Empire: Total War

Empire: Total War is the most recent game in the Total War franchise and was tested at 2560x1600 with all in-game settings at their maximum level.

Empire: Total War is a bit of a reviewer’s nightmare as the game can automatically over-ride the settings chosen by the user. For example, if you try to set the options too high on a 512mb card the game will lower them without warning. In the case of this 1 GB vs. 2 GB comparison it does however show us benefits of additional memory in a real world scenario.

With all of the detail levels set to maximum we can select up to 4x anti-aliasing on the 1 GB card, 8x is available in the drop down options but the game automatically lowers the level before we reach the main engine. On the 2 GB card we have no problem selecting 8x anti-aliasing and can play without issue.

Once again in the graphs above we have shown two sets of results for the Sapphire Vapor-X, the first is in direct comparison to the 1 GB card when both are using 4x anti-aliasing. In that test the performance is very close, though the 2GB card does show higher results with maximum framerate.

When we enable 8x anti-aliasing on the 2 GB card there is a performance drop, with a couple of heavy battle situations showing drops beneath 25fps. In a first person shooter this would normally be an issue but in an RTS these occasional low framerates are much harder to notice and do not impact our enjoyment of the game.