Total War: Three Kingdoms graphics efficiency: How to get the most effective settings on PC

23.05.2019

Total War: Three Kingdoms PC graphics efficiency: The specs

Just earlier than we cost into lots of of very sharp spears, although, let’s remind ourselves of Total War: Three Kingdoms’ PC requirements. As you possibly can see under, Creative Assembly have outlined numerous totally different suggestions this time, however you’ll nonetheless want a fairly beefy system to hit that 60fps candy spot. Their minimal specs, as an illustration, is just anticipated to provide round 25-35fps on each the marketing campaign map and battle situations on Low graphics high quality at a decision of 1280×720.

Their really useful spec, in the meantime, is aimed toward these taking part in on High at 1920×1080, which Creative Assembly says ought to provide you with a body price between 45-55fps within the above situations. To get a strong 60fps on Ultra settings at 1920×1080, nevertheless, you’ll want that backside specification – though if my outcomes are something to go by, I feel you’ll additionally be capable to get away with having a Core i5 / GTX 1070 system if Ultra settings are an absolute should for you.

Minimum specs:
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo
RAM: 4GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti / AMD Radeon HD 7850
Video reminiscence: 1GB

Recommended specs:
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-6600 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
RAM: 8GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 Fury X
Video reminiscence: 4GB

Recommended 60fps+ specs:
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-8700Okay
RAM: 8GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 / Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
Video reminiscence: 8GB

Click the hyperlinks under to see how every graphics card fared. For the file, my PC had an Intel Core i5-8600Okay and 16GB of RAM inside it, plus all the newest graphics drivers and Windows 10 updates put in.

Total War: Three Kingdoms PC graphics efficiency: The purpose

As all the time, the goal right here is to get you taking part in Total War: Three Kingdoms at 60fps at 1920×1080, 2560×1440 and 4K. That’s a fairly tall order for some graphics playing cards, however the excellent news is that Creative Assembly have put lots of work into making the game extra performance-efficient this time spherical, significantly in the case of their frame-melting anti-aliasing results – the stuff wot makes all these sharp edges and pointy weapons appear to be correct, strong traces as a substitute of jagged, pixellated staircases – however extra on that in a sec.

To take a look at every card, I exploit the game’s built-in benchmarking device, particularly the battle benchmark. This simulates an enormous battle between two opposing clans, exhibiting every military speeding throughout a large, open plain surrounding by forests and tall mountains whereas chucking huge nice hearth bombs at one another in between volleys of arrows. There’s quite a bit occurring, and it’s a superb take a look at of how properly your PC will deal with the game’s large fights.

There’s additionally a marketing campaign benchmark that comes with the game, which sees the digital camera swooping by a simulated marketing campaign map, however I discovered the common body charges it spat out have been roughly the identical as what I noticed over within the battle benchmark. As a consequence, the speeds I’ve specified by the hyperlinks above ought to be broadly consultant of what you’ll see in each sorts of situation.

Total War: Three Kingdoms PC graphics efficiency: How to get the most effective settings

I caught with the game’s 4 major high quality presets (Low, Medium, High and Ultra) throughout my testing, however as you possibly can see from the picture under, there are many choices obtainable within the Graphics settings menu’s Advanced tab to assist enhance your PC’s efficiency should you’re discovering it’s struggling to maintain a gradual body price (click on to develop).

If you’re struggling to get a gradual body price, there are many settings obtainable that will help you get the most effective efficiency.

Interestingly, Texture Quality is all the time set to Ultra no matter whether or not you’re taking part in on High, Medium or Low, however the remainder of the game’s settings all drop down accordingly with their corresponding preset. This helps preserve a sure stage of high quality while you’re getting caught in with Total War’s large battlefields, however I’d argue that different settings akin to Terrain Detail and Grass Detail are simply as vital in the case of conserving Three Kingdoms trying its finest.

As you possibly can see under, for instance, the game’s Low preset appears like your warriors are charging throughout a subject of Vaseline when the digital camera’s zoomed out, which simply appears a bit odd when all of your troopers are detailed as much as the nines. Sure, skimping on environmental particulars like this permits the body price to remain good and excessive, but it surely’s removed from supreme. Medium is healthier, however that, too, is verges on trying a bit of underwhelming at instances, particularly with its diminished unit sizes. As a consequence, I’d say Medium might be the minimal high quality you ought to be aiming for right here.

: Ultra

: High

: Medium

: Low

Fortunately, all however two graphics playing cards I’ve examined (Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and AMD’s Radeon R9 270) have been in a position to run Three Kingdoms at 60fps on Medium at 1920×1080 with out a lot hassle in any respect. The GTX 1050 Ti wasn’t far off 60fps, all instructed, however the R9 270 actually had a little bit of a tricky time with it. As a consequence, older graphics playing cards of an identical classic to the R9 270 could properly should make do with working the game at decrease resolutions with a view to push into greater high quality settings.

