Total War: Attila on 'extreme' settings is designed for future GPUs

Attila Gal 15

If you've booted up Total War: Attila on your state-of-the-art rig and wondered why you're getting poor performance in the game's 'Extreme Quality' setting, then I've got both good and bad news for you. The good news is that it's not your GPU under-performing. The bad news is, you can't get the optimum GPU for that setting, because it doesn't exist.

Taking to the Total War forums, an official Creative Assembly spokesperson outlined each of the graphics settings and explained why 'Extreme Quality' won't be the best setting for... well, anyone. " Please note, that the ‘Extreme Quality’ setting is meant for future graphics cards, not for current gen," the spokesperson said. "This is why it's above Maximum Quality."

In addition to a breakdown of which settings are appropriate for which cards, the spokesperson also explained why the game demands higher specs than Total War: Rome II.

"[Attila] is based on a newer iteration of our TW Engine. As a result it is more demanding, if you ran ROME II at a certain combination of settings, ATTILA will be different. If you have high end kit though, ATTILA will certainly look more impressive."

We rated Total War: Attila quite highly, describing it as a "barbarous twist on Rome II, with a handful of fixes".

Cheers, PCGamesN.

Shaun Prescott

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.