My report on Shogun 2 vs Gigabyte HD7970 3gb.

[Civilopedian]

Spent tree fiddy on it, delivered next day off Amazon, bought that Amazon Prime delivery thing (next day delivery on most stuff for £40 annual fee, worth it imo), pop it into my skt 1366 Gigabyte EX58-UD5, I also download latest non beta AMD drivers, so CCC v12.6, and fire up TWS2. Previously was packin' a Gigabyte 4870 1gb, a monster card in its time (about 2-3 years back). Since this is almost best card AMD have to offer barring some minor overclocks and spending a ridiculous hundred quid more, and since I was hating life on Low settings with my 4870 (and still it was slow as snails), I select ultra everything, max AA and AF, 1680x1050 is my max res. I have i7 920 cpu btw @ stock.

Tokugawa, Legendary ))) Need the achievements. 60% so far. 860 hrs clocked previously, and still aint used the new 'Saints DLC units (i own all dlc).

Everything ran great on the campaign map. It looked amazing - and at 60fps, dropping to 40fps if I pan the camera fast a lot over high detail/moving stuff. Then the first battle. Get about 3 mins in, it looks great but every time I move over troops it goes down to like 20fps from 60fps. Then boom, the sound goes into broken record mode and everything freezes and cannot alt f4 or alt tab, cursor will not move. Must hard reset. Rinse and repeat, it does it without fail every time I try to battle.

Bear in mind I looked at multiple reviews for the card pre purchase and all had stellar fps similar to what I was getting off the battlefield, no reviews reported any issues. I failed to see the reports from these forums about issues with the 7k series and TWS2.

This game is why I splashed out on my credit card and bought this product. As an aside, it runs Empire flawlessly on highest settings absolutely no lag whatsoever.

Creative Assembly Y U NO do something about this?

[Larkin]

Honestly it sounds like an overheating issue. I can run S2 fine, but if it gets too hot I get the exact same problems as you.

If everything looks good at one point there's nothing wrong with your card.

As far as I know, the reason it overheats so quickly is due to a lack of multi-core support. It tries to run everything on one core. The graphics card can only do so much.

[Civilopedian]

Honestly it sounds like an overheating issue. I can run S2 fine, but if it gets too hot I get the exact same problems as you.

If everything looks good at one point there's nothing wrong with your card.

As far as I know, the reason it overheats so quickly is due to a lack of multi-core support. It tries to run everything on one core. The graphics card can only do so much.

Cannot confirm/deny overheat, can report 30 degrees Celcius GPU at idle however. Have tried playing on lower resolution, same thing happens. Haven't tried lower settings yet, too embarrassed to fork out tree fiddy and not use highest settings. Use highest settings or its a waste of money.

[Muchacho]

This has been a problem since the release of FOTS. The problem is not the card, there is evidence that it seems to be problem between the all Intel processor sockets except the 1155 socket. I think you have an 1156.

Read this from the official forum:

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...l=1#post367349

[Civilopedian]

This has been a problem since the release of FOTS. The problem is not the card, there is evidence that it seems to be problem between the all Intel processor sockets except the 1155 socket. I think you have an 1156.

Read this from the official forum:

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...l=1#post367349

As stated, I have the 1366 socket, it was the former i7 Enthusiast socket, as opposed to the socket 2011 of today.

[Civilopedian]

BTW can confirm installation of DarthMod 4.2++ with the latest graphics mods did not help.

[Lionheartx10]

try setting shadows to low.

[Humble Warrior]

try settings shadows to low.

lol. Somehow, I don`t think he spent oodles of cash on a top of the range graphics card to be told, `try settings shadows to low`.

[A Barbarian]

@Humble Warrior

Setting shadows to low will improve CPU performance, especially in closeups. Therefore it's a good advice since he has performance problems in a CPU limited scenario:

...every time I move over troops it goes down to like 20fps from 60fps

I bet that a GPU monitor like MSI Afterburner will show a GPU utilization of maybe 60-80% during those slowdowns. 100% GPU utilization would indicate a GPU bottleneck but everything < 90% would indicate a CPU limitation.