High and Ultra settings, then again, are more likely to be the place the true battles might be fought in Three Kingdoms, because it wasn’t till I acquired as much as the GTX 1660 that I began to see a constant 60fps common on High. For 60fps on Ultra, you’re taking a look at both the GTX 1070 or RTX 2060. As such, that is the place I’ve targeted most of my consideration – tips on how to get the most effective settings on High and Ultra with out compromising an excessive amount of on what makes these settings so fairly.

As a case research, I took my 6GB GTX 1060 and tried to get it working as near 60fps as doable on Ultra at 1920×1080, and High at 2560×1440. The GTX 1060 can already hit a easy common of 58fps on High at 1080p and Medium at 1440p, so I wished to see if it was doable to get it working on the following graphics organising with out struggling an enormous drop within the general body price.

The largest factor you are able to do is to set the Anti-aliasing to FXAA. Creative Assembly stated of their PC necessities article on the high there that they’ve made nice strides with their body rate-guzzling anti-aliasing tech this time spherical – a lot in order that they’re calling their top-end TAA (or temporal anti-aliasing) setting their ‘headline technical feature’. It’s “very performance-efficient and looks great,” in line with Creative Assembly, and it’s allowed them to drop their multi-sample AA (or MSAA) altogether. Their “most performance-efficient” AA, nevertheless, is their quick approximate, or “FX” AA – and it actually does present.

It might not be “as visually clean as TAA”, say CA, however when dropping all the way down to FXAA noticed a lift of virtually 10fps once I re-ran the battle benchmark with my GTX 1060 on Ultra at 1920×1080, I feel I’ll take these barely ‘dirtier’ traces, thanks – particularly if it means a median body price of 51fps as a substitute of 43fps.

Switching off SSAO additionally helped push that determine even greater – as much as a near-perfect common of 58fps, with highs of 67fps and lows of simply 52fps. That’s a fairly first rate acquire, should you ask me, and decreasing the Texture Filtering to Anisotropic x8 will nab you one other further body to push the common to 59fps, too. That’s just about the identical velocity I acquired on the default High setting at 1920×1080 – and that’s with out compromising on any of the opposite environmental particulars, too.

: Ultra

: High

: Medium

: Low

Lowering the dimensions of your models can enhance efficiency additional down the size, however battles additionally look quite a bit much less dramatic in consequence.

Unfortunately, solely the FXAA trick may be utilized to the opposite high quality presets, as SSAO is already turned off on High, and its Texture Filtering is ready to only Anisotropic x4. I nonetheless noticed a 9fps enhance just by switching to FXAA, which introduced my GTX 1060’s common 1440p High body price up from 36fps to 45fps, however that’s nonetheless not fairly as attractive as one thing within the mid-50s.

Dropping the Texture Filtering all the way down to x2 didn’t assist a lot, and neither did altering the unit dimension from Large to Medium, or decreasing the general Texture Quality, so that you may as properly maintain these as is and benefit from the sight of these jumbo-sized armies. Instead, the one different factor that produced the identical sort of bump as switching off the SSAO was turning off Screen Space Shadows. This eked out one other handful of frames to bump my common as much as 49fps at 1440p, with highs of 56fps and lows of 43fps.

You may drop the Grass or Terrain Detail down a notch to Medium to get one other couple of frames, however the most effective common body price I noticed right here was 51fps – which isn’t actually that a lot totally different from conserving both of them on High. After that, the beneficial properties get fairly small. Disabling Sharpening, Proximity Fading and Vignette acquired me one other 1-2fps, for instance, however the distinction was so small they’re hardly value bothering with.

As a consequence, I feel that’s most likely going to be your lot on High – except, that’s, you don’t thoughts making do with a little bit of Resolution Scaling, which may be discovered on the Main Graphics setting web page (pictured above). This basically runs the game at a proportion of your required decision – say, 90% of 1920×1080 – after which upscales it to that authentic decision.

I’ll be upfront. Enabling decision scaling at 1080p does look a bit tough on the finish of the day, however at 1440p it was quite a bit much less noticeable. Running at 90% with FXAA and no display screen shadows enabled at 2560×1440, for instance, took my body price as much as a median of 55fps, which is fairly all proper in my books, and method higher than my authentic High determine of simply 36fps.

Otherwise, you’re most likely going to should chew the bullet (or ought to that be butterfly sword?) and accept Medium, which already has FXAA enabled by default.

But sufficient speak about settings. Let’s cost over to a few of them there graphics playing cards. Just click on the web page numbers under or hop again up the web page to the cardboard of your selection.