Is Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti too weak for Total War Games?

[HistoryPlayer]

Do you have experience playing Total War games with this graphic card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti? Is the cheapest Nvidia graphic cards of 10 series. I guess this GPU is good enough for Medieval II, Empire, Napoleon, Shogun 2 and probably Rome 2 in the highest settings (at this moment and with the latest update, I wouldn't be sure if this card is enough for Rome 2 with the highest graphic settings). For Attila and Thrones of Britannia is where I would be worried, I wouldn't go for more than quality settings and still I am not sure if this means to have a fluid gameplay since as far as I know both games demands a very powerful computer, practically top computers where you have to invest more than 1500$. I can't imagine the computer that will be required to play Three Kingdoms smoothly.

In this sense and according to my experience, I have a Nvidia GTX 970 and I got stuck at Attila with a mix of performance and quality settings, if I'd purchase a new computer with Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti, I would probably play up to Rome 2 and maybe think if worths investing in Attila and/or Thrones of Britannia, since I would be really worried about performance. I like the fact that Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti is really economical at this moment and can be an excellent option to Total War titles up to Rome 2 (included) but I am not sure if this GPU is enough for having a good experience with Attila and Thrones of Britannia.

What is your experience with this graphic card? Any thoughts/opinions will be welcome.

[Scorch]

Well, from what I have seen and tested - you shouldn't have any issues.
I'm mainly playing on a gaming laptop with a NVidia GTX 980M and I'm running almost everything on max.
I don;t think you'll have severe issues with this chipset, if 1920X1080 is what you are aiming at :)

[Thrax]

Gtx 1050 Ti is enough . You need strong CPU !

[BloodRave375]

I can run it on a Geforce 750 with no issues

[WhyXelsink]

I have gtx 1050 Ti, resolution 1080p: WH II on ultra/high settings with SSAO off - 40 - 48 fps average; ToB ultra/high settings - 50 fps average; ....

and now the funniest thing: Attila everything maxed out + FXAA - 40 fps in benchmark. Well, pretty good... but not for Attila - 15-20 fps in large battles for every modern card on max settings to this day! And it doesn't matter if you have 1050 ti or 1080, you will have 15-20 fps in large 6-10 k battles. This is just... I've deleted the game today.

I hope they will release the game performance update soon, I hope they will. ToB is great example on how to polish Attila engine.

If you ask me, I recommend at least 1060, as it has better memory bandwith, if not - 1050 Ti is a decent card.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by WhyXelsink:

I have gtx 1050 Ti, resolution 1080p: WH II on ultra/high settings with SSAO off - 40 - 48 fps average; ToB ultra/high settings - 50 fps average; ....

and now the funniest thing: Attila everything maxed out + FXAA - 40 fps in benchmark. Well, pretty good... but not for Attila - 15-20 fps in large battles for every modern card on max settings to this day! And it doesn't matter if you have 1050 ti or 1080, you will have 15-20 fps in large 6-10 k battles. This is just... I've deleted the game today.

I hope they will release the game performance update soon, I hope they will. ToB is great example on how to polish Attila engine.

If you ask me, I recommend at least 1060, as it has better memory bandwith, if not - 1050 Ti is a decent card.

Yeah the 1060 is an awesome card. It was one of the best vid card values of the last decade when it came out.

The problem is that vid card prices have been really out of whack since 2017: right now many 1050 ti's are going for what a 1060 6gb was supposed to be priced at, and the 1060 6 gig cards themselves are priced at the old msrp for cards one and two tiers above them.

This has resulted in the 1050 ti remaining an attractive option. But we are going into 2019, and it is getting harder to recommend the 1050 ti nowadays.

As sad as it is, really all you can do is keep different sites on your radar and watch for flash sales or daily events, and try to score a good card when it comes down to a more reasonable price. If you keep your eyes open, you should be able to find a 1060 3gb on a sale that is priced like what a 1050 ti typically goes for, or even a 1060 6gb for a few dollars more.