[gumption]

It has to be the card. I've a 6950 currently installed with an i7 processor (sandy bridge-e) and it runs at 80fps down to 45fps when zoomed in on maximum settings. The 7970 should be smoking that card, expecially with the beta drivers.

Suggest rolling back to the other catalyst drivers and see if that makes an impact.

[Lionheartx10]

lol. Somehow, I don`t think he spent oodles of cash on a top of the range graphics card to be told, `try settings shadows to low`.

No he didn't, but its the reality he probably has to face along with many others. I had a similar issue, and have now pretty much solved my large dips of FPS in large battles / close ups by settings shadows to low. I don't even see a difference between the shadow quality settings anyway, so it does only good for me by increasing my fps substantially.

@Civilopedian:

Have you tried the lower shadows setting? If so how did your fps fare?

[A Barbarian]

There is NO overheating problem or anything. As mentioned before, the 7970 freezes with S2 on many systems. There is a 93 page discussion on the official S2 forum. Only thing which might help is to use DX9.

The best option, imho, is to return the 7970 ASAP and get a nice custom design GTX670 or GTX680, like the ASUS GTX670DC2T. It will be more stable and faster. (and I have a 7970 which runs fine on a 1155 socket systems)

[Civilopedian]

There is NO overheating problem or anything. As mentioned before, the 7970 freezes with S2 on many systems. There is a 93 page discussion on the official S2 forum. Only thing which might help is to use DX9.

The best option, imho, is to return the 7970 ASAP and get a nice custom design GTX670 or GTX680, like the ASUS GTX670DC2T. It will be more stable and faster. (and I have a 7970 which runs fine on a 1155 socket systems)

Oh yeah, the other reason I bought this one and not nVidia was bitcoins. A 7970 gets 550 megahashes per second!

[Crazyeyesreaper]

yea im on 1155 and had 0 issues across AMDs entire HD 7000 series.

[A Barbarian]

@gumption
What's your FPS in the built in CPU benchmark ? After the benchmark open the log file and look for the minimum FPS and then report back.
According to your post, your minimum fps should be 45FPS. Unfortunately, that's impossible with any existing CPU, even overclocked. I guess that your number will be in the low 20. And that's in DX9 mode with minimal graphics. If you add some more CPU load from higher graphics settings you easily get < 20 fps in a 'big battle closeup scenario'.

[gumption]

@gumption
What's your FPS in the built in CPU benchmark ? After the benchmark open the log file and look for the minimum FPS and then report back.
According to your post, your minimum fps should be 45FPS. Unfortunately, that's impossible with any existing CPU, even overclocked. I guess that your number will be in the low 20. And that's in DX9 mode with minimal graphics. If you add some more CPU load from higher graphics settings you easily get < 20 fps in a 'big battle closeup scenario'.

Good point, all I was using was fraps and the gpu bench. Will take a scooby when am sitting in front of my computer.

[Carlaz]

I have a 7970 and have had no problems so far. Shocked that CA have introduced a problem into a partners (AMD and Intel LOL) device without bothering to solve it. Another case of CA grabbing our money and leaving a broken product without any way for a modder to fix the problem/

[Civilopedian]

Yeah the game has stopped my computer crashing now that I've turned the quality down and played in dx9. FPS is also much more steady. What I'm going to try is everything max with shadows low or off and report back.

[Civilopedian]

Turned shadows off, everything else maxed out, didnt crash, worked great, no lag.

[Lionheartx10]

Turned shadows off, everything else maxed out, didnt crash, worked great, no lag.

Ah good news, if you want shadows enabled, set it to low for best results, but guess its personal choice whether you like it with or without shadows in the end over extra fps. Glad this worked for you!