Total War: WARHAMMER will not support DirectX 12 at Launch

Total War: WARHAMMER will not support DirectX 12 at Launch

| Source: Total War Optimisation Blog Author: Mark Campbell

Total War: WARHAMMER will not support DirectX 12 at Launch

Creative Assembly has created a new "Optimisation Blog" for Total War: Warhammer, detailing the many changes that have been made to their game engine to ensure that the game performs better than it's predecessors.

Sadly this new optimisation blog has also confirmed that the game will not support the DirectX 12 API at launch, but that they have been working closely with AMD in order to offer some significant performance gains when using the new graphical API.

We’re pleased to confirm that Total War: WARHAMMER will also be DX12 compatible, and our graphics team has been working in close concert with AMD’s engineers on the implementation. This will be patched in a little after the game launches, but we’re really happy with the DX12 performance we’re seeing so far, so watch this space!

When we contacted Creative Assembly they confirmed that the DirectX 12 version will be coming a "few weeks" after the launch of the game, stating that they "wanted to ensure it’s the best possible implementation of the tech, and that it is as stable as possible".

Creative Assembly has been working hard to improve the performance of Total War's TW3/Warscape engine, improving the engine utilisation of both CPU and GPU resources.

Firstly the game has been given greater multi-core CPU support, moving game-draw and graphics render processes to separate CPU threads and reducing the possibility of your CPU becoming a "bottleneck" that limits game performance.

On the GPU side the particle simulation pipeline has been made a lot more efficient by changing the pipeline from pixel shaders to compute shaders, decreasing the GPU time required to complete certain tasks. Several similar changes have been made across the rendering pipeline to make the best use of GPU time and increase the games framerate.

In non-DX12 news, our graphics team has spent considerable time on engine optimisations and there’s lots of good news in this regard, so let’s talk about specific engine optimisations which benefit everyone.

Total War has traditionally been quite CPU-bound, with the game-draw and graphics render processes both running on the same CPU thread. Over time, as the engine has evolved and become more demanding, this has become an increasingly important bottleneck for us. During the course of TWWH’s development, we’ve spent time separating these so they now run independently on their own threads. We’ve also optimized our task-system to have better multi-threading performance across the board.

In GPU terms, we’ve shifted our particle simulation pipeline from the pixel shader to the compute shader, which is a more efficient use of the GPU’s time. In fact we’ve done this with several parts of the rendering pipeline, further utilizing the GPU and letting the CPU focus on everything else it has to do.

Long story short: all of this means we’re using the CPU and the GPU more efficiently. TW: Warhammer takes better advantage of multicore CPUs, balancing the load across the cores so that no single core is maxed out and limiting framerates while others sit idle.

The game engine has also been upgraded to support 64-bit, allowing the game to make use of a lot more system memory. While this alone does not improve the games performance it allows the game use more diverse models, animations and textures, which makes the game much more visually appealing.

Another benefit of allowing the game to use more memory is a reduction in end turn times, when the AI will take their turns on the campaign map, which allows players to spend less time waiting and more time playing.

We’ve also switched up the Total War engine from 32 to 64-bit. While this brings no tangible performance benefits, we no longer have the 32-bit restriction of a maximum of 2GB of memory devoted to processes. The upshot is we can basically cram a greater variety of models, animations and textures into battles. One neat side benefit though is that it’s brought a reduction in end-turn times. Coupled with further optimisation we’ve done on the AI’s decision-making, this means you’ll enjoy quite noticeably reduced end-turn rounds while all the AI factions take their turns.

Below are the PC system requirements for Total War: Warhammer.

PC Minimum Specifications:

[Expected around 15-25 FPS on campaign map and in a 1v1, 20 units vs 20 units battle, default graphics preset set to “Low”]

Operating System: Windows 7 64Bit

Processor: Intel® Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz

RAM: 3GB*

Hard Drive: 35 GB

Video Card: (DirectX 11) AMD Radeon HD 5770 1024MB | NVIDIA GTS 450 1024MB | Intel HD4000 @720P

(*)PC integrated graphics chipsets require 4GB ram, e.g. Intel HD series

PC Recommended Specifications:

[Expected around 45-55 FPS on campaign map and in a 1v1, 20 units vs 20 units battle, default graphics preset set to “High”]

Operating System: Windows 7/8.1/10 64Bit

Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4570 3.20GHz

RAM: 8 GB

Hard Drive: 35 GB

Video Card: (DirectX 11) AMD Radeon R9 270X 2048MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 2048MB @1080P

PC 60fps+ Specifications:

[Expected 60 FPS+ on campaign map and in a 1v1, 20 units vs 20 units battle, default graphics preset set to “Ultra”]

Operating System: Windows 7/8.1/10 64Bit

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4790K 4.0 GHz

RAM: 8 GB

Hard Drive: 35 GB

Video Card: (DirectX 11) AMD Fury X or Nvidia GTX 980 @1080P

Right now Total War: Warhammer promises to be a refreshing experience for any Total War fan, not only promising better performance at launch than previous releases but also a lot of free post-launch DLC. Those who Pre-order or purchase the game within the first week of launch will also get the Chaos Warriors faction pack, adding them as a playable race in the grand campaign.

Total War: Warhammer will be a very different game than what fans are used to, moving from historical wars to a fantasy world with magic, monsters, and non-human races. Hopefully, Creative Assembly's game can live up to the Warhammer name.

Total War: WARHAMMER will be releasing on the PC platform on May 24th.

You can join the discussion on Total War: Warhammer on the OC3D Forums.

Total War Warhammer will not support DirectX 12 at launch. https://t.co/gmI7HQYabp pic.twitter.com/FVBiodwQF0 — OC3D (@OC3D) May 19, 2016

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