On High, I get my solid 60FPS even with tons of other applications open, and I save 10GB of drive space into the bargain.Ī) The thought that they have the absolute highest quality graphics really matters to some people, in the same way that $300 HDMI cables and the exact materials used in the construction of speaker stands really matter to other people. Or, alternatively, don't bother with Ultra Textures at all, because there's really very little difference between Ultra and High. Exiting apps is easy enough, but I guess frantic multi-taskers will want 18-32GB of RAM to cope. To get a stable 60 frames per second with these Ultra Textures, even with a 1080Ti GPU, I need to exit Chrome, Photoshop and most of my other regular apps - otherwise it drops to mid-40s and flitters all over the place.
What I can say, from experience, is that performance takes a big hit on my 16GB PC if I have many other applications running. I've also seen anecdotal reports, which I've not been able to confirm as yet, that you also can't have Ultra textures if you have less than 16GB of system RAM. a 6GB GTX 1060, then you're staying on High. However, this will only be possible if you have at least 8GB of video memory on your graphics card. From a settings point of view, they mean that turning on Ultra Textures actually turns on Ultra Textures, as opposed to High but with a different title. Let's go back to those textures, and what difference they make.
No biggie for me as my monitor is 'only' 3440x1440, and nor do I want to spend 25GB of bandwidth and disk space on cutscenes of all things, but fingers crossed that those who've gone full 4K have more luck. Whenever I click 'download', it just boots up the game and nothing, in fact, downloads, and nor can I make the entry appear in the list of installed DLC.
In a similar vein, there is also a 4K cinematics pack, which ups the pre-rendered cutscene resolution from 1080p to 4K, but I've struggled to get this installed.
Two of us on RPS found that clicking the button didn't seem to do anything at first, but after a few minutes a new 10GB SOW update suddenly joined the Steam download queue. If it's not listed at all, head to this page in Steam and click 'download.' Then, er, wait. You can check whether it's postively, definitely installed or not by right clicking on SOW in your Steam library, clicking properties, then DLC, and seeing if 'Middle-earth: Shadow Of War High Resolution Texture Pack" is listed or not, and if it's got a little white tick and the word 'installed' to the right of the entry. (There is thus a very really chance that a lot of people have been thinking they are playing the best possible looking version of the game even though they are not - the placebo effect can affect us all). Your copy of Shadow Of War will offer the option for 'Ultra' textures whether it's installed or not, but if the pack isn't installed, Ultra will look exactly the same as High. In any case, it's worth a check: the norm does seem to be that you have to go out and grab it. However, a couple of RPSers reported that it was installed, despite their not having consciously done anything to make it so. Join me as I investigate whether installing ten gig of 'Ultra' textures really makes a difference to your nemesising.įirst things first: unless you specifically installed the HD texture pack yourself, you probably don't have it on your PC.
As if 65 gigabytes of PC Middle-earth: Shadow Of War weren't enough, there's also an optional extra, free 10Gb download, comprising what's officially called a 'High Resolution Texture Pack.' In other words, it in theory makes the grime, squalor and butchered viscera of Mordor that little bit more grimy, squalid and visceral butchered viscera-y. You may well already know this, but going on the basis that most of the RPS team weren't aware of it, let's put the word out anew.