Results: Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor And Thief
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
The AMD graphics cards dominate the field across all resolutions in this benchmark. Interestingly, the Radeon R9 Nano is inched out by the 390X at 4K.
There’s only one short stretch of the frame time curve where the GeForce GTX 980’s results fluctuate briefly. This can be replicated.
Even in the normalized view, there are barely any deviations. It’s interesting to see how the AMD and Nvidia graphics cards differ in where in the benchmarks they show strengths and weaknesses. It’s easy to see where the individual graphics cards do well (negative, faster) or not (positive, slower) compared to their own averages.
The two benchmark runs with the GeForce GTX 970 Mini at stock and overclocked frequencies don’t just look less smooth, but the graph bears this observation out as well. Jumps between the frames show when the card gets stuck. We’d also like to direct your attention to the GeForce GTX 980 and its yellow curve for another look at its brief fluctuation.
Overall, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 970 Mini (OC) manages to stay just above the 30 FPS mark. But this level of performance is still nothing to write home about. To achieve a smooth gaming experience, either the resolution or the graphics settings need to be decreased.
Thief
Full HD is the only resolution where AMD's Radeon R9 Nano loses to the factory-overclocked GeForce GTX 980. The Nano takes the lead from QHD and up. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 970 Mini (OC) just isn’t powerful enough for Ultra HD.
The frame render time curves show how the differences between cards increase as the resolution goes up.
After normalizing and superimposing the curves, it becomes clear where the GeForce GTX 970 Mini (OC) runs into trouble at UHD.
Thief is one of the games in our benchmark suite that pushes graphics cards to consume a lot of power. This doesn’t explain why AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X at Full HD demonstrates the worst frame time variance in this benchmark. The card actually improves at higher resolutions, where the 390X doesn’t do as well.
Be this as it may, the bottom line is that the hard power consumption limit doesn’t have the same negative impact on the frame time variances that it had in Metro Last Light.