PS: At the end of it all though, the cpu is much more important for Attila and Thrones than the vid card. TW has always been cpu dependent, and moving from a 1050 ti to a 1060 isn't going to make any difference for Attila or Thrones if your cpu is slower.

[danrenepetersen1]

lol

[Thrax]

Originally posted by WhyXelsink:

I have gtx 1050 Ti, resolution 1080p: WH II on ultra/high settings with SSAO off - 40 - 48 fps average; ToB ultra/high settings - 50 fps average; ....

and now the funniest thing: Attila everything maxed out + FXAA - 40 fps in benchmark. Well, pretty good... but not for Attila - 15-20 fps in large battles for every modern card on max settings to this day! And it doesn't matter if you have 1050 ti or 1080, you will have 15-20 fps in large 6-10 k battles. This is just... I've deleted the game today.

I hope they will release the game performance update soon, I hope they will. ToB is great example on how to polish Attila engine.

If you ask me, I recommend at least 1060, as it has better memory bandwith, if not - 1050 Ti is a decent card.

Yes . You can play it with a GTX 650 . But you need CPU POWER ! . At least 3,5 Ghz Quadcore ( Haswell or better )

[CaoLex]

1050 Ti is enough, especially 4Gb GDDR5 version.

[HistoryPlayer]

Originally posted by Yan Zhaoge:

1050 Ti is enough, especially 4Gb GDDR5 version.

Thank you for your reply but is enough to power Attila Total War? I've seen videos where even GTX 1080 struggles to maintain a stable fps. I'm afraid that the latest Total War games ask too much both CPU and GPU, is hard to have 2 bottlenecks: CPU and GPU when both components sum up to 90% the cost of the computer.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by HistoryPlayer:

Originally posted by Yan Zhaoge:

1050 Ti is enough, especially 4Gb GDDR5 version.

Thank you for your reply but is enough to power Attila Total War? I've seen videos where even GTX 1080 struggles to maintain a stable fps. I'm afraid that the latest Total War games ask too much both CPU and GPU, is hard to have 2 bottlenecks: CPU and GPU when both components sum up to 90% the cost of the computer.

TW games are cpu bottlenecked, which is why even a 1080 can struggle, because the cpu doesn't have enough clockspeed and/or single core performance. Even a mere dual core Pentium G4560, for example, can run the recent TW games just fine, because Intel's single threaded performance and silicon quality is superior, to say, an AMD FX8350, which has much more cores and many more threads capacity.

To get the best performance on all the TWs currently, you want two things:

1) CPU with very good single thread performance.

2) As high of clockspeed for that cpu as possible.

The WH TWs make better use of multi threading, so an older part like the FX 8350 will actually run WH 1 and 2 better than it runs Attila, funny enough.

Extra threads and cores currently are wasted with the TW engine, or rather, they are irrelevant (unless you're steaming or alt-Tabbing out of TW to other programs running in the background).

So the most cost effective cpus for TW right now, and to give some future proofing, would be either an unlocked Intel i5 from the latest generation, or a new AMD Ryzen 5 2600, and to crank up the clockspeed on either as high as possible.

On an extreme budget, the Pentium with hyperthreading (G4550 and up), or an i5 from the last several generations, is really the cheapest way to get max TW performance, but you lose all the future proofing and performance in other games. For future proofing and ultimate budget, a Ryzen 3 1200 overclocked is very tough to beat, since you can always upgrade to a Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 down the road on the same motherboard.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Yan Zhaoge:

1050 Ti is enough, especially 4Gb GDDR5 version.

I'd just add that a factor with Nvidia is their memory compression tech, which is quite good.

The compression means that the 3 gb on the GTX 1060 3gb is equivalent to 4 gb on another card, and similarly the 6 gb on the 1060 6gb is effectively equivalent to 8gb on an AMD card.

In any case, no current TW game uses more than 2 gigs of vram, even at all Ultra settings and 1080p, unless you're at 4K res, which is another topic.