on site warranty for only $905.
Prices are adjusted from time to time and the prices above are accurate as of the time of this post. All our systems are 100% customize, so you want to work of one of the systems we have listed above but want to make a few changes, just click the link above and then click the ‘customise’ button to make any changes you like!