The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria

While Dungeons & Dragons is a progenitor of the role-playing genre, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings universe is considered by many as the beginning of the fantasy genre itself. There is no point for us to describe the LotR world as you are sure to know it already. People want to play in the worlds of their favorite books and movies and this desire was satisfied by the April 24, 2007, release of The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. Later on, in 2008, the add-on The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria was issued. We have tested our inexpensive graphics cards in it.

The game was developed by Turbine Inc., the company that had previously released D&D Online, so LotR Online runs on the same engine codenamed Turbine G3. There were some improvements that made the game more contemporary visually, yet we think LotR Online is a bit outdated in terms of 3D graphics technologies. What about performance then?

Our graphics cards deliver almost the same performance as in Dungeons & Dragons Online. The same three cards fail in the most difficult mode (1920x1200 with 4x FSAA): Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate Edition, Radeon HD 4830 and GeForce 9600 GT. This time, however, the GeForce 9800 GT joins them as its bottom speed is lower than 25fps. The other cards pass the test well enough, and the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is even excellent. Still, if you want to play The Lord of the Rings Online comfortably, you can just spend $100 for a Radeon HD 4770 or, if such cards prove to be unavailable, add just a few more dollars and buy a Radeon HD 4850 which delivers similar performance.